Valve announces Steam F2P support

By Fred Dutton Published 14 June, 2011

Champions Online among first wave of titles.

Valve has announced Steam support for free-to-play titles with immediate effect.

Five launch titles are available now: Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valliant Arms (AVA).

Starting tomorrow with Spiral Knights and ending on Sunday with AVA, each one will get a 'F2P Game of the Day' slot which will see exclusive in-game extras up for grabs.

"The introduction of Free to Play games is another example of the constant evolution of Steam," commented Valve exec Jason Holtman.

"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."

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About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (11) Latest comment 11 months ago

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

  • shadow651 #1 11 months ago

    oh good, was hoping for something like this to come to steam

  • Caimbeul #2 11 months ago

    Valve continues to show fuck all commitment to Half Life...

  • Stratix #3 11 months ago

    The world is bigger than Half Life. Unfortunatley.

  • Shikasama #4 11 months ago

    Caimbeul - Explain, in detail please, how the publishing branch of the Steam platform greenlighting F2P titles has any effect whatsoever on the Valve development team making another game.

    You'll be marked on your answer.

  • icematt12 #5 11 months ago

    What do Valve actually get out of this? A cut of any transactions that may take place through Steam, the websites of these games advertising Steam. Think I have played the last 3 and am curious about what the future will hold for Valve/Steam and F2P by this move.

    Just looked at Steam and Champions Online has over 700 achievements on Steam. Never thought a game could have this many, never mind a "free" one.
    Edited by icematt12 at 14/06/11 @ 20:58

  • dagas #6 11 months ago

    Awesome! An easy way to get access to F2P games!

  • TheLittlestHobo #7 11 months ago

    Apparently Arma2 is going free to play. Has this been reported on Eurogamer yet?

  • Shikasama #8 11 months ago

    beemoh gets extra credits!

  • Ikaros_O #9 11 months ago

    Nice, will have to check it out.

  • hiddenranbir #10 11 months ago

    "What do Valve actually get out of this? A cut of any transactions that may take place through Steam, the websites of these games advertising Steam. "

    Basically, you're opening steam to play the game. So you open it, you look at the store page and might see a deal and voila, another game you have on steam and repeat the cycle. It works, a few of my games were bought like that.

    The more you use the platform, the more likely you are to buy something from it.
    Edited by hiddenranbir at 15/06/11 @ 09:14

  • jimmys #11 11 months ago

    What do Steam get out of this?

    A load more users in order to destroy EA's Origin.