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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.'"
Congratulations guys ;-)
crazy dynamite monkey
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 know this is trying to be a troll but he is correct. the fremium model 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.
I was going to disagree with you, but then I realized Farmfille is the most popular "freemium" game ever and I was forced to change my mind.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I think keeping 'Pay to win' concerns at the forefront is the key. Nothing turns me off of a game faster than that. At least, when the game is one where I'm competing against other people online. When it's a single-player game, the idea that you have to pay in order to win really irritates me, but if it merely takes a fair amount more skill to win if you don't pay, then it's sort of OK.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
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!
Those who bought the games all won a very awesome, useless bagde!!
We already knew that Linux can be a profit area for business, even though it's "Free". Now we see that same thing working in Gaming.
It requires some new methodology, and business modelling of course. But it works!
I'm always glad to see success stories. This a great example. Steam in my opinion has done a great job creating a platform. TF2 plugging in and taking advantage, very smart!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
A common truism you learn in business school is that it's usually easier (and less costly) to sell more to your existing customer than to try to get new customers...
If every new dollar you earn is less costly, you have more operating margin which you can then use to feed back into your business and make it grow faster. Thus cross-selling and up-selling techniques are really just no brainers that nearly everyone uses. Works in almost any business (including the gaming industry).
You got to play the game a lot earlier.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Also the ability to play the game up to 4 years prior to the f2p people. And the ability to actually trade items and get vanity stuff (if thats your thing)
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!!
Switching to "freemium" now may have increased revenue now. That doesn't necessarily mean it would have been a good idea to release as freemium in the first place. Valve had 4 years to convince people to pay up-front for TF2, and they succeeded quite well! But after four years, you've just about exhausted the supply of people that are willing to pay up-front. Switching to freemium not only brings in new customers, it also convinces some of the original buyers to pay again for in-game items. Now that's smart.
IMO they struck the right balance, too: TF2 is still fun without paying anything (or in my case, any more than I paid for the Orange Box.) If you had to "pay to win", people might be pretty pissed off.
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.
Valve's freemium model is different. The paid content doesn't give you a huge advantage over the free content. Most of the addons are cosmetic and the weapons are balanced or worse than the stock weapons. You're still a competitive player with the free version of TF2, and if you play for a reasonable amount of time the paid content drops randomly anyway. Even if you wanted to sink a bunch of cash into TF2 to be better than everyone else, you can't. I mean, even the paid items can't be crafted.
no the humble indie bundles are 'pay what you want' the fremium model is called fremium because it's nicer then the actual description. 'pay to win'. the fremium model is designed to give those who don't pay a lesser experience then those who willingly ignore simple addition and pay for a weapon here(10 dollars), a perk there (12 dollars), double experience(10 dollars), unlocking classes(15 dollars), etc.
any way, anyone who DOES pay only ONE cent on a 'pay what you want' IS ripping them off. since they are giving you full, unhindered my any sort of these rip off schemes, games. on the good faith you give them a good amount of money. I pay more then the average for linux which in it's self almost always almost double what window's users pay.
Please people stop buying stupid hats and stuff for TF2. Every single time you dump money on that game it's less incentive for valve to spend money on other, one time cash cow, games like HL3 or HL2:EP3.
Why should they spend massive resources making a game people only buy once when they can get idiots spending real money on digital hats from now until valve runs out of pixels.
Most (all?) new items these days are community submitted, and the majority of those are cosmetic items. In other words, it's easy money for Valve because they don't even do most of the work.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
So different people value different items in game differently, ergo the system is broken? Certainly there's a psychological factor involved with many small purchases vs 1 large purchase, but suggesting that people need to value a game purchase the same as many micro-transactions is ludicrous. Sounds like old-man syndrome.
If a game is pay to win, it'll eventually lose it's customer base. You may have noticed that TF2 is explicitly trying not to be pay-to-win. I'm not a user, so I don't know, but at least they are trying. And eventually a functioning model where game designers are encouraged to improve the game while gamers can't just "pay to win" will develop.
The paid content doesn't give you a huge advantage over the free content.
So it gives you a minor advantage over the free content?
Is that actually "good" or just "better than worst case"?
