Team Fortress 2 made modders $$$$$s

By Robert Purchese Published 22 October, 2010

"It was completely mind-blowing", says one.

In two weeks five modders from the Team Fortress 2 community made between $39,000 and $47,000 selling items through the game's new Mann Co. Store.

The royalty figures were so high they exceeded PayPal deposit restrictions, so Valve flew the highest earners - Spencer Kern and Steven Skidmore - to its door to hand the cheques over in person.

"It was completely mind-blowing, the size of the return that we're getting on these things," Kern gushed to Gamasutra.

The Mann Co. Store was added to Team Fortress 2 (PC) at the very end of September. It enables player-to-player trading and provides a storefront for modders to sell their TF2 content. Creators keep 25 per cent of the money made.

"It benefits us because it grows the community, right? These [content creators] benefit, but we benefit too," reasoned Valve brain Gabe Newell.

"Team Fortress 2 is a better product because we have community contributions in it. They're going to go off and listen to what the community says about how they can do that better, and we can draft along, as we both benefit."

Newell reckons the idea will eventually catch on: "Once people ... realise this is about their community, and that the right people are getting the benefits, ... after a while, they'll say, 'This is really how these kinds of communities need to work.'"

Team Fortress 2, a caricature-styled multiplayer shooter, was released to wide acclaim in the autumn of 2007. Three years on, the PC TF2 community is as healthy and enthusiastic as it ever was, thanks to devoted support from Valve. The same isn't true of the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game, as the closed nature of Xbox Live and PlayStation Network has made it impossible for Valve to unleash the same amount of downloadable support.

Tom Bramwell reviewed Team Fortress 2 for Eurogamer.

The characters of Team Fortress 2.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • tossetaz #1 2 years ago

    Nice for the modders and nice for Valve who apperently must have earned several hundreds of thousands of dollars on these modders!

  • Fatbobbybob #2 2 years ago

    So apart from all the visual additions like hats and weapons what other addons's are there? Tbh all this extra stuff has turned me off the game. It's all gone a bit mental.

  • butler` #3 2 years ago

    Proving yet again that micro transactions are teh futurez when done properly.

  • Spekingur #4 2 years ago

    Magic words right there, butler: "...when done properly."

  • Dogs-not-Gods #5 2 years ago

    In the early 90s I was in a pretty good TFC clan, was a fair CS player and loved DoD. I recently had a bit of a nostalgic hankering for the old days and revisited my old stamping grounds. I have to say most was unrecognisable - only DoD being pretty much as I remembered it. Still had fun but ironically the sense of community seemed to have been lost despite the games being somewhat 'handed over' to the community.

  • FreakyZoid #6 2 years ago

    Don't tell us what the mods were that earned them the money, though. That wouldn't be an interesting thing to have in the news story at all.

  • rivuzu #7 2 years ago

    I'd take my hat off to the mod developers, but I've not bought one on the store yet. |:

  • Genyus #8 2 years ago

    Wow that's a nice way to earn some cash

  • reelbigkris #9 2 years ago

    The trading and purchasing of items has kind of made me lose interest now. When a hat was once a sign of loyalty and determinitaion, now anyone can get it. Items are no longer special :(.

  • oceanmotion #10 2 years ago

    I've totally lost interest with TF2 as well. It's item crazy.

  • Doctor_What #11 2 years ago

    "Creators keep 25 per cent of the money made.

    "It benefits us because it grows the community, right? These [content creators] benefit, but we benefit too," reasoned Valve brain Gabe Newell. "

    Yes. You benefit to the tune of 75% on everything sold.

  • cw- #12 2 years ago

    @Dogs>gods What TFC clan? I played TFC for about 8 years

  • Dogs-not-Gods #13 2 years ago

    @cw-
    I lived in Toronto back then and was in an American clan made up of ex and serving marines. Unsurprisingly the clan was (USMC). I was (again unsurprisingly) (USMC) Limey and was largely a soldier tasked with base defence which, as we were pretty good, meant I got to stand around a lot. oddly enough bandwidth back then was horrible and there'd be many a match halted by frozen screens and deadly lag rather than loss or defeat! Good times!

  • Ryboy #14 2 years ago

    I wanna know what they made...

  • FogHeart #15 2 years ago

    TFC league on the Wireplay servers...halcyon days....

    For those that know, [FUS]OS

  • Lunatic4ever #16 2 years ago

    I'm curious,
    is ther still a broad community for this game?
    I thought about buying it but soemhow thought it might be dead.
    They are releasing updates constantly since its out,dont they?

  • cw- #17 2 years ago

    @Dogs>gods
    The name and clan ring a bell, I did play in the odd US league, but being based in the UK it was only short stints (high ping, early mornings).

    I ran/ played in smaller clans, and was admin for UKTFCL (which beat WPTFCL every day of the week :p)

    cw = Carwash

  • actionfitz #18 2 years ago

    "The same isn't true of the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game, as the closed nature of Xbox Live and PlayStation Network has made it impossible for Valve to unleash the same amount of downloadable support."

    guess which version i own :/
    /sadface