Report: Portal's Valve Creating Free-To-Play Game

Following up on last week's news that microtransaction-based free-to-play games will be coming to its Steam service, Valve has confirmed that it, too, will release its own title using that model. Speaking to French website Barre de Vie, Valve spokesman Doug Lombardi was characteristically cryptic, simply saying "yes" when asked if the company had its own free-to-play projects in the works. Some have speculated that the company's upcoming Dota 2 may be sold under this model, referencing the fact that Riot Games' popular League of Legends -- a strategy game clearly inspired by the original "Dota," Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients -- is a free-to-play game. Valve's Steam storefront currently offers five free-to-play games: Ijji and Redduck's A.V.A., Perfect World's Forsaken Worlds MMORPG, Atari and Cryptic's Champions Online Free For All, Hi Rez Studios' Global Agenda: Free Agent shooter, and Three Rings Design and Sega's Spiral Knights MMORPG. "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," Valve director of business development Jason Holtman said in a statement last week. Valve did not immediately respond to a request by Gamasutra for clarification.