Kotaku’s got a very interesting interview with the folks at Uber Entertainment and the folks at Valve on how exactly this crossover became a reality.

Here are some of the highlights:

It started with a lunchtime brainstorm by the guys who make Monday Night Combat: Maybe Valve would like to do a Team Fortress crossover? That began a process that required all of a 15-minute drive and a handshake.

No money changing hands, no strings attached.

“For us, it was like, ‘Really? That’s it?'” said Chandana Ekanayake, the art director for Uber Entertainment, a Seattle-area developer located just up the road from Valve. “It was a handshake agreement, completely free.”

Now that is how you do it, baby.

Valve makes a lot of money with several major brands, is a big player in games development and, through Steam, distribution. It’s still an indie company in both philosophy and design. “Their teams are tiny,” Ekanayake said. “On the Steam side of things, we dealt with just three people. It is very much indie in that sense. They respect the team, which is really cool.”

Once Valve agrees to the use, their symbols and characters are in the hands of another developer. But the discussions about Team Fortress 2 involved that team’s members, Ekanayake said, basically Walker and a few others. No brass hats or high-level meetings, just folks who could relate to one another as games creators.

That is really great to hear!

As for the rest of the interview, head over to Kotaku: http://kotaku.com/#!5746103/indie-games-character-exchanges-guaranteed-with-a-handshake