Valve: Sony, Microsoft Looking to Charge Gamers for Team Fortress 2 Updates

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Though Valve has hoped to release Team Fortress 2 add-on content as a free download for console users, company co-founder Gabe Newell now says that the console business model is getting in the way.

"The big concern I have right now is our ability to provide updates," said Newell to videogaming247. "On the PC side, we've done as many as four updates in a day, and that's great: we can respond very quickly."

Newell continued:

If Nvidia puts out a new graphics driver and it changes some way about how texture management works, then before our customers know there's any issue then the problem has gone away. Or we can do the Pyro updates, and the Medic updates [and so on].

On the consoles, they want us to charge money for them, because that's in their model, and our model is very much more to grow the community by giving out free updates. That's harder for us.

And then on the consoles they have pretty lengthy certification periods, and we're pretty happy that our customers think that we do a good job on the quality side of updates, and we don't need someone looking over our shoulder checking to make sure that we're not going to screw our customers with a bad update.

Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi told Shacknews in May that DLC for the Xbox 360 version of Team Fortress 2 would likely be announced "soon."

"How and when is still sort of being determined, on pricing and that kind of stuff," said Lombardi at the time. "On the PC it's sort of wide open, you can release stuff whenever you want. On the console there's a little bit more of a pathway."

From The Chatty
  • reply
    August 21, 2008 4:54 PM

    It's all about putting up walls and gates and charging for entry. One reason I loathe consoles personally.

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      August 21, 2008 4:58 PM

      It keeps out the rif raff though, just look at Xbox live!

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      August 21, 2008 4:58 PM

      They've got to preserve that revenue stream!

      The thing is, because they basically have a corner on the market in a lot of areas, they can charge with impunity and still find plenty of people willing to drop the cash on DLC and updates.

      In other words.....Horse Armor :P

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        August 21, 2008 5:00 PM

        Wasn't that free? (I believe you are talking about Oblivion or?)

        • reply
          August 21, 2008 5:04 PM

          No, it wasn't free, and yeah it was oblivion

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        August 21, 2008 5:02 PM

        People keep bringing up horse armor, but really, that was one of the first experiments with DLC, and it seems like they picked up pretty quickly that they needed to offer more with DLC for people to want it. And it cost money on PC as well, so it's not really the same.

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        August 22, 2008 3:34 AM

        Horse Armor was a good way to give Bethesday some extra money for a game I got 240 hours out of and counting. :)

        (I would have rather just had a "donate to developer" option, though. I don't like that it encourages other people to sell little bits of shit.)

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      August 21, 2008 5:36 PM

      The walls aren't there to keep you out, they are there as an opportunity for you to proove how much you WANT something!

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      August 21, 2008 5:50 PM

      Honestly though, it's better than nothing at all. There was once a time when you bought a game on consoles, you got what you got, and you didn't get anything new until there was a sequel, or a re-release.

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        August 21, 2008 9:35 PM

        At least that means they wouldn't hold out content from the original game with the intent of selling it later for money.

        • reply
          August 22, 2008 6:35 AM

          Please cite an example of a game company purposely leaving out content in a game for the sole purpose of charging for it via DLC and not due to time constraints.

      • reply
        August 22, 2008 6:55 AM

        [deleted]

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