My problem with freemium even when done "right" or whatever you want to call it is still is unacceptable to me at a fundamental level:
I -do- not want to be confronted with real life purchasing decisions every few minutes while playing games. Period. I don't want to be dropped into a "store" everytime I die. I don't want to be prompted to buy something everytime I start up, and every time I quit, and every time a new level loads.
I don't want to asked to evaluate whether or not some two dozen different micro-items is worth $X to me.
I don't want any of it. I don't want to subject my kids to it either.
That saod, I don't mind expansion packs. 20 new tracks and 5 new cars for $10 bucks or whatever is perfectly fine. But don't advertise it in the game so that I have to explicitly decline buying it every time I play... and don't break it up into micro-transactions... $1 per track, 1$ per car... I don't want to excert the mental process of deciding is this car worth a buck, is this car worth a buck, is this car worth a buck to me... I just don't.
And don't have me competing with people in the expansion pack cars if they are anything more than just skins.
Remember even "Situationally better" is still better if you get any control over the situation, which of course, unless you are an idiot... you always do.
One of the major themes in alternate weapon in TF2 that they aren't necessarily better than the weapons they replace.
There are two weapons in the entire game that have clear upgrades. Those are the Medic's Bonesaw and the Soldier's Shovel.
I'll use the Soldier's Rocket Launchers as an example of weapons that are sidegrades. The rocket launchers are:
Rocket Launcher - 4 Rockets per clip. 20 rockets total. Rockets shoot slowly. Rockets have a good amount of splash area.
Direct Hit - 4 Rockets per clip. 20 rockets total. Rockets shoot quickly. Rockets do 20% higher damage. Rockets mini-crit airborne enemies. Rockets have 70% smaller splash area.
Black Box - 3 Rockets per clip. 20 rockets total, rockets shoot slowly. Rrockets have a good amount of splash area. Player gains 15 health per person hit.
The Liberty Launcher - 3 Rockets per clip. 20 rockets total. Rockets shoot quickly. Rockets have a good amount of splash area.
The Original - Identical to Rocket Launcher, but fires from the center instead of from the right.
Cow Mangler 5000 - 5 Rockets per clip. Unlimited ammo. Slower reload time. Rockets shoot slowly. Rockets have a good amount of splash area. Can not do critical hits. When your clip is full, right-click to shoot a charge shot (takes 3 seconds to fire, during which you move at 1/4 speed) which does mini-crits and sets enemies in its splash range on fire... but uses the entire clip of 5 rockets. All shots do 80% less damage versus buildings, but a charged shot disables buildings for 4 seconds.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
fremium model prey's on the inability of many people to not only add the micro transactions together
#idonthavefactstobackthisup, but when fremium games generate more profit, it's not because the same people end up paying more. It's because more people end up paying a bit. So, instead of me having to make large-ish (let's say 50 euros) investment on a game and hope that it's good, I can get a game for free or for a nominal fee (a couple of euros), play a while and if I like the game, occasionally buy something nice.
There are many advantages here: I get to personalize my games (if I visit a friend with same games that I have and try some of them out, I'll have a whole another experience!), I don't ever waste money on stuff I end up not liking, the publisher gets constant feedback on what kind of content the gamers are into and can provide new stuff based on that and most importantly... the very low cost of initial investment is wonderful. I have a large-ish group of friends and friend-of-friends that like to play together and not nearly everyone in the group is in a relatively well-paying job like the one I have. Yet, because of the this model, we can get into a new game every other week or so.
So... yeah. I really love the microtransaction model though I'm pretty confident that I can perform simple addition.
If a game is pay to win, it'll eventually lose it's customer base. You may have noticed that TF2 is explicitly trying not to be pay-to-win. I'm not a user, so I don't know, but at least they are trying. And eventually a functioning model where game designers are encouraged to improve the game while gamers can't just "pay to win" will develop.
TF2 is absolutely pay to win.
The goal of the game is to collect all the hats and useless crap.
I hop on TF2 every once in a while only to find that no one is actually playing TF2. Control points? Intelligence briefcase? The cart? Nope. No one gives a shit about those things. They only care about farming shit and running around like retards.
