Team Fortress 2 is now Free to Play; Über Update is Live

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Valve announced today, alongside the ?ber Update, that Team Fortress 2 is now a Free to Play title. This means that if you don't already own the game, you can download and play it in its entirety, for free, from Steam. FOR-EV-ER.
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Special or rare Items sold at the Mann Co. store, such as some of the hats and weapons, will be where Valve makes their dough from here on out -- You won't find any premium subscription services in this game.
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Develop has posted a lengthy interview with Robin Walker where he explains this move. To put it bluntly, Walker said "The data we got back from [the Mann Co.] update leads us to believe that TF2 would be more successful as a completely free product."
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Click here for the press notes.
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More information on Free to Play is here, and you can find info on today's ?ber Update here.
 
Team Fortress 2 is now Free to Play
June 23, 2011 - Valve, creators of bestselling game franchises (such as Half-Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead, and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), announced today that after four years and over 200 updates, its popular and critically-acclaimed online action game Team Fortress 2 (TF2) is now Free To Play (F2P).
The F2P announcement comes as part of the "Über Update". Released today, it is the largest content pack delivered to TF2 since it shipped in 2007.

New players interested in experiencing what PC Gamer calls "the most fun you can have online" will have access to training and offline practice modes, so they can hone their skills before jumping into the ever-expanding TF2 universe.
To celebrate the launch of the Über Update, Valve has released "Meet the Medic," the latest in its series of TF2 animated shorts.

TF2 is now Free to Play for PC & Mac players via Steam.

For more information on Free to Play, please visit http://www.teamfortress.com/<wbr>freetoplay.

For more information on the "Über Update" and "Meet the Medic", please visit http://www.teamfortress.com/<wbr>uberupdate.
 
It's a smart business decision for sure, attracting a lot more people to the Steam store front and to the TF2 items and such. But it seems to be a decision that disregards the quality of the game experience. Under the current conditions, cheaters could swarm the game, now that they can just create new accounts over and over to play it.

Although I'm sure Valve has thought of this and I'm looking forward to hearing what they intend to do about it.
 
Do customers that own the game get anything special? I'd probably be kind of pissed if I bought the game recently and then it's suddenly free.
 
Well how about that... didn't see that coming at all. Figure that means they've officially made one full assload of money from the Manco store.
 
Maybe this is what the coaching thing was in preparation for? It'll be interesting to see if the game jumps in popularity.
 
Here's hoping that they don't start introducing weapons exclusive to the Mann Co. Store. That's the least of my concerns, though.
This is bound to attract a shit load of cheaters to the game. How are they going to fight that?
 
Oh well, haven't played TF2 in yonks. This move has pretty much consigned it to the "won't bother again" pile for good.
 
and here comes an influx of Brazilian players...oh god.
 
Likely much more than from the sales that they are currently getting, seeing as how most people who wanted to play it enough to buy it already have. This move really makes a lot of business sense. They've already made the money they wanted from retail sales and now turning to micro transactions will pull in more players who will try it just because it's free and drive the sales of the Mann Co through the roof.

I would love for games 10 years and older to become free to play(because most games that old you can't even find in the stores anymore) and maybe more shifting to free to play with existing multiplayer games.
 
OmegaX said:
Do customers that own the game get anything special? I'd probably be kind of pissed if I bought the game recently and then it's suddenly free.
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There are free accounts and premium accounts. Free accounts only have 50 backpack spaces and cannot trade away times, only receive them and cannot receive hats as drops. To go from free to premium you just have to spend any amount of cash in the Man Co. Store.

Anyone who bought the game obviously automatically gets a premium account and also gets a WWI British army helmet for all classes. That's it.

http://www.teamfortress.com/freetoplay/faq.php
 
ríomhaire said:
There are free accounts and premium accounts. Free accounts only have 50 backpack spaces and cannot trade away times, only receive them and cannot receive hats as drops. To go from free to premium you just have to spend any amount of cash in the Man Co. Store.
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Good god, the game has changed so much since I last played it. You listing that stuff just made me go "what?"

I mean, I knew about things dropping, and have some vague notion of that the store is, but backpack spaces? Theres a ****ing inventory now? I have a feeling I'd just be lost if I tried to play again, since the last time I played was before any of the changes to the game, like, any of them.
 
LOL, they are giving TF2 as F2P when I know for a fact that PC versions of the orange box are still sold in stores.
 
Interested to hear how they are going to combat cheaters.
 
Valve's usually been pretty good with anti-cheating software haven't they?
 
Escaep said:
Interested to hear how they are going to combat cheaters.
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I don't think it's going to be that much more of an issue. Those who want to cheat usually pirate the game in the first place.
 
Not surprised in the least. F2P games supported by MTX is likely going to be the standard model of the future. Several games this week alone have switched over to this business model, and the trend is just going to keep continuing.
 
Overwatch Sector said:
LOL, they are giving TF2 as F2P when I know for a fact that PC versions of the orange box are still sold in stores.
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If you read the faq you notest that, pepople who buy the game will get a premium account and f2p players not.

Q. What happens if I buy a retail copy of TF2?
You will automatically be upgraded to have a premium account and will be given a special Proof of Purchase hat to wear on any character in-game.
Click to expand...
 
Krynn72 said:
Good god, the game has changed so much since I last played it. You listing that stuff just made me go "what?"
I mean, I knew about things dropping, and have some vague notion of that the store is, but backpack spaces? Theres a ****ing inventory now? I have a feeling I'd just be lost if I tried to play again, since the last time I played was before any of the changes to the game, like, any of them.
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My feelings, too.
 
Krynn72 said:
Good god, the game has changed so much since I last played it. You listing that stuff just made me go "what?"

