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Steam Now Offering Free-To-Play Games
donniebaseball23 writes "Valve's digital Steam service is going strong with 30 million active accounts, and now the developer has further boosted its offerings by adding free-to-play titles. Steam is kicking off its support of the free-to-play model with five titles (which will include in-game Steam exclusives): Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valliant Arms. Valve's support of free-to-play shows just how widely accepted it's become."
in fairness not everyone constantly visits steams website or plays games off of steam every day
I'm sure that a significan portion of people who use Steam have their settings as such that they never see the store page or the "special deals" offered and not to mention the multitude of casual gamers who would probably be inclined to partake in such free to play offerings. Also, I hate free to play stuff :|
This. I have never visited Steam website because I am not a big gamer since WC3, but I will probably download Steam now to check them out.
It also seems that some of these free to play games aren't available everywhere (a couple of users have written at the thread about it).
Perhaps Valve should just make IvanDoomer's list official or something :)
Wow,
Nah, I don't think WoW falls in the free-to-play category.
Not everyone plays games off of Steam at all for that matter. Polish it and put lipstick on it all you want, but Steam is invasive DRM that creates an artificial necessity to have a worthless resource using program running in the background and an internet connection even for single player games.
Do you have a key for "£" on your keyboard?
This Penny Arcade strip pretty much sums it up for me.
Mainly because it's simply not free, yes you can enjoy the games to a certain extent without paying a penny, but they are designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and in the long term are far more expensive than purchasing a retail product upfront.
I think the subscription model is going to decline severely the more games that exist which are FTP. I would not be surprised if even Blizzard is starting to see their subscriber numbers dip and are beginning to wonder what to do about it. Maybe it means WOW will eventually go FTP, or a successor title will.
The problem with these one off purchase games with online play, is that most of them don't release the server code and force you to play on their servers... And if they are not making any ongoing revenue, they have very little incentive to keep the servers running - and the online play mode of the game becomes useless once the servers are shut down.
Warcraft is a bit better since your paying for a service so they have an incentive to keep it running, but i do resent being expected to purchase the game *and* pay for service.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
So what kind of games are these? Never heard of any of those titles.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
This offer of Free games sounds just like Turkish Delights in Narnia. Steam does not care about the games, it is all about extending the DRM'd platform. The more people use Steam (and Steam's DRM) the more Steam can tell developers that to reach a sizeable market they have to be part of Steam and use Steam's DRM.
It's all about the platform and its network effects. The larger the platform, the more relevant it becomes, the worse off we will be (as someone who decided NOT to purchase Civ V just because it uses Steam's DRM.
I really dont care for this business model, i dont like someone having an advantage over me in a game because they spent more money than me. Its one of the things i like about WoW, that everyone on pretty equal footing, they do have some microtransaction items, but theyre strictly vanity items and have no impact on game play. I also really like what valve has done with TF2, i think it strikes a good balance. Every item is balanced, so one is not necessarily advantageous over another in every situation, so if someone chooses to spend money on those items they dont have an unfair advantage, BUT, every item is also available for free via random drops or a crafting system if you invest enough time. Unfortunately most companies arent rich enough to not be greedy when it comes to this sort of thing...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Please note, these are not what GamersGate is doing which is an F2P for single player games that are ad supported:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/14/gamesgate-explain-freegames/
This is regular F2P mmo's where the payoff for having people play for free is the community is bigger (small community and empty worlds can kill an mmo in a heartbeat). The games just seem to be promoted on steam now, not that much of a story to be honest.
In LOTRO you can buy everything -including the expansions and quest packs- using turbine points you can earn in game.
A member of my kinship (guild) in LOTRO has played from 1-65 (the current level cap) without spending a penny of real money. And she has every expansion and quest pack.
Me? I'm much weaker and richer ;)
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
an artificial necessity to have a worthless resource using program running in the background
Most people use Windows anyway.
and an internet connection even for single player games.
Steam features an offline mode. You only need to have been online once per game to be allowed to play it offline, i believe.
that may well be - but steam (in contrast to other drm copy protections for games) gives you something in return too - have your games available from everywhere where you have internet access (which is the main reason i started using it) - buy games comfortably from home - some really nice deals from time to time (especially on holidays) and with the option to go into offline mode, you can play without an internet connection (allthough it is needed at some point to enter offline mode)
all of the mentioned games can be installed and played without touching steam. And being mmo's they are updated as needed anyways. What do Steam bring to this?
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Steam's offline mode is far from perfect. I've lost count of the number of times I've had games cease working until I went online, even if they showed 'ready to play' in Offline Mode.
Yes, even single-player games with no internet functionality at all.