You're forgetting the fact that without a player base, a game dies. Particularly multiplayer, which is all that TF2 is. By introducing it as F2P, Valve probably quadrupled the player base overnight. Not only that, but they introduced them in to a game with hundreds of bugfixes, content updates and major graphical overhauls. All of which had already been paid for. Even while most of those freepers will never buy anything in the store, they provide the much needed player base for those who are spending money in game to play with. They're mainly playing on third party servers, so by opening up the game to anyone, they've increased the game's perceived value at no additional cost to valve or the end user, while allowing the game's popularity to flourish.
moox. for a new generation.
There is no paid content in tf2 that can't be obtained through other means, either by trading, crafting, or simply having the item "drop" like an mmo (it just appears between lives while playing, you usually get 10 a week or so if you play a lot). The most expensive content is vanity items, hats or other facial accessories, but those can be obtained via the above methods as well. Several of the earlier ones are available through achievements as well. Most of the strongest items for all classes are the original weapons (or ones available via achievements) - new stuff tend to be sidegrades or gimmicks (but still relatively easy to obtain if you are actually interested in them).
The paid content doesn't give you a huge advantage over the free content.
So it gives you a minor advantage over the free content?
We're talking about TF2 still, right?
The thing about "paid content" in TF2 is that you can get any of the non-cosmetic items over time, as you get 6-8 random weapons per week. There are also 27 weapons (3 per class) that can be unlocked through achievements. Weapons can also be crafted, but I'll be honest: It's better to wait for a random drop, because 6-8 items a week makes it take a long time to craft even one weapon, let alone multiple.
The major problem with f2p accounts is that there are restrictions on them until you buy your first item from the store. In USD, the cheapest item is $0.49, but Valve has a minimum of $5 for adding funds to your Steam wallet... however, you can use the remaining $4.51 towards anything on Steam, including games.
My problem with freemium even when done "right" or whatever you want to call it is still is unacceptable to me at a fundamental level:
I -do- not want to be confronted with real life purchasing decisions every few minutes while playing games. Period. I don't want to be dropped into a "store" everytime I die. I don't want to be prompted to buy something everytime I start up, and every time I quit, and every time a new level loads.
I've never had a TF2 free account, but from my understanding is that it bugs you once when you start the game with one of the game's characters having a text bubble mentioning it on the main menu. This is the only time the store is mentioned. other than having a button on the main menu for it. This text doesn't appear if you've ever bought anything from the store or bought TF2 itself from a store (or bought the Orange Box from a store or through Steam).
That saod, I don't mind expansion packs. 20 new tracks and 5 new cars for $10 bucks or whatever is perfectly fine. But don't advertise it in the game so that I have to explicitly decline buying it every time I play... and don't break it up into micro-transactions... $1 per track, 1$ per car... I don't want to excert the mental process of deciding is this car worth a buck, is this car worth a buck, is this car worth a buck to me... I just don't.
When TF2 has new weaponry come out, they sell them as sets along with related cosmetic items, if you really want to pay for them. The catch is that they're ridiculously overpriced... and usually they're added to the drop system at the same time they come out. So, unless you really want the cosmetic items, there's little point in buying them.
And don't have me competing with people in the expansion pack cars if they are anything more than just skins.
Remember even "Situationally better" is still better if you get any control over the situation, which of course, unless you are an idiot... you always do.
I believe I've already addressed this point.
But more to the point, the way items are balanced in TF2, a lot of the times they're different rather than strictly better. One of the more controversial items from the Christmas 2011 update was the Spy-cicle.
The Spy-cicle is a melee weapon for the Spy... all Spy melee weapons do instant-kill backstabs. Note: Spies can disguise as enemy players, which becomes important in the description below.
The Spy-cicle prevents the usual death screams from players, but instead makes a freezing sound and leaves an ice statue behind instead of a corpse. It can also be used to prevent fire damage (and makes the extinguishing sound when this happens) for 2 seconds at the expense of the Spy losing the Spy-cicle for 15 seconds.
The thing is that its upsides and downsides are tied together. Sure, I can prevent fire at the expense of being able to instant-kill b
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Since the subject came up, I'm going to mention that EverQuest is going to launch their Free-to-Play program in about a week. (the original, EQ2 has been F2P for a while now) info is at http://www.everquest.com/free/ (also a new fresh server starting.)
I don't work for Sony, I just like (and play) EQ. In fact I work for a competitor.
I'm not a fan of the F2P model, I plan to keep my regular sub; but an MMO needs fresh blood to stay healthy, and I'm hoping this will boost the userbase.
