Steam trading cards drop more often if you spend more in free-to-play games
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Steam trading cards are currently in beta, and they’re really weird. An adjacent but separate system to achievements, they land silently in your Steam inventory as you play. Some are earned in-game, others through trading, and all can lead to rewards when you have a full set - Steam XP, emoticons, backgrounds, and occasional discounts.
Bar an arbitrary Friends list cap, our Tim found the new system to be fun and friendly. But that was before today’s addition to the Trading Cards FAQ, which reveals a direct correlation between cash spent in free-to-play games and cards earnt.
Hi-Rez
Studios, the developers of Tribes: Ascend, have announced what they’re
calling a “Single Purchase” option for their game. This one-time
purchase is a comprehensive package that unlocks all the weapons, perks
and classes already featured, but without including any of the cosmetic
extras.
There is a day in the year when young adult men form new and exciting long term relationships. With games. 
If games have taught me anything, it’s that when life hands you lemons, you make those lemons into free-to-play lemonade with extra delicious garnishes for paying customers. In this case, BioWare and Electronic Arts have finally taken Star Wars: The Old Republic from its subscription model to free-to-play.
Funcom's The Secret World has struggled since launch. Following poor sales the developer was forced to halve its studio staff, causing delays on updates (clearing up the mess left by halving a staff member, presumably) and internal reshuffles as people were promoted to fill empty positions. This hasn't convinced Funcom to follow the crowd and drop the game's subscription model.
Gotham City Imposters was no TF2-killer, but it marked the first time developer Monolith had removed the po- from their face for many years and it was a real shame to see its maps emptying so soon. From today, it's fighting its way back into your affections.
This to that eternal tune of Cole Porter’s: Everquest had ‘em, The Elder Scrolls Online will have ‘em; educated fleas probably live in ‘em. Let’s have it - let’s introduce cat people into our struggling MMO.
Free-to-play, not pay-to-win! That’s what the placards would read, if gamer protests were something that happened on the streets of London rather than the alleyways of Reddit. SOE president John Smedley agrees, and cites League of Legends as the payment model standard to beat for his studio’s Planetside 2.
EA’s recent investor call is a lesson in business expectation management. Before the call, EA announced the shift to a free-to-play business model. In the call, Frank Gibeau, the President of EA Labels, explained that the game and team would “pivot and provide a two-tiered pricing plan, which will make the game more accessible and grow the audience.” But later, Frank admitted that the new plan wouldn’t necessarily bring in more cash. 
Wheeeeeeeee...... Here's some good news. Tribes: Ascend, Hi-Rez's exceptionally fast rethink of the original Tribes game, is now available on Steam. 
Form up on the starting grid: F1 Online, the free-to-play browser-based F1 management sim, is now live. Build your own F1 team up, manage all the behind the scenes car fiddling, and then hop on the track and prove that you can be the next McLaren or Williams. 