I mean, I knew about things dropping, and have some vague notion of that the store is, but backpack spaces? Theres a ****ing inventory now? I have a feeling I'd just be lost if I tried to play again, since the last time I played was before any of the changes to the game, like, any of them.
Click to expand...

Everytime I look in my game library and think about playing TF2 for a bit, I quickly realise that it'll probably be too much of a hassle to grasp all the new things and that I'll most likely be at a disadvantage not having all those items.
 
StarBob said:
Valve's usually been pretty good with anti-cheating software haven't they?
Click to expand...

Unless they've changed something VAC bans were always linked to the account. Cheaters could always just re-purchase the game under a new account and then continue cheating until that account got banned. What they should do is have the bans be hardware linked so the only way to continue playing is buy new hardware.

-smash- said:
I don't think it's going to be that much more of an issue. Those who want to cheat usually pirate the game in the first place.
Click to expand...

Yes, but now they can just create 20 accounts and use all of them to cheat. I don't think it will be a huge issue I'm just interested to see what they will do.
 
Krynn72 said:
Good god, the game has changed so much since I last played it. You listing that stuff just made me go "what?"

I mean, I knew about things dropping, and have some vague notion of that the store is, but backpack spaces? Theres a ****ing inventory now? I have a feeling I'd just be lost if I tried to play again, since the last time I played was before any of the changes to the game, like, any of them.
Click to expand...

You probably would be lost, but it's still a lot of fun. I've pretty much played it constantly since it first came out, but I have taken "breaks", and coming back after an update can lead to some "what the heck was that" moments when you encounter an opponent with a new weapon or item (like when a sniper hits you with a jar of pee, or a scout shoots you and it knocks you across the room). On the positive side, all of the random drops you get would be new items for a while, whereas for me, I already have 90% of the items so I mostly get duplicates.
 
My first thought ... well, okay my first thought was that I have friends I've been trying to get into this game and this may finally persuade them to try it. But my SECOND thought was, "the n00bs! Oh, the pwnage! I can't wait!"
Don't judge me.
 
So now L4D (in the future), Portal, and TF2 are free. You know at one point I payed for those games. Sure they decrease in value but the fact still remains that I payed for those games. HL still costs money and was made in 1998. From a business aspect it would make sense because this is expanding it to a wider potentially paying audience. However I know the community for F2P games. I have some internet friends from Portugal and they are the cheapest mofo's you will ever meet. One doesn't buy SP only games and some pirate the game then wait a year when it's under $30. Most of their time is spent playing F2P games though and put PT at the end of their nickname. This is their FAQ: http://www.teamfortress.com/freetoplay/faq.php
 
So is anyone from HL2.net quitting FOREVER over this? If so can I have your items? :p
 
hool10 said:
So now L4D (in the future), Portal, and TF2 are free. You know at one point I payed for those games. Sure they decrease in value but the fact still remains that I payed for those games. HL still costs money and was made in 1998.
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Okay, so you paid for it (several years ago now). So what? What is your point?

hool10 said:
However I know the community for F2P games. I have some internet friends from Portugal and they are the cheapest mofo's you will ever meet.
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Two slightly different things going on there.
 
Portal was free, at least for a few weeks... although it was for the whole Mac thing.

Either way, I don't think those other games would go F2P... even though Portal 2 has a store of its own, the profit from there alone isn't that great. I imagine.
 
I played last night and it's certainly overwhelming the amount of crap in the game now. Are all of the new items able to be found randomly like everything else? Or are they crafted? I still don't even know the crafting system that well. Practically everything I have is "vintage" now. Somehow I lost all my pyro gear. Are there new achievements you do to unlock items like before as well? I don't even think I could commit enough time to keep up with all this anymore.
 
StarBob said:
I played last night and it's certainly overwhelming the amount of crap in the game now. Are all of the new items able to be found randomly like everything else? Or are they crafted? I still don't even know the crafting system that well. Practically everything I have is "vintage" now. Somehow I lost all my pyro gear. Are there new achievements you do to unlock items like before as well? I don't even think I could commit enough time to keep up with all this anymore.
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Only the three original unlocks for each class can be gotten through achievements, so 27 all-in-all. The others must be found or crafted and all (with the exception of the jumper training weapons) have crafting recipes that you can use to make them. All recipes are in a big list in game or you can just look them up on the wiki.
 
They made it pretty clear in the Develop article that the F2P model wouldn't work in their other games, the TF2 switch to F2P is purely a response to both the MannCo store and the nature of its multiplayer. There is a big difference between the way content works in TF2, to the way it works in a game like Portal or L4D.

As for the new-player problem, crappy people have always existed in multiplayer games, and people have always responded to every frustrating death with an accusation of hacking or lag, so F2P will simply be a new buzzword to go alongside the others. It is a natural part of online gaming, and anti-cheat systems have rarely succeeded in appeasing those compalints, so it will continue to fall on the quality of the server communities, and the responsiveness of their admins.

Online shooters have always and will always be best experienced when playing in a small chosen set of well policed servers, (At least for the shooters that continue to use dedicated servers).
 
Crafting? That the Jesus is going on with this game? I've got half a mind to download TF2, grab some pizza, some beer, and some hookers and sit down to figure this new-tf2 out. On second thought, forget the TF2 part.


Eh, screw the whole thing.
 
Krynn72 said:
Crafting? That the Jesus is going on with this game? I've got half a mind to download TF2, grab some pizza, some beer, and some hookers and sit down to figure this new-tf2 out. On second thought, forget the TF2 part.

Eh, screw the whole thing.
Click to expand...

Except there's nothing to figure out. It's as simple and accessible as ever.
 
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