Valve, creators of bestselling game franchises (such as Half-Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead, and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), announced today that after four years and over 200 updates, its popular and critically-acclaimed online action game Team Fortress 2 (TF2) is now Free To Play (F2P).

The F2P announcement comes as part of the "Uber Update". Released today, it is the largest content pack delivered to TF2 since it shipped in 2007.

New players interested in experiencing what PC Gamer calls "the most fun you can have online" will have access to training and offline practice modes, so they can hone their skills before jumping into the ever-expanding TF2 universe.

To celebrate the launch of the Uber Update, Valve has released "Meet the Medic," the latest in its series of TF2 animated shorts. TF2 is now Free to Play for PC & Mac players via Steam.

How will Team Fortress 2 be monetised? Just through microtransactions or in-game ads and other routes?

Right now we’re only planning on using the items you can purchase from the in-game store.

?Is there a concern that you've let the genie out of the bottle? A triple-A high-quality game for free will change expectations on what you charge for other games, will it not?

We’re always improving on the relationship we have with our customers, and we’re willing to run experiments if we think it will help us learn how to do that better.

Is the free-to-play move motivated as much by a desire to get people to try the game as it is monetary?

Sure. It's a belief of ours that in multiplayer games it's generally true that the more people playing the game, the higher value the game has for each individual customer.

The more players, the more available servers in your area, the wider variety of other players you'll find, the greater the opportunity for new experiences, and so on.

Another way we think of it is that there are a class of players who will never pay us a dime, for a variety of reasons. We're not upset by that, it's just a constraint we need to design around. The interesting problem to solve is how to make those freeloaders produce value for our paying customers. Obviously, getting those free players into the game is the first step to doing that.