Team Fortress 2 is only “70% free to play”, says Crytek’s CEO
By Tim Colwill on March 7, 2013 at 4:52 pm
Crytek are moving heavily into the free-to-play market, and, naturally, one of their biggest competitors in that space is Team Fortress 2, which itself recently made the switch to F2P. Crytek’s CEO Cevat Yerli has revealed that he has concerns about the game requiring the purchase of items to compete.
“I kind of think it’s a 70% free to play title,” he said to PCGamesN. “It’s on the way to be there, it’s a good model and it works for them, but there is still pay to win there and I don’t like that.”
“There’s some great experiment there, with user-generated content, but you buy items. You have to buy items.”
Yerli also explained how he believes a free-to-play game should be entirely free, not have any spaces locked off. “A free to play game doesn’t allow you to sell items,” he said. “This is the issue I have with that. We would allow communities to create items for virtual currency, but you can’t really go with commercial items because that’s pay to win. So that’s why I’m saying I’m disapproving of the concept of Team Fortress 2, because that is effectively not quite free to play.”
“The only thing that’s free-to-play there is they I can just go into the game and play it. But there’s a piece of game I can’t access without spending money.”
Source: PCGamesN
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But the hats are just cosmetic and the weapons drop at the same rate for free to play players as premium players. There is no pay to win involved at all.
It may be 70% F2P but it’s still 100% awesome.
So the game is fully free to play.
But some of the hats are not.
So, the game, is 70% of the game.
And this, this makes sense? Or am I missing something..
it’s a classic case of someone in marketing, who has no idea what he’s talking about.
LOL, tf2 is free to play you can get the weapons easy and they drop alot, hats dont but they are not needed to COMPETE, and u dont have to PAY to win. i could own alot of people with the original weapons TBH… i still prefer most the original weapons. looks like a cheap shot at some marketing to me… tf2 is one of the best f2p games i have seen.
The vanilla weapons are better than any weapon you can buy, which you also have a chance to receive in a drop.
This guy is just trying to shittalk the competition to try and make their model seem better. In the way EA shit talked Steam in general by saying they don’t allow communication directly with customers.
Yup, been playing TF2 since the Orange box and it ain’t pay to win at all.
Not a single paid item helps you play better at the game.
Except for the Secret Saxton. Randomly chooses a player in the server and gives them a random gift.
Random gifts increase fun, which is how to play TF2 better.
Part of the game is locked off in the form of cosmetics, is it not?
He’s saying everything should be earnable with money otherwise you’re lying when you say f2p; what’s there not to understand about it? He dislikes people lumping f2p with ‘free to play + paid cosmetics’.
forumrabbit,
Except that cosmetics are in the drop table and the crafting tables, heck I even found the High Five taunt last week.
forumrabbit,
I doubt that Crytek will even think about releasing a Free to Play game without some sort of transactions happening. As majority of this forum have mentioned, they’re just trying to stir the pot. I don’t think that they’ll be able to fund just off advertising in game.
In my opinion, a Free to Play game is one where a game doesn’t cost you anything up front or via a subscription where you are not put at a disadvantage if you do not purchase things in the game.
I think he’s putting forward two arguments: one is his belief that f2p means EVERYTHING is free and nothing can be bought or restricted through real world currency. I could be wrong but are there some items that can’t ever be received through the drop system. His second belief is that TF2 is pay to win, which I would mostly disagree with the same arguments already presented.
Wait, what? Free to play games aren’t allowed to have microtransactions now? How the hell are the supposed to pay their bills, let along make a profit? I’m not just talking about Valve here. There’s a huge number of MMOs and other games that use the free to play model. They all, without fail have bits you can buy. Most of them are attainable through actual gameplay (as are the purchasables in TF2), but they all have ways to get some money out of you. Free to play games have bits cut of out them intentionally to get you to pay money for them. That’s the whole idea. Can you play it without paying for it? Yes. Then its FREE to PLAY. It doesn’t matter if there’s a couple of bits you can choose to pay for. Its certainly not pay to win. Although some of the weapon unlocks are definitely an upgrade (<3 that Ubersaw), they're all still attainable without paying a cent.
World Of Tanks is a free to play game, yes? You can play it for free. There is no requirement to pay at any time. However, you can buy shells that do more damage, experience boosts, more credits to buy things, buy normally unattainable tanks and new paint schemes with real money. They do this so they can make money (duh). A game can never be completely free otherwise there's no way to pay for servers etc. Pretty sure this chap is a tad butthurt that Valve's free to play game is still making more money than Crysis and will continue to do so for some time.
wolfstar90,
Games that let you purchase higher damaging shells and better tanks put you at an advantage over other players who wish to ‘truly’ play for free which i guess is still technically FTP but not if you want to be on even terms.
