When Valve released Team Fortress 2 as a free game it was obvious there would be an influx of new players. Just how many though couldn't have been predicted... Today, for the first time in years, Counter-Strike 1.6 has been knocked off the top spot as the most played title on Steam.

The revelation was reported on by PC Gamer after, in less than 24 hours, TF2 gained tens of thousands of new players to dethrone Counter-Strike. They also speculated that Valve may decide to make some more of their titles free to play following the success of the move, although that may be subject to scrutiny should the numbers dip after a short time.

PC Gamer said of the revelation:

Team Fortress 2 already had a big player-base before it went free-to-play, and it might have been fair to assume that everyone who wanted to play the game already owned it, especially given the incredibly low prices it’s been sold for in some of Valve’s Steam sales, and the regular free weekends that were thrown after every major update. In practice, removing the barrier of entry completely has had an impressive effect.

Does this mean Valve will be making more of their catalogue free? Speaking to Develop, Team Fortress 2 lead Robin Walker said “with just the data from a single product, it seems dangerous to assume that it would be true for all our products.”

“The data we got back from the Mann-conomy Update leads us to believe that TF2 would be more successful as a completely free product,” he said. “Either way, we’ll know a heck of a lot more in a couple of months, and that’s the kind of thing that gets us excited around the office.

What this will mean for the competitive community could be anyone's guess. A prevailing sense of doom and gloom had settled following the game failing to be picked up by bigger LAN events and a lack of interested sponsors for prize funds. With the title now being propelled to the most popular on Steam could this actually soon be subject to change?

Source: PC Gamer