Micro-Transactions Coming To Team Fortress 2 Via Steam Wallet

whoop writes "Valve has announced that Team Fortress 2 will be getting a new Mann Co. Store to buy trinkets with real money through a service called Steam Wallet. TF2 is the first game to use this new Steam Wallet, but the money can be spent on anything in Steam, including full games. This would open them up to featuring gift cards, micro-transaction games, and more." PC Gamer has an interview with Valve's Robin Walker about why they're doing this. Walker says everything they're selling will still be obtainable by playing the game, other than a few cosmetic items.

Comments

Re:Final nail

[rsmith-mac]

Agreed. "You can get it through grinding" is usually a cop-out for microtransaction systems, and it's no different here. The new item sets (which confer a bonus for having the complete set) make this especially silly - the odds of obtaining all of the items directly through the game's anemic drop rate are virtually nil, and crafting doesn't make this a lot better because you need to melt down dozens of items (including already extremely rare hats) when the results of crafting are a random class/slot weapon.

Just to put this in perspective, Valve is charging $20 for any one of the new item sets. Items that can more easily be obtained through achievement unlocks are $0.50. And that's not inappropriately priced - that's a really good representation of just how much grinding is necessary on average to acquire all the parts of a single set. You can't reasonably do it, especially if you're not an unemployed 14 year old (keeping in mind this is an M game).

Ultimately Valve is going to argue that all of this is balanced, but that's not the case. There are already items that are better than other items, and the item sets infer additional bonuses above and beyond that which make the item sets must-haves for most situations. Items never fully replace skill, but after today they sure as hell make it secondary; for equally skilled opponents it's now a pay-2-win game. And that's a shame, as it used to be the best non-military multiplayer FPS on the market.

Re:Price

[imakemusic]

I have now looked into it and found that I was actually right.

The person I was originally responding to was expressing their disappointment at there being items which can only be purchased and not earned through grinding.

I said that these items do exist but that they are purely cosmetic i.e. don't affect gameplay. This is true (at least according to Robin Walker:

PC Gamer: Just to be absolutely clear: everything you can buy with real money is also available to find or craft for free?

Robin Walker: Almost everything. There are a really small number of cosmetic items that you can’t find. On the flip side, there are a few items that aren’t purchasable either. Our main goal was to make sure that all gameplay affecting items are findable, so that no-one can buy an in-game advantage over someone who’s choosing to find their items.

To be fair, if you ignore the context of my comment and consider it as an answer to a different question than the one I was answering then, yes, I was wrong. Similarly, your comment is incorrect as an answer to the question "What is the capital city of Sweden?"

For the record I stopped playing TF2 around the time they started introducing upgrades. Partly because I didn't like the upgrades and couldn't be bothered to keep track of- and grind in order to get new weapons but mainly because I just got bored of the game.