It's also really annoying that there's no way to throttle Steam's download speed, since it's capable of completely saturating my net connection so no one in the house can even check their email.
And it detects all the software bandwidth throttles I've tried to use and ceases downloading at all until I turn them off and let it have every byte it can slurp.
Then there's also that if Steam knows there's a patch, but it's not downloaded, you can't start the game even in offline mode until you download the patch.
Well I know GOG doesn't offer the same selection as Steam does, but they do offer the ability to download any games you bought through them anywhere, as many times as you want with any web browser - all DRM free too. Too me this is a much, much better say to do digital game distribution.
I don't understand some of the hate here for Steam, sure I use it and may be a little bias but it is the least most disruptive DRM, you can take your games to a different PC if you want (all you need is a login) and is so easy to join in games with friends if they are already in a game.
Out of the 5 only 1 (spiral knights) is available for Mac.
In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of radical evidence I must be classed as an Atheist.
You can also directly enter the ASCII code on most keyboards (in Windows at least) by holding alt while punching in the base 10 number. For example [alt]156[/alt] yields: "£."
I don't do a lot of currencies much, so I'm not using £, ¥, etc... often, but I do use some of the Greek letters on a daily basis - particularly mu (who wants to use the letter "u" when you can use "" (230))*. "" and "ß" (224, and 225 respectively) are of occasional use. The fractions for "½", and "¼" (171, 172) sometimes come in handy too. (And back in junior high I programed the Apple || e in the library to wait about five minutes and then start printing ASCII 7 (audible beep))
So just because the key is not on the keyboard doesn't mean you can't type it without navigating the insert function in a word processor and then pasting to whatever internet forum you're posting on. I've always thought throwing in an extended ASCII into a password is also a good way around the method most brute force attacks would attempt (at least until exhausting "regular" ASCII combinations first). It'll get you into trouble if you wind up with a non-standard keyboard (some laptops are cheap that way) or one of the "virtual" keyboards some remote authentication web based servers use to attempt to get around key-logger vulnerabilities.
*Strange - in the preview mu doesn't show up as it's own character and neither does alpha, but everything else does (they all display properly in the FF text entry window). Anyone have an idea why? Is this some sort of error of the Slashdot ASCII to html unicode converter? Or is FF or Windows inputting in a "symbol" rather than the true ASCII 230? Curious and curiouser.
not sure what'll get through, but we'll try -
alt-0230: æ æ (that 'ae' character)
alt-0181: µ (mu)
alt-0176: ° (degrees)
Here's a quick overview of the Steam announced titles.
Global Agenda: Free Agent - I've been playing this for quite some time, back since it was "boxed product" that was going to be a MMO. The devs then actually had the integrity to say "You know what, monthly subscriptions aren't right for this...so we're just not going to do them." That evolved into its current state where it is actually completely free, and you can pay a $20 ONE TIME fee to be upgraded to Elite Agent status on your account (anyone with a boxed copy of the game on their account is automatically Elite) which unlocks a number of things, including speedier XP and more loot. You can also pay for name changes or buy a "booster" which further gives you 2x XP and Loot, plus so many "free" tokens every day. Amazingly for a free game, to get the best in game gear you don't have to buy or pay for anything if you don't want to. Global Agenda plays well on Linux through the use of WINE, at least in my experience. Onto the gameplay itself, mix "Planetside" with "Guild Wars" and you get a MMOTPS/FPS that is actually really, really fun. There's a lot of content available, open world "questing" areas like any other MMO...but you have to use your FPS/TPS skills to take down that enemy you need for the quest. PvE content, PVP content, and Agency vs Agency combat in a meta-game for map control of various "Hexes" on a grid. If your agency (guild) say, owns a hex and have built a special building on it that provides resources, it can be attacked by another enemy agency - 15+ members of your team teleport to an in-game instance of that hex (with special building) and you fight against 15 of the attacking enemy etc... Crafting is more accessible than ever and there's a nice amount of customization. Out of all the "shooter MMOs", I think Global Agenda is one of the best. It may not have the scale of Planetside, but it has a nice "Guild Wars + Tribes" mix that's really unlike most of what's out there, polished to a nice shine. I buy boosters just to keep this business plan viable.
