Several companies recently added “completely optional” microtransactions to what were paid games before. I’m talking about Payday 2 and Killing Floor 2.

Users left a lot of angry reviews for Payday 2 on Steam

Communities of both games didn’t like introduction of additional payments for an obvious reason — they consider it to be “bait-and-switch” tactics. Both Overkill and Tripwire, the developers of respective games, failed to warn players about microtransactions beforehand.

But let’s skip community management for a moment and talk about why some games are going with this business model instead of classic “buy-to-play” or more recent “free-to-play”. Why “pay-to-pay”?

Why not just go free-to-play?

As a business model free-to-play solves several big problems, but this solution, pardon the pun, isn’t free.

Free-to-play allows the developers to ease gamers into the game. It is really important for some audiences — so-called “casual” gamers, people with low income, or people from countries where free-to-play was the default business model for games for over a decade.

You don’t want to charge someone upfront for your Candy Crush Saga, because the person in question probably isn’t a seasoned gamer and doesn’t want to give up her money upfront for something she might not like.

But the limiting factor for most “core” games in Western markets isn’t the price of admission, it’s the gameplay. You have to be a really dedicated player to enjoy most of the modern FPS games. The pool of players willing to spend hours per day shooting other people in the face is relatively small and isn’t growing fast enough to cope with the growing number of games.

Of course it’s different in the East — Russian and Chinese FPS players are more cautious about paid games, especially when they have an access to a number of good alternatives for free.

User acquisition is getting more expensive

From a business perspective free-to-play has an additional problem for the developers. User acquisition isn’t free, marketing isn’t free, ads aren’t free. Yes, you’re removing a barrier of entry, but the user still has to learn about your game somehow, and if you’re not making enough money, you won’t be able to compete for his attention with Geico, Ford and McDonalds, not to mention other games.

Some games managed to succeed with free-to-play model despite being core products, because they went viral. Take a look at League of Legends — it’s hardcore, it’s free-to-play and they don’t spend much on user acquisition.

But League of Legends is an outlier — it was one of the first f2p games in the West and now the market has changed. You just can’t plan on going viral. You can hope, sure, but it’s not a reliable strategy to pursue.

The good thing about Western market is that once you get people convinced that your game is worth their time, they will readily pay money upfront. Core gamers are used to paying for games, so it makes sense to at least try and sell the game to your most involved audience.

While free-to-play games also often offer to buy a game upfront (“Starter packs”, “Founder bundles”) they nevertheless allow you to get the game for free. Maybe later, so you won’t get into the beta, but still it’s always an option that is clearly communicated to gamers. That’s why you rarely see people complaining about free-to-play games with pre-orders.

Running a service costs money

Multiplayer games are not ship-and-forget boxed products, they are services. Supporting a free-to-play game with new content and features usually costs way more than developing it. While it’s not necessarily true for paid games, it still costs money.

Selling the base game to new users to continue support for existing users isn’t a viable business. It’s a Ponzi scheme. It’s unsustainable.

A typical question at bizdev meeting

So we’re left with two options: selling content or going full free-to-play with hats, boxes, locks, energy and gacha.

Selling content sounds good in theory (it’s exactly like selling the game), but it has several drawbacks.

It might lead to user base fragmentation as any Battlefield player can confirm. You’ve got a season pass, but your friends didn’t bother, so you’re either stuck playing on the same old map or with a bunch of strangers shouting profanities in German.

Gamers are also consuming content faster than you can possibly produce it. Even if you’re Riot and have over three thousand developers on a payroll.

Just to be clear. Season passes and DLCs aren’t free-to-play mechanics creeping into traditional “buy-to-play” business model. It’s still “buy-to-play” only with a hidden surcharge, because companies don’t want to scare people off by asking $90 for a game upfront.

But players hate microtransactions!

No, they don’t.

Players hate bait and switch. Players hate when they’re lied to, when they’re deceived, when the product they’ve paid for is gone and is replaced with something else.

That’s why free-to-play originally got a lot of hate — because the term itself is deceiving. Free-to-play games aren’t 100% free as in a beer, they’re only free to some extent. We just got used to it by now.

BTW, in Russia free-to-play games are not usually called “free”, they’re called “contingently free”/”free with a catch” (“условно бесплатные”).

It’s even worse with “pay-to-pay” conversions, though. Unless it is clearly communicated to the user before he paid for a game, switching the business model on the fly might be viewed as bait and switch tactics.

And just because Valve managed to get away with adding microtransactions to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive after the release, doesn’t mean you will be able too.

What’s next?

I think we’re going to see “pay-to-pay” more, especially in multiplayer games for the Western audiences. It makes the game sustainable, it makes it easy to adapt for the East, it provides the developer with consistent revenue stream.

I also hope that we’ll see less examples of companies switching to a different business model midway.

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