There are still a lot of people out there who write off Free-to-Play games as trash, but a major theme in gaming over the past two years has been the maturation of the F2P model. While it may have been true only a few years ago that F2P games were generally of lower quality than full-priced games, these days that couldn't be further from the truth. The latest sign that the genre/model is coming into its own is Valve's announced support for F2P games on Steam.
This kind of support for F2P developers gives them important exposure to the millions of hardcore Steam users who may normally be accustomed to ignoring F2P games. The support will begin today with a new game being launched every day until Sunday. The first titles will be Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valliant Arms.
Valve has announced that the titles will be supported by the same micro-transaction software that Team Fortress 2 uses. What we'll be interested to is whether or not all microtransactions will have to go through Steam's software. It seems likely considering Valve has to make money off these games somehow, but many developers may be hesitant to join with Steam if it means losing a cut of their profits (which many users are still hesitant to part with.) It will be interesting to see if the largest and most successful F2P games like Lord of the Rings Online will be making the jump to Steam as well.
"The introduction of Free to Play games is another example of the constant evolution of Steam," said Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve in a press release sent to Mac|Life. "Free to Play games offer new game genres and game experiences for customers, while offering developers and publishers new revenue opportunities and the ability to reach customers in areas of the world where the traditional packaged goods model is less popular than F2P."
