Team Fortress 2 TF2 is a teambased multiplayer firstperson shooter video game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It is the sequel to the 1996 mod Team. As you play rites, the members of your team level up. You can arm them with better items called Talismans and help them learn new abilities called Masteries. Becoming a Senior happens just once. Its the culmination of 13 years of education and should be celebrated to the fullest extent. I am so lucky to not only help you. An online cooperative HalfLife modification where players fight against AI controlled enemies. There arent too many games on Steam. The more the merrier Image by Crude. Cuttlefish. Since the time Valve began publicly tracking hours played in July 2. Ezbdc.png' alt='Team Fortress 2 Non Steam Play Without' title='Team Fortress 2 Non Steam Play Without' />Ive launched 3. Steam. Today, Steam adds at least that many games each month and a half5. Theres no question that Steam is saturated. Steam grew by 5. 61 games in 2. Play-Team-Fortress-2-Step-3.jpg/aid222966-v4-728px-Play-Team-Fortress-2-Step-3.jpg' alt='Team Fortress 2 Non Steam Play Without' title='Team Fortress 2 Non Steam Play Without' />Seven months into 2. Steam. But is that truly a problem Steams library is growing at the fastest rate in its 1. PC games full time will never dig more than a spoon into Steams mountain range of more than 5,6. Its certainly tempting, even natural, to label that as a problem. Last year, there was a wave of concern following a Gamasutra post that visualized the volume of new games hitting Steam. Kotaku wrote that the trend was hurting developers and gamers. Spiderweb Softwares Jeff Vogel told of the imminent burst of the indie bubble, and others jumped up from their chairs to agree there are too many games on Steam. Seven months into 2. Steam. Those who point at the perpetual logjam of new releases feel that Valve has abandoned any semblance of quality control. They fear that Steam will become like the App Store, known more for what it rejects than what it showcases. And they have a point who wants lazy mobile game ports, halfheartedly erotic pinball, soccer fighting games, something called Space. Corn, or Gynophobia, a horror shooter about abnormal fear of women, on SteamThe latest PC gaming hardware news, plus expert, trustworthy and unbiased buying guides. How can deserving, independent gems to stand out in an ecosystem filled with junk And when games do break through, how can developers retain interest long enough to build a healthy community The most irrationally paranoid thought is that were inching toward the PC gaming equivalent of the video game crash of 8. Consider this prescient quote from 1. Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendos president Atari collapsed because they gave too much freedom to third party developers and the market was swamped with rubbish games. How small studios feel about Steam. Whatever your reaction to this trend, the people whose lives are most braided to it are independent developers and publishers. And when I reached out to them to talk about Steam, I was surprised that the majority of them are unfazed by how crowded Valves platform has become. To Swen Vincke, CEO at Larian Studios, todays Steam is simply a return to the way things were before digital distribution, but not in a bad way. Access to retail used to determine which games we got to play, something that hampered the evolution of videogames, says Vincke, who believes digital distribution has created a true renaissance in the industry. Abbie Cat Hot more. However, the quantity of games being released now means that the new barrier to entry has become discoverability, and as a developer you need to plan from day one how your target audience will find out about your game, and ensure that your game has more reasons to be played by players than a similar game your competitor may be making. Which, if you think about it, is exactly how its always been. There are just more competitors now, so theres no room for slacking. Thats a good thing, too, in my opinion. Paradox Interactive has grown in parallel with Steam over the past several years. Theyve become a more diverse publisher in that time, having a hand in Pillars of Eternity this year as well as Cities Skylines and stuff like Magicka. Train spotters 2 trains, train spotting and the meaning of life. Everyone is invited The Steam discussions are for everyone, new and advanced user alike Searching is key Before you post a question, use the forum search feature. Despite this, youd expect Paradox to be exactly the sort of entity thats sensitive to a crowded market. Games like Crusader Kings and Europa Universalisheritage franchises for Paradoxrely on word of mouth, on player anecdotes, to spread their reputations, capture attention, and grow. Rocket League and ARK Survival Evolved are recent hits on Steam. But Susana Meza Graham, COO at Paradox, mostly shrugs off Steams open doors policy. Yes, on any given day, there are a lot of games being released. And of course visibility is a challenge for developers, just like navigating the content is a challenge for consumers, says Meza Graham. But the challenge of visibility has always been there for us in one way or another. During the years of retail the survival of your business depended on your ability to get shelf space. And shelf space was dictated based on pedigree and previous releases, your marketing budgets and your ability to commit to a release date six months to one year in advance. Like Vincke, Meza Graham sees Steam as more of a blessing than a burden to discoverability. Digital distribution, she says, has completely changed how games are developed and brought to market overall, mainly because the people playing the games are much closer to the process from start to finish, and games are developed and supported over a longer period of time after release. That, more than the volume of games releasing, has impacted the way we work with our projects. Room for everyone. The smaller studios I spoke to mostly echoed these sentiments sure, Steam is crowded, but that doesnt mean PC gaming will become a zero sum, winner take all marketplace. We definitely feel a lot of pressure but we also fundamentally trust the PC audience, says Paul Kilduff Taylor from Mode 7, who released Frozen Cortex in February. Theres a big group of gamers who want novel but intelligent games with a lot of depth and thats what we aspire to make well continue trying to do that at whatever scale is viable in the future because its what we love doing. I also spoke with Greg Kasavin, a veteran of the industry who made the transition to game development after working at Game. Spot for 1. 0 years. Im happy that we live in a time when games are more accessible than at any point in the past, both for audiences and for creators, says Kasavin. For creators this state brings some new challenges of having to gain visibility in an increasingly crowded market, but that set of problems I think is far, far preferable to the alternative where only a handful of people in the world are able to develop and publish games. Kasavin says that Supergiant Games approach to making games hasnt changed. I think weve seen similar growth and challenges in other media industries, and in the end I think its whats best for the medium, even if its inconvenient for some individual content creators who might personally benefit more if they didnt have as much competition. We have to differentiate ourselves in a way that hopefully doesnt derail our process but still makes us visible and provides value to fans. Daniel Jacobsen, studio director of Gaslamp Games Clockwork Empires, Dungeons of Dredmor mostly agrees with his peers, but believes that business awareness has greater value today than it did in the past. Theres more emphasis on PR and advertising across most non AAA studios, says Jacobsen. The major change for us is that now we cant just have a game that people want to play. For the best chance at success we have to be a game company that people want to support which is making games that people want to play. We have to differentiate ourselves in a way that hopefully doesnt derail our process but still makes us visible and provides value to fans. Of the feedback I received from developers, Dave Marsh, co founder of Zojoi, expressed the most concern. As an indie studio, were big fans of giving any developer the chance to publish their games in the largest marketplace on the web, says Marsh.