Valve’s Steam online store launches micro-transaction games

Valve’s Steam service dominates the market for downloadable games on the PC. So it’s a big victory for the free-to-play market that Valve is announcing its first micro-transaction games on the Steam service today.

The company is releasing five games on the Steam store today that use micro-transactions. That’s a big deal because it shows that free-to-play games (where gamers can play a game for free and then pay real money for virtual goods in small transactions) are becoming more and more mainstream in the video game industry.

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Daniel James, chief executive of Three Rings, an independent game developer in San Francisco, said his game Spiral Knights will debut in the Steam store with micro-transactions. That shows how far micro-transactions have come. In the past, micro-transactions were pioneered by Korean companies such as Nexon a decade ago to stop game piracy in Asia. It worked, but it also became a standard business model because users liked the fact that they could pay in smaller, measured amounts and try a game out before they spent money on it.

Other free-to-play games include Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free For All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valiant Arms. Overall, Steam has more than 1,500 games and 30 million active accounts worldwide. It is available for Mac and PC games.

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