Team Fortress 2 moves to “free to play” model.

Yep, you heard it right. One of the best class based team FPS games on the market (THE best, in my opinion) has become FULLY FREE TO PLAY FOREVER! This means everyone and anyone can jump in and begin capturing the intel and dominating noobs with just a quick registration on steam and a short download (Today I learned TF2 is over 9.0GB). As a long term player of the game, this excites me with the prospect of having more people to play with, and also horrifies me with the amount of griefers that will undoubtedly flood servers with micspam and hack tools. I know what some of you are thinking, “But Valve..what about us guys who BOUGHT the game outright, or bundled with ‘The Orange Box’ so long ago!?” Ever the awesomeness Valve is actually rewarding us “premium” players with a special hat, as well as the ability to nab cosmetic and rare items in drops whereas the free to play guys will only ever be able to score the “standard” quality items.

Free players are limited to 50 backpack items, are unable to trade items out, but can receive gifts from other players. A full list of what is available to the Freebies and what’s available to those of us who bought the game are listed here: Free to Play update FAQ.

Valve has released a TON of content in the latest update, this being the biggest since January if my memory serves me right. New weapons and items for everyone except the Engineer (poor guy) will also be included in this massive content release.

Valve is doing a very smart thing, by releasing the “Mann-conomy Update” that included the “Mann-Co” store that allowed players to purchase items, hats, paints, rename tags, keys, and other such in game goodies they have easily been able to make ends meet, and continue to pay their developers to work on content, videos, and other stuff for this beloved game.

I for one, welcome our new free to play brethren-in-arms to the battlefield with a well-aimed headshot, a crit rocket, and a few uber charged heavies to ensure they get the full-on Team Fortress 2 greeting!

What do you guys think of Valve’s latest update? Let us know in the comments, and feel free to post your steam names so we can get a game going this weekend!

Team Fortress 2 is for Mac and PC on the Steam platform and currently holds a 9.2 rating on Metacritc.

Sources:

• Team Fortress Uber Update Day one
• Free to Play Update