Current Events > Is pay to talk a common thing in games now?

(+) Yeah! (+)

In TF2 they have pay to talk. As in you have to make a purchase to graduate from free-to-play to regular player and only then are you permitted the use of the in-game chat.
They say it's an anti-bot measure, because the bots used to spam chat.
It's also turned what was more like a flock of excitable noobs into a legion of weird mutes incapable of asking for advice within the game.

Do other games do this or is TF2 uniquely skilled at disappointing its players?

If it were an anti-bot measure, then they should be able to authenticate you using email, text, etc.

You'd think, but here we are.
A few years into the pay to talk era of TF2.