Is it time for TF2 to go Free to Play?

[Audio]

If it was free, i'd still not pay for them stupid keys
The fact that they charge what they do, helps them include more stuff like hats and new weapons. If it was free, it would be up to the community to release stuff. Cool stuff but doesn't reach everyone.

 

[MolotoK]

That would completely destroy the in-game economy.
People would just create 20 steam accounts, idle all week and have incredible amounts of metal and hats.

TF2 is set up so that you can't idle to get massive amounts of drops

A single account can only get a limited amount of items a week, but if you have many accounts, u can get much more.

I'm no expert, but idling one account for 1 night and 1 workday (about 16hours in total) is about enough to get the maximum number of drops per week out of that account.
Do that with 7 accounts and you have 6-7times as much items as if you'd just be using 1 account.
Add maybe a second computer (or your laptop during the night) or virtual machines and you could have 15 or 20times as many items(and hats!) per week as a normal user.

 

[Lacsapix]

mabey after we killed ourself playing tf3.

 

[MARKMCMARCUS]

Another thing worth mentioning is that with free to play games there tends to be more hackers. If you hack in TF2 now and get caught, you just lost 20 dollars or whatever plus whatever online games you had on your steam account. Where as if it were free, there wouldn't be much of a penalty at all.

 

[Signa]

A) Yes, people still buy CS.
B) If CS can't be a good comparison because it doesn't have an in-game store, then why the hell do you even bother mentioning Alien Swarm? Seriously. That's like saying indecent exposure is bad, then proceeding to strip on national television.
C) I never had a bad experience on Left4Dead before.
D) You don't kill each other on Alien Swarm. Try? Sure, you may. But you won't because it's a pain in the ass and not very entertaining anyways. You play fucking zombies in Left4Dead. "Bad conduct?" Yeah, ok.
E) How the hell is the fact that it's free supposed to make its userbase more friendly anyways?

A) I know it's just my opinion, but I think it's a crap game with a poor community. $10 is too much.
B) CS was an example of a game that is not free that does have the same user support as TF2. It was a good parallel except for the part I mentioned about the store. Alien Swarm was mentioned as an example of a community of a Valve F2P game, not a direct comparison to how CS works. I really don't get what your naked analogy is trying to illustrate.
C) I have. It wasn't horrible, and bad apples are always to be expected in any online game, but I know I'm not the only one [http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=278]
D) So it has to be competitive to be a relevant example? Or are you talking about griefing? I'm confused on your point here
E) I said the opposite probably would be true.

A single account can only get a limited amount of items a week, but if you have many accounts, u can get much more.

This is a good point now that they have implemented trading.

Team Fortress 2 isn't an MMO, why would you make it free? That's just stupid, giving away a game for free that isn't based off of a subscription-based income.

No.
It's not like it has monthly fees or anything.
You buy the game once, you get to play it forever.
Done.

I feel like some people aren't understanding what I'm trying to say here. I'm not talking about subscriptions, just making the in-game store the source of the game's revenue. I don't know what Valve actually gets in an average month from in-game purchases compared to sales of TF2 itself, but I'd imagine that they are close enough that the in-game sales would jump significantly if people didn't have to pay for the game, and the total income gained from the store would be higher than the store + sales now.

 

[Delusibeta]

Making TF2 free will render the anti-cheat entirely useless. That's the largest reason Valve hasn't done so already.

 

[Ashcrexl]

so what you're saying is valve should give up money to potentially make money? sounds like a risky business strategy. plus they do some kind of sale on TF2 (that at one time seriously reduced the price to $0.99) about 5 times a year

 

[Luke5515]

I don't think so. 20 bucks is a great price for tf2, there are steam sales, and you really don't have to buy anything from the store. Just save up your metal, and anything you could buy you can trade for.

 

[Signa]

I'm a little disappointed that no one bothered to answer my bonus questions. It feels like everyone just read the title and posted.

