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Steam Expands Store to Include Free-to-Play Games

"Free" games come to Steam, as Valve expands the platform.

Spiral Knights, one of the F2P released on Steam, looks like Diablo crossed with Phantasy Star Online.
Spiral Knights, one of the F2P released on Steam, looks like Diablo crossed with Phantasy Star Online.

Steam has been a terrific digital download service for players looking to buy both games at full price and games on the cheap. However, If you're the kind of game player for whom buying games "on the cheap" is still too expensive (or you live in a territory where retail sales aren't feasible in the market) then Steam has been ill-equipped to deliver the kinds of games you want to play.

Never one to let any potential PC revenue stream slip them by, Valve has announced that, as of today, Steam will support the release and distribution of Free-to-Play games in addition to the paid games already available from the service. With this new update, players can not only download F2P games from Steam, but also purchase each game's microtransactions from the Steam Client itself.

Along with the initial announcement, Valve revealed the first five F2P games available on the service. The first run of games are Sega's Spiral Knights, Cryptic's Champions Online, Hi-Rez Studio's Global Agenda, Perfect World's Forsaken World, and NHN's Alliance of Valiant Arms.

It's interesting to see Valve expanding on the types of payment structures it's willing to integrate and support through the actual Steam client. Thanks to games like Team Fortress 2, players on the PC are more used to purchasing the kinds of vanity/functional items that have been the lifeblood of other F2P games. Hell, it's possible that adding this kind of support to Steam paves the way for Valve to release Team Fortress 2 as a free multiplayer shooter supported solely by microtransactions. We'll find out more of what Valve has planned soon, as additional information on Steam's F2P integration will be revealed in the coming days.

113 Comments

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AlexW00d

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Edited By AlexW00d

What's Steafm?

Also you used 'than' instead of 'then'.

And 'additional' instead of 'addition'.

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dungbootle

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Edited By dungbootle

Sweet

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mattbodega

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Edited By mattbodega

@Styl3s: Champions Online is bad, but believe me; that game gets WAY BETTER when you don't have to pay for it,

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Rhaknar

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Edited By Rhaknar

been wanting to try Forsaken Worlds and spiral Knights for awhile now, so this is cool for me. that and ive been wanting a mmo fix since my free month of rift ended so Forsaken might do it (from i remember it looks a lot like wow, astectically). Oh and ill try Champions too, if only for the character creator which is supposed to be amazing.
 
No interest in the shooters tho

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Edited By MrKlorox

Agreed. If they can actually sell those awful TF2 microtransaction items, there's obviously a market for such things in "free" games. I always thought such things were garbage, but perhaps all they needed was a centralized location with a pre-existing install base.

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galiant

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Edited By galiant

Steam is boss. Games for Windows Live and that new Origin thing can go die in a corner.

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Junon

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Edited By Junon

Gotta love Steam. 

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HydraHam

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Edited By HydraHam

Spiral Knights is fun, Champions Online is complete rubbish, can't speak for the rest since i have never played them.

I love the idea of steam putting the free micro transaction games on their service :)

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Chummy8

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Edited By Chummy8

Free is in my price range. 

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Edited By Branthog

A brilliant move to expand your Steam installation base, which will make future purchases when those oh-so-hard-to-resist deals funnel through.

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Edited By theartofjag

Go Champs!
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Edited By MachoFantastico

Sounds awesome

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Edited By mattbodega
Spiral Knights, one of the F2P released on Steam, looks like Diablo crossed with Phantasy Star Online.
Spiral Knights, one of the F2P released on Steam, looks like Diablo crossed with Phantasy Star Online.

Steam has been a terrific digital download service for players looking to buy both games at full price and games on the cheap. However, If you're the kind of game player for whom buying games "on the cheap" is still too expensive (or you live in a territory where retail sales aren't feasible in the market) then Steam has been ill-equipped to deliver the kinds of games you want to play.

Never one to let any potential PC revenue stream slip them by, Valve has announced that, as of today, Steam will support the release and distribution of Free-to-Play games in addition to the paid games already available from the service. With this new update, players can not only download F2P games from Steam, but also purchase each game's microtransactions from the Steam Client itself.

Along with the initial announcement, Valve revealed the first five F2P games available on the service. The first run of games are Sega'sSpiral Knights, Cryptic's Champions Online, Hi-Rez Studio's Global Agenda, Perfect World's Forsaken World, and NHN's Alliance of Valiant Arms.

It's interesting to see Valve expanding on the types of payment structures it's willing to integrate and support through the actual Steam client. Thanks to games like Team Fortress 2, players on the PC are more used to purchasing the kinds of vanity/functional items that have been the lifeblood of other F2P games. Hell, it's possible that adding this kind of support to Steam paves the way for Valve to release Team Fortress 2 as a free multiplayer shooter supported solely by microtransactions. We'll find out more of what Valve has planned soon, as additional information on Steam's F2P integration will be revealed in the coming days.