Great news for those who play a lot of Free-to-Play MMOs: Steam will be supporting Free MMOs from various publishers on their Steam platform. Why is this good? Gamers who play a lot of free MMOs know that client downloads can become a hassle with slow rates, corrupted files, and finding the latest versions. If you're a publisher of free online games, you'll know that it's sometimes difficult to get your games to the players who are actually interested in playing them because of how convoluted the market for Free MMOs, and even more: the internet, is that a lot of potential players overlook it.
Source: Youtube Channel IGNentertainment
Well Valve's Steam platform will help reach out to their 30 million active users and help those interested download it with ease on the program rather than trying to find a download host that has the latest version with no viruses on them. Right off the bat, five games are available:
-Spiral Knights (Sega)
-Forsaken World (Perfect World)
-Alliance of Valiant Arms (Ijji)
-Champions Online: Free For All (Perfect World - they now own Cryptic Studios)
-Global Agenda: Free Agent (Hi-Rez Studios)
There has been a lot of speculations that Free MMOs don't have the quality of paid subscriptions and that most free online games are not worth the time. Not entirely true as aspiring developers work hard to provide the best online gaming experience for the player to choose to spend money or not and still make a profit. All five games are of the highest quality in terms of MMOs (though I haven't tried the first two, but now I will since it's easier to download on Steam) and I recommend trying them out. Yes, you may have to sacrifice some time to try it out, but at least money isn't an issue.
Those who download and play the games will receive special in-game items. This hasn't been made clear, but I'm guessing it's for those who play the games on Steam. Details on what registered users get if they even get anything haven't been reported. From what I know thus far, players can log into the games using their accounts from their respective publishers, use their steam account to log in, or link their steam accounts with the account with their publishers. I am mostly glad about being able to have a fast and efficient way to download the games. More Free MMOs will be available on the Steam platform later on.
Sources:
-Gamasutra - 'Free-To-Play' Model Arrives On Steam
-Joystiq - You're free to play these free-to-play games through Steam
-Kotaku - Steam Goes Free to Play
-Steam - Free To Play Games Have Arrived on Steam
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