Valve recently made their multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 free-to-play. In a new interview, Valve's Robin Walker assured gamers that the game really is free and this isn't some sort of elaborate money-trap.

"Subscriptions aren't something we've really spent any time thinking about. With existing customers being one of the primary sources of value for new players, we'd like as few barriers to them sticking around as possible," Walker told Develop. He also shot down the possibility of in-game advertising.

Valve intends to have the game supported entirely with microtransactions. Players can buy game items at a Mann Co. Store using real world money. Walker says that they've been "toying with the idea" of F2P ever since the store was added months back.

"Over the years we've done a bunch of price experimentations with the game, going all the way down to $2.49 in our random one-hour Halloween sales," said Walker. "The more we've experimented, the more we've learned there are fundamentally different kinds of customers, each with their own way of valuing the product. Now that we're shipping it, it feels like a fairly straightforward next step along the "Games as Services" path we've been walking down for a while now."

Team Fortress 2, if you're unaware, is a team-based shooter first released in 2007. Players choose from different classes, such as Spy or Engineer, and use their unique abilities to help achieve objectives. You can download the game for the PC or Mac through Steam.