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."

Re:I dont think free means free here

[DrXym]

It's probably casuals who benefit most from Free To Play games. I play Lord of the Rings Online in fits and starts, maybe a couple of hours a week. I bought the game when it first came out but couldn't justify a monthly sub for such low intensity gameplay so I cancelled. Now it's FTP I've gone back and the new model suits me a lot better. I go weeks without buying something and when I do need something that requires points it tends to cost less far less than paying on a sub. I expect if you were really hardcore that it might go the other way (though there is a premium service which is sub based), but on balance I think more people benefit than lose out. It also means the game becomes more popular which benefits Turbine because even if they're earning less $$$ per player they're still gaining more players to make up for it.

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.