It seems like every time I load steam TF2 downloads an update. It’s an OLD game. I’d have thought it’d be ‘done’ by now!
Valve supports its game as long as they are popular and TF2 is extremely popular. That is why we love Valve. Also, they use TF2 as a test bed for many of their wacky ideas.
TF2 is a flagship title for Steam, and arguably -the- flagship. It still generates substantial income through sales, and microtransactions through the item store. Why wouldn’t they keep working on it? It lends itself well to gameplay expansion with a fairly modest amount of development time - a really clever new weapon or two can add a lot of dynamics and player enthusiasm with, at most, a couple days of labor. It’s especially cost effective since, through their generic development model, any feature they implement, initially done for TF2, then becomes a feature for other Source games and the Steam-powered engine as a whole, which then increases their appeal to other game developers to use Steam integration.
It’s brilliant, really.
Welcome to online gaming. Games are never finished here, not so long as they make money.
Amen.
TF2 has many legitimate updates; new items, etc. are being added on a regular basis.
At first I wondered how they could afford to keep updating TF2, but as the others have mentioned, it’s a great way for Valve to test stuff out without necessarily alienating customers, since these new ideas and such are all “free”. And with the addition of paying for items, they get direct revenue from it now.
Thanks for the answers. I guess the one that most adequately answers my question is the testbet answer.
I KNOW online games are ‘never finished’. I wasn’t asking why games update. I have nearly sixty games on my steam list. Many of them are online games. Nearly every one other than TF2 updates maybe once a month (a very rough guestimate), so I was just wondering why one of my online games (which I hardly play, not because I don’t like it - I have too many other games and I only have it because of the orange pack) seems to be updating almost every day!
To repeat - Thanks for the answers. I get the testbet/flagship game argument.
People who play TF2 have Steam, so it’s a great source of indirect revenue.
There has been a lot of “flavour” content added to TF2 lately. The Polycount weapons pack, the new melee based medieval map, new ‘costume’ packs for demo and heavy etc (I am looking forward to getting the full demoman gear). Often, despite playtesting, these packs need tweaked after release. After all, several thousand advantage seeking gamers will find a lot more flaws/exploits than a few hundred testers.
In fact in a recent interview one of the designers admitted a view that Natascha (the Heavy Weapons Guys alt minigun that slows opponents) needs nerfed, and that they were still very unhappy with the Sandman (a melee weapon for the scout class that can fire a baseball that stuns the enemy).
Also Valve recently announced that they are restarting the TF2 beta program to investigate facets of online gaming. They are looking at things such as greatly increasing/decreasing damage modifiers, model speeds, map design etc. Then looking at how this affects gameplay. All of this requires frequent (yet hopefully small) patches to the game client.
My take on it, is that for years developers have been trying to take MMO’s and fit them towards FPS devotees. With TF2 Valve are looking at making a FPS into a persistant online community. I know it is the only online FPS that I have played consistently for more than a few months (I bought it when the Orange Box was first released in th UK). I may be as shit at this game as every other, but it’s still fun to play. And to me that’s the clincher.