How Team Fortress 2 Will Be Ruined By Going Free-To-Play

Of all the groups that consume media, people who play video games are easily the most obnoxious, entitled, and dickish. When you think about it, this is probably a logical extension of the interactive nature of games. Other media is passive, but when you directly control some element of the end product it makes sense that you'd become more invested and therefore more likely to question the creator.

Players have proclaimed the ruination of Team Fortress 2 at every opportunity. First they hated the class updates. Then they claimed that hats killed the experience because, you see, there were hats in the game. Although the mechanics hadn't changed, the fact that people could randomly win or purchase hats meant that the entire game was crumbling. With all those hats, it was impossible to aim guns, run around levels, and shoot people. Team Fortress 2 had simply become a hat simulator.

Now that Team Fortress 2 has officially become the first good game to adapt a free-to-play model, it is COMPLETELY RUINED according to internet jerks. Here's why.

• With the sudden influx of new players, the game might become more popular than it had been in recent months. People who enjoyed the game as a quiet little cult favorite will now have to put up with all the riff raff as Team Fortress 2 sells out.
  
• If people don't have to pay to get in, how will they know the value of a perfectly placed meatspin.gif tag?
  
• More people means more hats. Hats totally ruin everything.
  
• "Um, excuse me but I bought this game and enjoyed it. If everyone else is getting it for free I demand a refund!"
• This is clearly a stunt to trick more people into installing Steam. Gaming as a whole will lose, as the Steam platform is terribly unfair to consumers and publishers, unlike EA's Origin, which offers download insurance at reasonable prices.
  
• With so many additional players waiting to get into servers, it will be harder to get away with switching away from a losing team without being kicked.
  
• New people can't play as well as experienced people. They should just go away so the community can become smaller and more impossible, rather than staying and becoming better like you did several years ago.
  
• What's next, free Left 4 Dead and Portal content? Ugh.
  
• There's only so much ammo in the Team Fortress universe. These new guys are going to hog it all, I just know it.
  
• If Valve has to focus on all the free players, what are the chances we'll ever get a "Meet The Control Point" video?
  
• The chances of us getting the long-rumored Play By Email option are now pretty much zilch.
  
• Giving the game away for free sounds nice, but what if the new people want computers to play the game on? Won't they expect those to be free too? I'm not giving them my money. Fuck you, Valve.
  

F.3.A.R.
Th3 g4m3 th4t 1 0842 012 1239213. 6/10

Dungeon Siege III
Somewhere, a guy that worked on the camera system for Neverwinter Nights 2 and this game is shaking his head disbelievingly as he cashes his latest check. 7/10

Alice: Madness Returns
A platforming game with no ledge-grabbing, an art-driven game with a style that isn't particularly impressive or creative - but I suppose it's not Bad Day L.A. 6/10

Trenched
I salute you (repeatedly, slowly, and in a somewhat rude manner) for creating a really fun mech game that makes tower defense fun with tons of customization, loot, and humor. 9/10

Green Lantern: Rise Of The Manhunters
As bad as a mediocre tie-in game is, this is worse because the protagonist is A SPACE MAN THAT CAN CREATE ANYTHING HIS SPACE BRAIN THINKS OF so therefore this should be the greatest game of all time. 4/10

Shadows Of The Damned
All the charm in the world, undercut by the lazy light/dark mechanic that turns every game it touches to tedium. 7/10

– Dennis "Corin Tucker's Stalker" Farrell (@DennisFarrell)