Valve opened up its digital distribution portal Steam to in-game transactions through the Steam Wallet last September. Following that move, it seemed only natural that the Half-Life creator would bring free-to-play, microtransaction-supported titles to Steam, making this week's announcement that Valve would be doing just that no big surprise.

DOTA 2 would be Valve's obvious choice to make free to play.

As the next logical progression, Valve appears to be prepping a free-to-play title of its own. Barre De Vie reports this week that Valve has plans to create a microtransaction-based title. According to the French-language gaming site, Valve's marketing head, Doug Lombardi, reportedly offered a perfunctory "yes" when asked about whether the studio was developing its own project using the business model.

Lombardi reportedly offered no additional information on the mystery title. Valve had not responded to GameSpot's request for comment as of press time.

Though the title could be an unannounced project, one other possible candidate could be DOTA 2. Due for release this year, the game is a sequel to the Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients, which melded the action genre with tower defense gameplay mechanics. A similar project from the original DOTA team, Riot Games' League of Legends, adopted the free-to-play business model upon its release in 2009.