Team Fortress 2 getting micro-transactions via Steam Wallet | Hacker News Reader

Team Fortress 2 getting micro-transactions via Steam Wallet

teamfortress.com

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Team Fortress 2 has offered absolutely stunning value to the buyer over the past two years. Paying $15+ for DLC for the Call of Duty, GTA and Battlefield games is an absolute joke compared to the massive improvements that have come to Team Fortress 2 from the publisher for free.

What I'd like to see, however, is some hard numbers that demonstrate this has been worth it to them from a financial perspective.

I can't find the link right now, but I'm pretty sure I've seen them say:

1) TF2 is profitable, even including the close to ten years that it spent in development(!)

2) They make money off the updates (because of new sales), but not always enough to break even for the update

3) Valve views TF2 as their sandbox to see how players respond to certain ideas, so they find it useful to keep TF2 around even if it weren't carrying its weight anymore.

(edit this backs up some of my claims: http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/08/19/interview-valve-on-the-fut...)

However, each time you fund your wallet, the minimum amount of funds that you can put in your Steam Wallet is $5 / £4 / 5€ to keep transactions and payment service provider fees to a minimum.

Is $5 really a micro-transaction?

I think the individual transactions can be quite small. You just have to commit to making $5 of them because of the non-micro-transaction handlers.

Apparently you can buy gear. I haven't played TF2, but from my "too many" TF days, there were many times I'd have gladly payed $0.10 to see a sniper lagged for just 200ms.

We've been talking about this for years, since the bad old days of TF before the turn of the century(1).

Wouldn't it be awesome for online games like TF to have a small "buy in" and then a prize purse for the winners? That might be enough to bring this old fogey back to Team Fortress again.

(1) Yes, kids, they had Team Fortress, on the quake engine, playable online in the 1900's. It was blocky, it was slow, it was guaranteed to be lagged to hell, and we liked it that way. Now get off my lawn.

While Valve's continued development is impressive, as someone who hasn't played since what must be 2008, the stream of new systems and facets that have been laid over the game make it intimidating to return (harshly: game bloat).

Have you actually tried it and been discouraged? Honestly, 100% of the core gameplay is identical to what it was in 2008. The bonuses are just new maps, slightly different alternate weapons, a new game mode or two (payload, king of the hill), and hats. It's not as if they added a dozen new classes or something; they release exactly enough content to keep it fresh for people who are playing all the time.

I'm surprised that anyone would find it intimidating -- frankly, if you took 2008 me, put me in a hole for two years, and brought me out to play TF2 CTF or CP, I would probably barely even notice that there were new things.

Demoknight is practically a new class

Huntsman + Jarate sniper is practically a new class

Gunslinger + Fontier Justice (or wrangler) Engineer is practically a new class

Dead Ringer Spy is almost a new class

Many changes in balance and game play have been made. It's not the same game as it was in 2008.

Good to know. I haven't played since, I just always seemed to see changes mentioned on news sites.

Someone also told me there were 360-like achievements (with perks) and there ended up being servers with custom maps to rack them up with minimal effort.

Yeah, there's a few hundred achievements (!) which exist for a combination of fun and to unlock the alternate weapons. (If you don't get the achievements, you'll gradually get the weapons anyway via random "drops" when you die and/or crafting, trading, or (now) RMT.)

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