Free to Play Model a Success

[Chris D]

Eurogamer is reporting from GDC that the switch to the Free to Play model for Team Fortress 2 has been "a resounding success".

Although Valve considered this move a massive risk, it has most certainly paid off with an increase in revenue twelve times higher than that of the monthly sales before the switch to the new model in June last year.

There are many other statistics in the article which certainly beg the question: If the switch to F2P was so successful for Team Fortress 2, would it work just as well for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2?

 

[ríomhaire]

League of Legends seems to be going pretty well with the FTP model but I wonder how good it is for competitive play (I literally have no idea about what the competitive scene in LoL is like so this is only going to be me using my own reason with no facts backing it up).

Competitive play demands a playing field that's as level as possible. Video games can give us that even more than real sports due to the field being artificial and Valve seem to be really pushing Dota 2 as an e-sport titles. Counter-Strike and Chess are timeless (CS has certainly held onto its player base a hell of a lot better than most games in any case) I think partly because everyone is on a clear and level playing field. All players have access to the same stuff (that would have been a given in any MP that came out at the same time as CS) at all times. No need to buy or unlock anything. That's kind of against the free to play model.

For free to play to work you still have to be able to sell something and unless that something is just character skins (which TF2 and LoL both do well in selling) you're now going to have players who haven't bought everything at a disadvantage. Even if what you can buy are sidegrades, which TF2 items attempt to be, rather than upgrades the person with the most options is still at a disadvantage. So it leaves me curious as to how you could adopt the in-game store model with Dota without ****ing up competitive gameplay. Would a store that is only cosmetics turn a profit? Will they have a system like LoL where you can earn heroes or spend money to unlock them faster? All these must be weighed carefully with how they can interfere with the e-sports idea Valve is trying to sell.

 

[JossiRossi]

F2P works best with properties with large established player bases. Team Fortress 2 was already one of the more popular multiplayer games out there. You already had this huge market. Even if only 1% of players spend 1 dollar once a month, well with a massive player base that "trickle" of cash adds up.

For any other game those willing to pay will likely stay about the same, as such if it is 1% with a fraction of the players comes a fraction of the income. I am reminded of when bands for a while did "Pay what you want" style sales. It boomed for a while because Radiohead did it. Problem is Radiohead was already massively popular, they had their own advertising system already in place thanks to the number of ears they had trained to them. Smaller bands, well it just wouldn't pan out. Not enough people care.

Basically, in order for F2P to work you really need to have the players first. So DOTA2 and CS:GO already have established players from the previous games, but it'd be a big gamble to start them off F2P. If the players aren't there, then you spent a whole lot of money on development to see little return if your game dies out.

We'll be seeing a whole lot of this in the coming years, as overly enthusiastic game developers attempt to emulate the success of TF2 and other F2P games.

 

[Ennui]

Dota 2 could really benefit from the F2P model - this much is evident from the insanely potent successes of League of Legends which is arguably the most profitable F2P game in the world - and I wouldn't be remotely surprised to see Valve take that route with Dota since the whole architecture of the game and its community lends itself quite handily to the F2P model.

On the other hand, I don't think F2P would work for CS:GO hardly at all. It's just not terribly compatible with the gameplay people expect from Counter-Strike. I'd be surprised and annoyed if Valve took the F2P route with Global Offensive purely because it wouldn't fit the game. CS is about competition, skill, and technique revolving around a very limited and well-defined set of rules and game mechanics - a fixed number of guns, maps, etc. There's not really much room for any kind of microtransaction model there. It would wreck the competitive gameplay to pay for items that affect gameplay (like weapons, grenades, equipment etc) and it would wreck the whole spirit and image of CS to have cosmetic options like hats or custom skins or whatever. Luckily I don't think Valve is remotely dumb enough to do something like make CS:GO a free to play game. I'd expect it to cost about $20 one time.

 

[xLostx]

League of Legends is pretty big, and the competitive scene is quite large as well now. IEM Hannover is going on right now, live matches will have 100,000+ viewers. Pro LoL players stream all the time and can have anywhere from a few hundred to 30,000 viewers. Great game, addicting but sadly lots of trolls.

 

[Quixoticism]

F2P works well in TF2 because you still get access to a complete game and the micro-transactions are all cosmetic based.

I really hate the kind of unlocking required to play LoL and now HoN. I really hope that Dota 2 goes different in this area even if it is F2P. A random pool or 15 heroes(or whatever it is) each week makes for horribly imbalanced games.
DotA was designed around having the choice of any hero and removing that would seriously hurt how the game is played.

For Dota 2 to be able to overtake LoL the F2P model would be the best option as it would be an open invitation for everyone to try out.
It could be hard to win over long time LoL players if they had to go through the same process of unlocking through play/pay when they already have access to their favorite options.