Champions Online: Free For All - Cryptic, the developers from the City of Heroes team, made this "sequel" if you will, to practice for their better known MMO, Star Trek Online. One thing Cryptic does better than most other MMO developers is to make you "feel" powerful. Blasting someone with a ice beam has a real "weight to it" and you feel "super" when you deploy your batman-style grappler to swing around the map. In Champions, Free "Silver" players have a wide variety of prefab archetypes that basically include a balanced set of powers along a fixed progression. If you want to mix and match core skills, you'll need the "Gold" subscription, which is like LOTRO/DDO in that it costs the standard MMO fee monthly. Gold also allows you free access to many of the "travel powers", which silver players can purchase individually if they wish. After selecting your character's powers, you can design a costume from what is likely THE most comprehensive costuming system in a MMO to date. If you want to be a hero with a tiny green head with pointy ears, a barrel chest, red hulk hands attached to robot arms, you can do that. Silver players have a lot of the content unlocked, but there will be some that need to be unlocked with a Cryptic Points (a RMT token). Those that don't want to spend anything can have a great experience and not "fall behind", provided they don't mind losing some access to certain costumes, travel powers and a couple of the Adventure Pack zones of the game. Unlike many, you can level to the cap easily in the zones available and without buying any XP-boosters. Its a good value for Silver players and has what you'd expect from a Super Hero MMO and many of the things you may not. Works in WINE on Linux, in my experience.
Spiral Knights - Anyone play "The Legend of Zelda: The Four Swords Adventure"? Spiral Knights, made by the Puzzle Pirates developer three rings (Amazingly, one of the only devs with the balls to create guild owned pirate ships that p
Maybe it means WOW will eventually go FTP, or a successor title will.
Not while they're under Activision. Even if they weren't tied to Activision, I doubt Blizzard would make such a move. They've got plenty of users and the number of attrition doesn't quite alarm them, yet I'm sure. (There are still millions of players worldwide.) I imagine if they had to start reducing the number of servers down to about the 10+/- range, then they'd start to worry.
Having said that, I've let my subscription to WoW lapse recently and indefinitely. It was a fun game, but if I'm paying a monthly sub, I feel I need to get my money's worth - and that meant 2-3 hours a night nearly every day. Some would call that an addiction, except I have no urges or desires to jump back into the game, heh.
Their hand is going to be forced on the matter whether they like it or not. WOW apparently lost 600,000 subscribers since last year which is a drop of 5.5% or ~ $108 million in revenue. I don't think they can sustain their current model if subscribers continue to drop like that.
the absolute worse payment system in a free to play game I've played, would be perfect world. Where it would be virtually imposible to do anything without buying cash shop mana and HP charms. (in game potions were prohibitively expensive, and mana regens so slow that without the charms, you would have to sit and regen 10 minutes for every 45 seconds you used skills/spells), and those charms added up so fast it was rediculous, I'm talking a $3.50 item that was more or less necessary, and burns out in under 2 hours, and that was assuming you didn't use the best skills, in which case you could blow through them in less then an hour.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=664376
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
" Its one of the things i like about WoW, that everyone on pretty equal footing, "
False.
In some FTP games it's money v money
In other FTP games there is very little advantage. In DDO, you can buy some thing, but the power advantage is minimal. It's real power is in selling some special and interesting dungeons.
In WOW it's time v time. If you don't have the inclining to spend 4-12 hours a day playing, you will never be able to compete. By the time you just about get to the power level, there is an update and all the people who don't mind spending 60hours a week playing get more powerful in a day.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Steam becomes extremely disruptive the moment you finish a game and want to sell it used. You can't.
Interesting. I did not know that. It is significant. They are making money like crazy. I don't see why a subscription has to be $15/mo, or even over $12/mo.
On a Mac (US Keyboard) you can just press option-3 :P You can do a lot of other things using option- or shift-option- including some cool stuff like umlauts (option-u) where when you do an umlaut, it highlights a freefloating umlaut yellow indicating you can type the following character you expect to display under it so typing option-u and then a gives ä which I don't even think appears in a language (if slashdot chokes, the character it gives is literraly a lowercase a with an umlaut).
Also I'm not sure why the things weren't showing up but I know slashdot chokes on half of the "nonstandard" characters its fed so it's probably just slashdot.
It does exist im dumb Wikipedia has an article on it but Slashdot can't handle "Ä" in a url so yeah.
Wow,
Nah, I don't think WoW falls in the free-to-play category.
Have you seen the wealth of private servers? They're falling a bit behind on expansions, but in general... It's possible to have the WoW experience without paying a dime.
Their hand is going to be forced on the matter whether they like it or not. WOW apparently lost 600,000 subscribers since last year which is a drop of 5.5% or ~ $108 million in revenue. I don't think they can sustain their current model if subscribers continue to drop like that.
Well, 5 percent in six months is certainly something to be concerned about, but the overhead drops almost as quickly as the income, so in eight or nine years, their $2,000,000,000/year cash cow will be breaking even. I don't think they need to worry quite yet.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.