

How Valve made Team Fortress 2 free-to-play - pbj
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/164922/GDC_2012_How_Valve_made_Team_Fortress_2_freetoplay.php

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oacgnol
TF2 was a masterstroke for Valve in PR. I paid $40 for TF2 and I felt like the
value that it gave over the past 5 years has more than exceeded what I paid
for it. It has generated a huge amount of goodwill towards Valve and Steam
that will help anchor them in the PC gaming industry for years to come. It
will be interesting to see where they're taking Steam and the PC platform in
the near future, especially given all the talk about a possible console.

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simon_weber
I thought the way they used the "Meet the Team" teasers was really clever:

"Each content update started with a teaser trailer that hinted at several
possible new items or features, and Valve developers would monitor the
community reaction in the forums to determine which aspects caught the
players' attention."

I had seen these, and had always thought Valve _already_ planned out what was
going to be included. Like magicians, they set themselves up for victory - no
matter what the player ends up wanting.

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sawyer
One of the most interesting things about the TF2 story is that they opened up
custom item creation to the community, and allowed players to actually profit
from designing and uploading objects to the store. I remember reading a quote
from Gabe Newell mentioning that some of the top player sellers were making
over $30,000 / month from their creations.

edit: If in game, player driven markets are the sort of thing that interests
you: keep an eye out for Diablo 3's real money auction house.

Also: hats.

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frodprefect
I couldn't find your example, but here is some players getting paid royalties
on their creations submitted through a contest.

[http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/21/user-created-tf2-items-
bri...](http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/21/user-created-tf2-items-bring-in-up-
to-47-000-for-some-steam-mem/)

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silentscope
I respect the balls of Steam. This is something that could have gone horribly,
horribly wrong.

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cube13
Honestly, the conversion was probably the lowest risk move Valve could have
made(short of a new IP) for Free-to-play conversion.

When Valve moved the game to F2P, the game was out for almost 4 years. By that
point, basically everyone that was ever going to buy the game had purchased
it. Plus, Valve already had the loot chase built into the game(random drops
were added in 2009, IIRC). And while it's popularity wasn't waning, it was
still usually the third place game on Steam's total users list behind
CS:Source and CS 1.3.

So they basically had full market saturation for their product, and probably
weren't seeing much new revenue even when they did major content updates. By
making the game free, they opened the door to a LOT more people, and allowed
them to get a lot more revenue from both new and long time players. I've spent
probably somewhere around $40 in hats and weapons since the conversion.

The truly brilliant thing that Valve did was make the transition absolutely
seamless for the veteran players. Outside of a few new buttons on the main
menu and a very unobtrusive news section that advertised changes, the overall
experience didn't change at all for them.

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corin_
Not that it's massively important, but since it's fairly important in my
company I feel the need to correct you: CS 1.6 since 2003! 1.3 is commonly
considered the best version, though.

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danso
TF2 is probably the last video game I'll ever put significant time into. For
being a multiplayer, non-story driven game, it is still one of the best games
I've ever played.

I am a little miffed that they never upgraded the console versions and I've
never really played it on PC. But I'm glad they're still able to get life out
of the game, considering they've been upgrading it (the PC/Mac versions) well
past its shelf life. It's an inspiring example for other developers with games
that aren't commercially viable yet still have a well-knit community.

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sek
I tried this game a while ago and i am surprised how versatile and fun an ego
shooter can be.

The thing is, all these big ideas (Spy, Engineer) who are implemented are
balanced and working. This is just possible because it is not a dead line
driven development.

Most of the game industry is still working with hype and big releases, but the
most successful ones are incrementally developed. World of Warcraft and
Minecraft for example. Community feedback, frequently new content and constant
balancing/bug fixing creates the best games.

TF2 showed this is not just possible for MMORPG's, the best genre games are
yet to come.

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Sikul
This model is also commonly used in the MOBA genre to great success.

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iam
I feel like everything that's happened to TF2 is just a sneak peek into what
will happen once Valve ships Defense of the Ancients 2.

The question is, how will they balance a hardcore gaming community which hates
paying to get better (stats-wise) items vs monetizing F2P? Will they charge
only for cosmetic items, or will they drive away their core Dota fanbase?

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jmcqk6
I've suspected this for a while as well. I think many of the features we've
seen released in tf2 has grown directly out of the development of DOTA2. Valve
has practically admitted as much in the past by saying tf2 is a place where
they experiment.

Let's consider:

* Replay system

* Training system

* Coaching System

* Microtransactions

* Trading interface

* Community Submissions + submission royalties

Who knows what else? At this point, I think tf2's success is going to
influence DOTA2, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if DOTA2 is released free
to play.

I probably won't ever play DOTA2, but I'm thankful for all the improvements to
tf2 over the last few years. I'm just hoping for some mainly bug fix patches
to be released soon as this point.

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polemic
I used to be semi-addicted to TF2, until it became free to play.

The massive increase in poorly balanced weapons and items and the flood of
newbie players who were not that interested in the 'team' aspect of 'team
fortress' really killed the fun for me.

There was a similar effect with major releases before it became free to play.
I particularly remember the engineer update - for about a week that's the only
class 1/2 the team would want to play, so good luck being Blue (attacking) on
a pipeline map (for example).

I'll try it again one day soon so see if things have settled down, but I think
that the commercial success came at the cost of game quality.

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ohgodthecat
Sometimes it depends on the servers. I'm pretty good at FPS's and found that
weapons aren't really unbalanced and using the default weapon set you can do
pretty well (I've mainly played only soldier). A recommended look at servers
would be the reddit ones

Personally I liked TF2 when it first came out (before achievement based
upgrades came out) and felt that the updates and new weapons and especially
after hats and such came out were all too much. My problem is probably that I
was a hardcore counter-strike player and TF2 really turned into a pub oriented
game.

It is still fun to play a week every few months if you can find a decent
server to play in.

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gchpaco
I put a bunch of time in recently in getting decent at pyro and the main thing
that pisses me off about the game as it is now is that there are a number of
hard counters designed into the game system that are hard to overcome. For
example, my game plan going against heavies, engineers, scouts and to some
degree soldiers is "gee, I hope he's an idiot" which works sometimes but
doesn't make me thrilled.

Probably this is the habits I learned on mediocre pubbie servers coming back
to bite me, and I need to learn to be less aggressive all the time, but it
still rankles.

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bluejeansummer
As someone who plays Pyro a lot, there are two things to realize: playing
(good) Pyro is _hard_ , and pick your fights. Being a melee class, you have to
know which battles you can win, and which you can't. So the "hope he's an
idiot" approach may work, just judge your opponents before committing to the
fight. Know how and when to use your airblast, secondary, and melee.

Yes, it can be rather annoying to play, but in the long run, it gets better.
In organized matches, the Pyro is a rather critical part of the team. Both the
Engineer and the Medic depend on him/her for their protection. If you get any
satisfaction from helping your team, that makes it worth it.

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pavel_lishin
Kind of a fluffy article.

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martin1b
must..resist...ranting....'where the heck is half life 3'...

