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Valve Switching Team Fortress 2 To Free-To-Play Increased Revenue Twelvefold
An anonymous reader writes "We've frequently discussed the growing trend among video game publishers to adopt a business model in which downloading and playing the game is free, but part of the gameplay is supported by microtransactions. There have been a number of success stories, such as Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online. During a talk at the Game Developers Conference this week, Valve's Joe Ludwig officially added Team Fortress 2 to that list, revealing that the game has seen a 12-fold increase in revenue since the switch. He said, 'The trouble is, when you're a AAA box game, the only people who can earn you new revenue are the people who haven't bought your game. This drives you to build new content to attract new people. There's a fundamental tension between building the game to satisfy existing players and attract new players.' He also explained how they tried to do right by their existing playerbase: 'We dealt with the pay-to-win concern in a few ways. The first was to make items involve tradeoffs, so there's no clear winner between two items. But by far the biggest thing we did to change this perception was to make all the items that change the game free. You can get them from item drops, or from the crafting system. It might be a little easier to buy them in the store, but you can get them without paying.'"
I only paid like $30 for the Orange Box when it came out. Valve has given me above and beyond my money's worth over the past 4+ years so I have no problem buying a key every so often to pay them back.
Call it freemium, call it widget frosting, call it whatever you want... giving the core item away and selling the addons has always worked in the gaming industry and this is just another victory for the concept.
I think the key to all of this for me, and why I like it over other similar models, is this statement:
"You can get them from item drops, or from the crafting system. It might be a little easier to buy them in the store, but you can get them without paying."
If you are lazy, you can pay. If you don't want to pay, you can work a little for it. Sounds good to me!
Yeah! All we got was four years of the best multilayer game on the planet! And what was that bullshit with it being bundled with Portal and Half Life 2: Episode 2? Who has even heard of those games!? Now people can get it for free? I'd have just waited if I'd known! RIP OFF RIP OFF RIP OFF! And what's with people discounting older games? They should have to refund the difference to me! It's not fair!!
prey's on the inability of many people to not only add the micro transactions together. but also disrupts how people gauge the 'value' of the product by infusing emotional attachments into the mix.
Screwing with our brain wiring is sort of how video games (or board games, for that matter) get us to buy them in the first place. There's nothing rational about buying a video game for $50 and then wasting tons of time playing it - it's a purely emotional experience. If running around smashing ogres is what gets your endorphins going, great. If buying Farmville charms does it, who is to say that emotional response is any worse?
Now's when people will start in with this-or-that study that shows that video games sharpen this-or-that skill, as if that's why they bought the game!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.