<story><title>How Valve made Team Fortress 2 free-to-play</title><url>http://gamasutra.com/view/news/164922/GDC_2012_How_Valve_made_Team_Fortress_2_freetoplay.php</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>oacgnol</author><text>TF2 was a masterstroke for Valve in PR. I paid $40 for TF2 and I felt like the value that it gave over the past 5 years has more than exceeded what I paid for it. It has generated a huge amount of goodwill towards Valve and Steam that will help anchor them in the PC gaming industry for years to come. It will be interesting to see where they&apos;re taking Steam and the PC platform in the near future, especially given all the talk about a possible console.</text></comment>
<story><title>How Valve made Team Fortress 2 free-to-play</title><url>http://gamasutra.com/view/news/164922/GDC_2012_How_Valve_made_Team_Fortress_2_freetoplay.php</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sawyer</author><text>One of the most interesting things about the TF2 story is that they opened up custom item creation to the community, and allowed players to actually profit from designing and uploading objects to the store.  I remember reading a quote from Gabe Newell mentioning that some of the top player sellers were making over $30,000 / month from their creations.&lt;p&gt;edit: If in game, player driven markets are the sort of thing that interests you: keep an eye out for Diablo 3&apos;s real money auction house.&lt;p&gt;Also: hats.</text></comment>