Steam just got even better. Rock, Paper, Shotgun tipped us off that Valve has begun offering free-to-play games via its digital distribution service. The current lineup is limited to five titles, and I haven’t heard of any of ’em. It’s hard to argue with the asking price, though. All you need is a Steam account—no credit card required.
As Penny Arcade so eloquently points out, free-to-play games aren’t always without cost. Players can easily be tempted into shelling out for in-game currency, items, and, of course, hats. It looks like all of the free-to-play titles on Steam will use the service’s wallet feature for in-game purchases.
While some developers should be chastised for the DLC associated with retail games, "horse armor" wouldn’t have been such a bad deal had Oblivion been a free download. As long as you don’t need any pay-for items to progress through and enjoy a game, I can’t help but applaud developers for trying a different approach that lets folks pay only for the content they really want. Anyone know if Global Agenda: Free Agent, Champions Online: Free for All, Forsaken World, Spiral Knights, and Alliance of Valiant Arms are any good?