LambdaGeneration Community Join our new Community Platform — Share Half-Life news and community content. Built by fans, for fans.
We Are The Lambda Generation. LambdaGeneration is a website dedicated to the video game Half-Life. ( We're basically really passionate about crowbars, headcrabs and anyone who has goatee with a PhD in theoretical physics… )

Tagged:

'economy'

Articles tagged with 'economy'

Valve’s Economist Is Now The Financial Minister of Greece

Valve

Anyone remember that economist Valve hired back in 2012?

Yanis Varoufakis was always a big name in international economics, with a number of successful books and a popular blog on the subject, but he first appeared under the gaming communities’ radar when he became Valve’s own economist-in-residence, acting as a private consultant for the company.

Well, Varoufakis was recently elected the new Financial Minister of Greece.

What Makes a Free-to-Play Game Successful?

Gaming Industry

This is an editorial by Aabicus which analyses the successfulness of free-to-play games in the gaming industry with relation to Team Fortress 2. All views expressed here are his own.

The Free-to-play model is the current trend in multiplayer online games at the moment, most frequently seen in MMOs, MOBAs and shooters. Since several high-profile games (including Team Fortress 2) proved the model worked, the gaming industry have seen a staggering amount of F2P releases, some of whom keep their revenue-enhancing devices subtle and others who make real-world money the most valuable resource a player can have.

Steam’s New Community Market Beta Goes Live, Lets Players Buy And Sell In-Game Items Using Steam Wallet Funds

Steam

Though we may take it for granted these days, Steam Trading might just represent one of the most significant innovations in the field of in-game community interaction in recent years. Trading games, coupons, and items, all within the Steam community. The Team Fortress 2 economy alone was estimated last year to be worth 20 million dollars – and that was a very conservative estimate, made only 6 months after the game had become free-to-play.

And a lot of people have made some a lot of money by buying and selling these in-game items. But since so much of that activity takes place outside the Steam ecosystem (in the so-called gray market), it could be quite difficult to track what’s going on in the marketplace at large. But it seems as though Valve have found a way to remedy that problem in a pretty unique way. Read on!