Team Fortress 2 Is Now Free On Steam!

Well, Valve announced some awesome news last night: Team Fortress 2 is now free to download and play on Steam.

Even though I've owned the game for little over six months, I was only able to really start playing it after I got a new video card at the end of May, and I've put a lot of hours into it because it is just that fun. And now a whole lot more people can start playing it too on both the PC and Mac, and to me, the more the merrier.

I have to say, I haven't enjoyed a multiplay first person shooter this much since Unreal Tournament. It is just so silly and balanced and it offers so many different play styles, weapons options and classes to match so many types of players that I think there is something for everybody. And it has an average rating of 92% on Metacritic, so to say it was well received is an understatement.

And when I say it is silly and funny, you have to check out the various trailers and meet the characters videos Valve has made to get a sense of that.

I will say this: if you start playing this game on Steam, I will play you. I will even coach you if you need it. Just add me (writinguy) on Steam and we'll mess some stuff up.

Valve did something which in retrospect was sort of smart too. Earlier this week, they announced that this week would be a free to play week so people who were interested could download it. At the time, it seemed like just a PR move to coincide with the Uber Upgrade, but in retrospect, it ended up being a way for the company to spread out some of the downloading of the game over a greater amount of time before they announced it was going to be free forever. Because, I can't imagine how much more network gridlock Steam would have had last night between 10-11 PM Eastern last night if this week hadn't been building up to that moment with "trial" downloads of the game.

Now there are going to be premium players (like myself) who owned the game before this change, but the difference between the two tiers is based more on how much stuff you can have, not any real in game or on the battlefield advantages. But even getting a premium account is really cheap. Like less than a buck to have one forever (since you just have to buy a weapon or something from the in-game store and a lot of those items are 49-99 cents).

So even if you are a casual player, it is an easy game to get into, so if you have a computer that will run it, it is well worth the download. What are you waiting for?