Valve getting into the free-to-play game business with in-game content sales
Free-to-play games are becoming more popular but making money in that business can be a little challenging, but as Zynga has shown with its games on Facebook in-game microtransactions for game content can prove to very lucrative.
This obviously hasn’t escaped Valve’s Steam online game store, one of the largest players in this area, as they have announced that starting today there are five games available immediately that are free-to-play and allow the player to buy game content from within the game.
Available immediately, the launch titles are Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valliant Arms (AVA).
Beginning tomorrow (Weds) with Spiral Knights and concluding Sunday with AVA, each of the five launch titles will offer exclusive in-game content to those who try the “F2P game of the day” on Steam. In game transactions in all of the titles will be supported by Steam’s micro-transaction backend system that is available to Steamworks partners and currently used in Valve’s Team Fortress 2.
“The introduction of Free to Play games is another example of the constant evolution of Steam,” said Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve. “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.”
Specific details on the F2P games of the day and their exclusive in-game content will be made available in the coming days.