Games like TF2 don’t put anyone at a disadvantage if you don’t wish to buy anything. ALL items are attainable without spending cash, whether it be hats and weapons (random drops), or seasonable items (just have to play during the seasonal event), and even the competition items (by entering the Saxton awards etc.).
I’ll put this to everyone. Is the Free to Play product the same product for those (on the basic level) who choose to pay for stuff versus those who don’t? Surely a truly free to play product you can attain the same level of playability or function as those who wish to pay for it.
wolfstar90,
Urgh…
WoT has locked out content that only paying members could get (unique tanks), and that’s what Cervat isn’t happy about.
Hell you can buy special ammo in WoT too.
TF2 pay to win? last time I checked stock weapons offer the best overall function and other weapons can be found as drops anyway for those parts of the game where a niche weapon is preferable.
Hardly pay to win.
This Crytek guy must of had some sour grapes.
TF2 is F2P done right
my 200 hours without spending a cent and being able to score quite well disagrees with his assessment.
It’s a war themed hat simulator. You need a hat to play properly or people will point at you and laugh at how poor you are.
Hats don’t drop very often so the only other way to get one is to buy it, thus he is technically correct.
I have played 100% of TF2 with $0.
Buh bow.
Yerli “the outspoken” has clearly never played team fortress for any period of time.
I have like ridiculous amount of weapons (Never bought a weapon) for my pyro, and spy, I still use the default items, cos they’re mostly better. :/
Good job Yerli, good job.
I still don’t have an unusual. I think this is what he’s getting at. Anyone who donates an unusual to me can prove him wrong.
played TF2 since beta, not a cent paid since the incredibly good decision to purchase Orange Box. and i am much happier with stock weapons than the other fancy bollocks. this man clearly does not understand marketing
Okay, back up. Let’s look at the first phrase.
FREE TO PLAY
That it is. Fully. So, next.
PAY TO WIN.
There is, as far as I understand NOTHING in the game that provides a pay to win equation. Please, hardcore TF2ers, call me out here if I’m wrong.
PAY TO WEAR A SILLY HAT.
Even this, isn’t *always* needed – but it can certainly help. And at the end of the day, has *zero* bearing on the game itself, winning or losing. Only the headwear left by your corpse.
From reading around the webz, this is all coming down to trying to make a claim in bullshit wording. Let’s address that the “70%” bullshit. “Here’s a random number I pulled from my overly swelling arse” should be applied before such. Even to apply such a figure, would imply that 30% OF THE GAME is based on hats.
ON. HATS.
I do have a lot of respect for Crytek, their coders, staff and etc. But this, seriously, this ranks up there with “SimCity Servers will be fully operational”.
Actually, worse.
It’s just horse shit dumb.
Only way I could see it slightly pay to win is if 2 people get the game, start from scratch, one pays the other doesn’t who ends up with more options to assault thier enemy with?
It’s not always about pure mathematical balance between weapons. Often it also comes down to having access to weapons that suit your particular style of playing the most. Giving you a boost to help reduce the weakest link in your abilities or to provide a good increase to your strongest point making you all the more potent when on top of your game.
If the vanilla weapons don’t provide benefit to these areas, i’d say you are somewhat at a disadvantage against somebody whome it does.
However all that said, who really cares. The advantages/disadvantages (if any apply to you) aren’t gamebreaking and the game can still be very much enjoyed. If you want to get all competitive and play it all the time you will unlock stuff very quickly and still have a tonne of fun in the process. Not a bad deal for the cost of nothing.
So… as a CEO he is planning on stopping players from spending money? He would actually like to deprive players who are willing to spend money from having the opportunity to do so?
That’s…. that’s a dick move to the players and to the company.
Wait…. can someone swap this guy with the Telstra CEO?
Another asshat CEO that has sour grapes over the fact that Valve and TF2 ruin their view of how F2P should actually work.
The way I see it is if they can prove (justify to players) that the TF2 model is flawed then it will help them to explain away why they decided to charge so much extra for some DLC/ item that we most likely don’t need in their games as their attempt to fix the flawed model of F2P that TF2 has created.
Basically, blame Valve for why we charged extra $$$ in an attempt to fix things!!!
Wyld,
Yeah!
I earnt all of the weapons that I want to use through the ones unlocked through achievements.
I hate that we allow game developers to talk to the outside world.
When will they learn that they are not people…