 

[Dead_Man]

So long as it doesn't start charging monthly like WOW, I'm happy. It's not like it costs alot anyway.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Valve said when they added the Mannconomy update, it was because people wanted it. Not many people wanted to head to the forum to wait for their offer to be fulfilled, and would rather pay a few dollars for their wonderful trinkets.

For your question on going F2P: not that good of an idea. I don't see why anyone would pour that much effort into a game, sell it for around $20 for three years, then decide to make it free.

Plus, they deserve every cent they get.

 

[Rednog]

The game is like $5-7 every 3 months, can your few friends who don't have the game not afford that? Seriously, I've gifted the damn game so many times just for my friends to try it out because it has been so cheap.
Also, free to play usually refers to MMOs that have monthly fees, and going free to play means the elimination of a monthly cost.

 

[Scout Tactical]

Here's my take on this. I paid full price for TF2 back when it came out. It's been an amazing game over the years, and I love it to death. However, with the recent addition of the in-game store, I feel little obligation to pay more money for a game I paid full price for. However, had TF2 been free for me, I'd be snatching up keys and possibly other treasures and trinkets as a way to say "thankyou" for the game being so awesome

I don't believe people would pay for stuff from the store any more often if the game were free to play.

TF2 has given us a surfeit of free updates for years. I'm glad they did it at all, and I'm happy they found a way to keep the money flowing to make this possible. Keys may be dumb, but I didn't mind dropping a few dollars on the Familiar Fez, especially when it was 75% off during Christmas time.

 

[Signa]

I don't believe people would pay for stuff from the store any more often if the game were free to play.

I don't believe people would have paid $50 for the polycount pack, but they did. That's what got me into this line of thought.

 

[Scout Tactical]

I don't believe people would pay for stuff from the store any more often if the game were free to play.

I don't believe people would have paid $50 for the polycount pack, but they did. That's what got me into this line of thought.

Right, but that's an entirely different group of people from those who are willing to pay nothing at all, see? By going FTP, it invites in the non-payer crowed, rather than the paying crowd.

 

[timeadept]

Why on earth would it go free? It's not like it's subscription based. I mean i guess valve might get a little more from micro transactions, but anyone who is interested enough in the game to pay for thous things has already bought it. Isn't it like 20$ as it is?

Oh yeah, what about people who've pirated the game? Now they get to join the community for free? Do we really want hackers and pirates joining in with us? I'm not sure personally, i guess i'm implying that these guys would be a bad addition to the community, but i really don't know either way.

 

[timeadept]

That would completely destroy the in-game economy.
People would just create 20 steam accounts, idle all week and have incredible amounts of metal and hats.

I don't exactly play TF2 for the "in game economy" if you can really call it that (sorry i'm not trying to sound rude. it's just that, well after runescape (hell you could play runescape like the stock markets, almost)and wow this thing just doesn't compare). Anyway I really wouldn't care if some people did this, i know Valve would though, and i know some of the players would (probably a lot more than i would guess, which is like 50). But i can see the explosion of idle servers being an issue and... wait a second... where would you run tf2 20 times simultaneously anyway?

 

[Signa]

I don't believe people would pay for stuff from the store any more often if the game were free to play.

I don't believe people would have paid $50 for the polycount pack, but they did. That's what got me into this line of thought.

Right, but that's an entirely different group of people from those who are willing to pay nothing at all, see? By going FTP, it invites in the non-payer crowed, rather than the paying crowd.

Right, but those people who paid $50 already paid for TF2. Obviously what this argument comes down to is that it's what you have faith that the market would do, like some sort of financial religion. Arguing further is just repeating a circular argument. I have faith I'm right, but I completely see your very well-thought out points too. The only thing that could end our argument is some numbers of how many frequent Steam users don't have TF2, how much money the TF2 store makes every month/year, and how much money Valve gets from selling TF2 a year (got to account for random sales). THEN I'd shut up. I'd be able to see how much more or less money Valve stands to make from unsold copies and the TF2 store. Chances are I'm over estimating the value of the store by several factors.... but then chances are that I'm not. I need numbers to know otherwise.