Maybe you are choosing the wrong server. Some server descriptions include words like "achievements server" or "trading server". I don't use them expecting hard out action, I choose other servers. There is most certainly a lot of full on action going on, and play to win usually means support your team to make it win.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
That makes me wonder what the reaction of the last person who ever bought TF2 on Steam was when it went F2P....probably something like "WHAT THE FUCK? A $20 HAT?".
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
Yeah.
Hats don't help you win.
What you describe isn't a competitive game but a social one -- collecting meaningless bits of fluff that look neat but serve no purpose.
Pay to win implies that forking over money gives you an advantage over players who haven't. Hats confer no such advantage. You just mad.. for some reason I can't even begin to understand.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
I play TF2 quite a bit. Nothing that can actually give you an advantage is buy-only. This includes someone else buying something, and you trading for it. You can get every game-changing item without paying a cent. I bought the game, so I have never had a free-only account, but it's my understanding that you need to have a premium account to trade, which means you have to spend at least 50 cents on a item. Once you've done that, however, you can basically get any game-changing item you want. Things randomly drop while you are playing, but there are 9 classes. Trade any two weapons, and you can get any one weapon you want, generally. It is VERY easy to become competitively equipped with one class, and only takes a month or so of playing to become competitively equipped for all classes you would likely play regularly. TF2 is without a doubt the model of Free-to-Play gaming, from a business perspective. I have bought a few keys, but the impact has been nothing but cosmetic.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Yeah! All we got was four years of the best multilayer game on the planet!
That's weird, I never received my free copy of Starsiege: TRIBES when I bought the Orange Box.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
That's why I'm only "mildly" annoyed; that and how these days I only tend to play the game when a friend pulls me into it anyways. Mild like the "spicy" food the local Asian restaurants serve white people.
WTF? just use the stock weapons. The new weapons are just more interesting to play with. hacking a guys head off with a sword for example...cool and intimidating....but you can only run in a straight line so all the victim needs to do is step to the left or right and shoot you.
You seem to be implying that art is rational and objective. Art is neither, it is emotional. Video games most certainly ARE art, and just as purchasing art is most certainly NOT a rational activity, neither is purchasing video games. That doesn't make spending money on either foolish or bad, rationality is not a measure of morality or other subjective values.
Most people, whatever they believe, are hugely in favor of engaging in some degree of irrationality. Anything you do that does not directly improve your material condition on strictly survival and evolutionary measures is, ultimately, irrational... which ironically includes a dogged commitment to doing only those things which are most obviously rational, as doing so would almost certainly lead to social isolation and associated difficulty with both survival and reproduction.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
There are two free-to-play models that I've seen
Pay to Win and
Pay for Time
Pay to Win involves payment-only items that give a distinct advantage over other players. Games like APB contain Pay-To-Win models. Sure, these Pay-to-win items in the hands of an idiot will not confer any advantage over a skilled player with base weapons, but pay-for-exclusive weapons with unique properties (in the case of APB, silencers) scream Pay-to-win. I'm told there are some MMOs that follow this route, but I don't know which ones they are. World of Tanks I think got brought up but I don't even know if that's actually an MMO.
Pay for Time involves paying for items that you could otherwise get if you played the game for longer, and give no advantage other than you play the game for less amounts of time. In a game like LoL most things (i believe) are open to everyone with enough XP, but XP is so much of a dribble for non-paying customers that the incentive is there to speed that process up with a bit of cash. Same goes for the in-beta Tribes Ascend and, ofcourse, Team Fortress 2. Lord of the Rings Online has this model (sort of) on top of a pay-for-content model (buying questing areas) which can be bought using in-game points (that you can earn X per day, or suppliment with cash) but good luck buying it that way. You'll need to grind for weeks just to get it for free.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Yeah.
Hats don't help you win.
What you describe isn't a competitive game but a social one -- collecting meaningless bits of fluff that look neat but serve no purpose.
Pay to win implies that forking over money gives you an advantage over players who haven't. Hats confer no such advantage. You just mad.. for some reason I can't even begin to understand.
When the game is about collecting pointless shit, then paying to get that pointless shit instantly is paying to win.
The game has been about collecting pointless shit for about 2 years now. No one actually plays the game.