TF2 is free now

I suppose if anyone was holding out actually buying the game, you can get it now at no cost. Valve actually says this is due to the MannCo Store being so (financially) successful... makes sense I suppose, and they probably make more money off of the in-game store than actual game copies :P

Just thought it was interesting. I still occasionally play it from time to time though not on a regular basis.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/440/ (Yes, it does require Steam)

I thought you just got to play it for a week, like they did with Black Ops a while back.

If not, dammit dammit dammit shit I just bought it for $10

Cool, I guess. If I had time to play online more often, and if I didn't have to piss around with Steam, I'd go for this.

Nah, it's free forever now. I wouldn't worry though, $10 isn't that bad :P

Also though Steam isn't my favorite system, it's not that complicated... you install the client, register an account, and then you can click "Install Game" on the TF2 page. No payment information needed for free games.

Welp, I have an excuse to get it for pc, now.

I guess they finally decided the money people waste on the hats was enough to fund the game on its own.

Xeros612 said:

I guess they finally decided the money people waste on the hats was enough to fund the game on its own.

Fucking sad.

That's really cool, certainly from the standpoint of I have friends I've been trying to get on board but they've been hesitant, and maybe this will encourage them to give it a try.

My fear, though, is that this leads to a move of game-balance-altering items being only obtainable through purchase in the in-game store. In the past, Valve has been good about making sure that new items don't alter balance too much and so aren't necessary to enjoy the game, but if they're going to be relying solely on the in-game store for income, that might change.

I just got the notification when I started steam up to play the terraria 1.05 patch. Clicked install swiftly, was wondering why it was free. Wish more games would go free like this.

If you can deal with people going WOW OMG YOUR WEAPONS SUCK WHY DON'T YOU HAVE ALL THE UNLOCKABLES YOU MUST SUCK AT GAMES, sure.

TF3 must be in development. I hear from a lot of people that Brink is a new TF2.

Stylized classed based shooter does not a TF2 clone make. I'm guessing that lot of people took Yahtzee's "review" on it seriously.

Quite good, actually. Means a lot of my friends are now getting the game as they have no excuse, and I have people I actually know to play against. Sure, I bought it, but that was in The Orange Box 2 years ago, so I still have had my money's worth.

Only games to go free recently which I'm kicking myself for were most of the games Sony offered for free as part of the "Welcome back" package: I had just bought in the past few months prior to the shutdown many of those games.

It shows how sad the items community are in the game (that they no longer need to get money from the game itself and can just sell the hats), but it dosen't bother me too much. With the items, whatever I get from random drops or the occasional trade is all I have. Never spending a penny on items.

Here's why they went F2P:
-Mann Co. Store was definitely a huge success, and could only be an even bigger success with the game going free. Removing the relatively small fee of buying the game ($10 or often less) grows the customer base tenfold. Valve's going to see a huge profit off of this smart move, not to mention even more great reputation.

-Recent popularity and success of pay-what-you-want pricing schemes. Lately we've seen a lot of game bundles and even music albums with the whole "pay at least this much, or pay more if you want to" idea. In situations with millions of fans, it seems to work very well. In some sense TF2 has this system now too: if you play for free, you're not allowed to trade, give gifts, a few other small things. To upgrade to a paid account, all you have to do is buy something in the Mann Co. Store. If players are enjoying the game, their initial purchase will pretty often be more than $10. Plus, I imagine getting people to buy something once will make them realize it's not a big deal, and they may do it again. Soon they're paying regularly, and some people will pay far more than any regular retail game costs. It's even better than monthly fees!

-In one interview, someone from Valve (I think Robin) explained that one of the biggest upsides of updating TF2 all the time is that they use it as their testing ground. We've seen them add features again and again to their games that were first seen in TF2 (recent new voice codec, in-game stores, even things like raw-mouse input, etc.). Valve's upcoming game in case you didn't know is DotA 2...that gametype has been extremely popular as a free to play type lately (League of Legends) and Valve definitely is going to want to match that if it wants to beat LoL and HoN. The replay system is another thing they put in TF2 just a month that I fully expect will be in DotA 2. They love testing things in TF2 before putting them in another game. Lots of features lately in TF2 remind me of things that will probably be in DotA 2. So now, they get to try out providing a free to play game, getting all the kinks out, for future games.

-Cheaters. If DotA 2 is going to be f2p, Valve's going to have to figure out the best practices for dealing with cheaters. Now that TF2 is in the f2p state, they're going to get plenty of practice and research on this I'm sure. This is probably the main reason they didn't go free to play months ago, it's scary.

They already have the VAC-secured servers (which they've had since before Half-Life 2, IIRC. Doesn't that pretty much eliminate cheating? I've personally never seen any on TF2.

Plenty of cheats that work on VAC. People just cheat less than it's usually made out to be.

New threat for quakelive for sure.

Yeah, great, now VDF have a new ace up their sleeves: "it's free so you can't complain!" Oh yes I will. Usually I play a little after each update but I really don't feel like doing it now. I still have like 15 weapons that I haven't got yet, the drop cap is up, nobody wants to trade, and the crafting recipes are insane. 2 reclaimed plus a weapon? Eight Jarate and a reclaimed? Were they high? Let's see how long until undisputed gameplay advantage items are up for sale at the cash shop. At least EVE players had the balls to stand up against macrotransactions.

Well, I was hoping that the free version would at least come with the Source SDK Base 2007, but nope.

Oh well.

hervoheebo said:

Yeah, great, now VDF have a new ace up their sleeves: "it's free so you can't complain!" Oh yes I will. Usually I play a little after each update but I really don't feel like doing it now. I still have like 15 weapons that I haven't got yet, the drop cap is up, nobody wants to trade, and the crafting recipes are insane. 2 reclaimed plus a weapon? Eight Jarate and a reclaimed? Were they high? Let's see how long until undisputed gameplay advantage items are up for sale at the cash shop. At least EVE players had the balls to stand up against macrotransactions.

Yeah, when they said they had plans to revamp crafting, I was hoping it was to move away from the absurd metal-based blueprints and go back to more logical things like Kritzkrieg + Bonk = Crit-a-Cola. They even lessened the cost of the items from the Christmas update and compensated anyone who crafted them by upgrading their quality. Then they go and pull the same thing again, it's really disappointing.

At the same time though, it's practically a non-issue. This time next month the weapons will probably be as valuable as any other weapon and I'll feel like an idiot for actually crafting some of them. Happens with every update.

That eight jarate thing has to be a joke. Sad thing is until a few weeks ago I probably had that many in my backpack. I'm a hoarder when it comes to TF2 items and don't bother crafting them down until I'm entirely out of space.

I don't get the whole crafting thing or how it works and I never use hats. one person taunted me for it but I was almost single handingly pushing the opposite team back into their spawn point as heavy. i have like 100 hrs with him and even own the exclusive statue gaming heads made.

I played for a few hours this weekend. First time playing ever. Wow there's a lot of retards playing the minecart things. For a lot of the games it feels like I'm the only one working.

If you let it pick a server for you, then you were probably playing with almost all brand new players who did the same =]

I tried out the "let it pick a server for me" feature and essentially I thought that I was playing against bots the entire time. Bad bots. Only it turned out they were all real people.

You can let it pick a server? I've got to try that.

I still wanna play TF1.

If you have Quake you can join TF QuakeWorld servers.

I don't have Quake. I have Half-Life. With Team Fortress 1.5

Neca toys is making TF2 figures so with more people becoming familiar with these characters better the chances of the toys selling better.

Hat Fortress 2? No thanks.