Free Team Fortress 2 For All Soon, Says Valve Developer [Robin Walker Tells Website That Team Fortress 2 Will Be Free-To-Play, Valve To Make Money On Hats & Other In-Game Items]

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Team Fortress 2? Free-to-play? Did you read that title right? Yep, you did. Today, Valve kicked off a “free week” for Team Fortress 2 where the game is free to play. Except this time, it sounds like Valve intends to keep the game free-to-play forever. In an interview with Develop magazine, Valve Design Manager (and one of the guys behind the original Team Fortress Quake mod) Robin Walker has revealed that Valve will be making Team Fortress 2 into a free-to-play game.

According to Walker, they’ll make money off the game through the in-game store, which allows you to buy hats and things for your TF2 characters in-game. Walker told Develop that they don’t have plans to put in-game ads in or add any further microtransactions. Hopefully this means that Valve won’t adapt the “pay to win” model that so many free-to-play games use. You might not think that Valve makes munch money from those in-game items, but considering that it seems that Team Fortress 2 is always on sale for $5 or $2.50 on Steam, it’s possible they think they’ve sold all the copies they’re going to.

Walker says that it’s a step towards the “Games as Services” path that Valve has been considering, and added that they’re doing this partly because Valve believes the more people who play a multiplayer game, the more fun it will be.

I know some TF2 fans believe the game went downhill when Valve started introducing the in-game store stuff and the hats, and this will surely make it worse. While this will introduce a lot more people to Team Fortress 2, I’m sure plenty of trolls and 12 year old boys will discover the game, too.

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