._. Need a new gun to take care of those pesky combine? Well just enter your credit card info here: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX
....
Yeah no thanks Valve, just keep doing what you're doing. <3 TF2

CSS2, Pay REAL money for your weapons :O)

Micro-trans doesnt work on PC. We WILL find a way not to pay :)

BTW one must be retarded to ask that question.

@KroKan: Dozens of Korean pay-to-play MMORPGs would like to disagree with you.

@Guizzy: Not pay-to-play, meant "free-to-play"

And I will "Love" to stay away from Valve if they start this.

The picture's a little bit too small to see properly. Are their eyes red or not?

$$$$

The problem with micro transactions is that they arent ever really 'micro'.

To my mind it has to be such a small payment that you dont really consider or notice it.

The garbage i see going on with xbox live could more appropriately be called 'mini' transactions. They're small granted but not so small that I dont stop and consider its worth.

Depending on what it is, if its anything that you couldnt efficient describe as 'cents' then i'm just not going to bother, especially if its something trivial in a game.

I love you red eyes Bashcraft.... keep them coming.

"I'd love to have a game that we gave away saying 'however much you want to invest in this, this is yours'".

In theory this may not be a bad thing. If the game would come to around $40 to play through without being gimped and cost extra for bonus crap that people may or may not want it could save a lot of us who care about playing the game some money. In practice? They'll milk us for all we're worth.

@cordsie: Is there ever any doubt.

I wouldn't mind this, as long as they are actually EXTRA content i.e. something that was created after the game was released, and not something the game left so that you can pay for it.

awwww man. Left4dead now dated all the way in november? will be worth the wait i know... but arrrrrh >.<

@cordsie: Oh yes, they are.

@mx5geek: That's the idea behind microtransactions. When you look back on your little transactions through the console life, you will see a huge number at the end - if you're keeping track.

I hate the idea of microtransactions and I'm praying that Valve don't go that way. They make great games, it'd suck to have to pay extra to play the whole thing, especially when they give so much for free already!

I honestly don't mind microtransactions, as long as they don't give players an unfair advantage - however, I've not played a game where a developer has been stupid enough to do so.
I doubt Valve will make a mess of a microtransaction system if they choose to implement one at some stage, but it's hard not to be a tad cynical.

I cant stand this fat guy.

Look at PC gaming's hero Valve now, my friends. They're as much about making money as EA is, just less vocal about it.

Steam isn't the answer to all of PC problems, as much as people like to call it that whenever the word "piracy" is brought up (which is now several times a day on this site).

Micro-transactions have their place, it's just so many publishers/developers(?) try to slap that shit on everything they can. EA, for example, is like a really slow child repeatedly trying to shove a triangle block into a circular hole. Most figure out rather quickly it is not working and try one of the other options. Some just keep at it.

A bad example of this is charging for extra weapons in a multi-player game. A good example is horse armor. No I'm not kidding. Say what you will, but that's an example of micro-transactional content that helps customize the game-play experience, not change how it happens.

However I think micro-transactions are stupid. I don't mind paying for additional content but I'd rather it be something like Half-Life 2: Episode 1 or 2. Something meaty, that furthers the game experience and doesn't feel like it was intentionally left out with DLC in-mind. Oh wait...

Obviously Valve isn't concerned with microtransactions, they want the whole hog!

Valve wants to perpetually redistribute whichever edition of Half Life and readjust it to current market inflation so they dont lose a CENT.

Valve, please do not have micro-transactions on the PC. I do not want to suddenly fined myself faced with "Should I go with the Plate Armor Buggy or the Ebony armor buggy..."

Micro-Transactions....used to unlock the GOLDEN CROWBAR

Remember the days when Epic would release free Unreal Tournament packs with new characters and levels? And later, totally new vehicles and playmodes?

I miss the days when companies would reward you for buying a game rather than finding as many ways as possible to get more of your money.

@Ashground:
There were also more mods because modders could actually keep up with graphics without a budget of any sort. These days it's hard to invest time into doing something as impressive.

Those were the days.

(I thought Epic still releases packs free though.)

Actually Valve, DON'T keep doing what your doing with TF2. Unless it means instead of unlocking retarded achievements for imbalanced weapons I can instead pay 5 dolla.

GJ and MORE CRITS PLZ

While I'm not big on micro-transactions, I certainly wouldn't boycott Valve if they ever released a game that fit Doug Lombardi's vision of "a game that fits that". I would just not buy that game.

However, it's nice to see that we're so reactionary against the word "micro-transaction" these days that we fail to comprehend the rest of the sentence *rolls eyes*

Microtransacations are horrible, but didn't Valve already do them with Episode 2...

Im gonna loose all respect for Valve if they ever do something like that (-_-);

@Shad0X: "IF"?
They've done it already. Episodic content is just another way to screw us out of more money for only a fairly short game, running on an engine that has already been developed. Every Half-life episode was waaaay too short.

@Annex1: Oh, so you thought the Source engine would only last for a year and one game?

@RavenGT: Valve only used their variant of the quake2 engine for one game. Then made 3 expansions on it. So yeah, by the time HL3 comes out, they'll be using either a heavily modified source engine, or have made a new one.

@RavenGT: Obviously you missed the point of my statement. The point is, the engine has already been developed. The expensive portion of development has been taken care of. Further to the point, if Ford charged customers an additional fee, to help pay for the development of a 5 year old powertrain, would that be justifiable?

It's little more different than buying ANY game that came out on the deplorable Doom3 engine...

It sounds like Valve's philosophy is fundamentally different. Or at least they want us to think of it as fundamentally different. Wheras EA says "Here's a £40 game, now, would you like to pay for all the bells and whistles?" it sounds more like Valve says "Here's the start of this game. Like it? Want to pay £5 for the first quarter of it?"

It could be a very interesting system. I can think of dozens of games that I've only played half or less of for one reason or another (often I got too bored). If I could have paid half as much for them it'd have been amazing. I would never have bought those unused discs to Final Fantasy IX. I would have saved money in Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, by avoiding my old age and death.

Of course, if they do implement such a system, I'll probably still end up going "This demo is great! I'd like the full thing!" and plonk down all my payments at once.