If you've never played Team Fortress 2--or any PC shooter, for that matter--there won't be a better time than right now. Valve, developer of critically-acclaimed franchises like Half-Life and operator of the Steam network, has made its team-based first-person shooter (FPS) free. And that's forever.

Team Fortress 2, released over Steam in 2007, tasks players to work as a team across several game modes like Capture the Flag and King of the Hill. You can choose between a bunch of different player classes such as the Sniper, the Scout, the Heavy and more.

The game will be supported by micro-transactions--just like your favorite social games. (And just like it has long before it went free-to-play.) There will be no subscriptions nor will there be advertisements. And in an interview with Develop, Valve's Robin Walker said, "Now that we're shipping it, it feels like a fairly straightforward next step along the 'Games as Services' path we've been walking down for a while now." In other words, we can likely expect way more where this came from.

The developer slash digital games store owner has been on a free frenzy lately. Just last week, five free-to-play games were made available on the Steam platform including Spiral Knights, a social game-like dungeon crawler for four. (It looks like another developer is feeling the heat from the social/mobile games markets.) This could be the mysterious project Valve recently alluded to, or more freebies are just around the bend. A man can dream, no?

[Via Kotaku]

[Image Credit: Valve]

Are you interested in trying TF2 now that it's completely free? What do you think of this traditionally hardcore developer's steps toward free-to-play games? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.