Freemium Is The New Premium

The Valve Stamp of Approval

Seeing the model succeed time and again, exemplary PC hub Steam brought free-to-play to mainstream attention in 2011 with a few titles at first and dozens later on. Not just that, but the Valve-owned platform showed its full confidence by making one of its biggest games, Team Fortress 2, completely free.

Since then, Valve has put the costless scheme to Dota 2 as well and with terrific results. Looking at the Steam statistics, both these freebies are in the daily top 5 of most played games, amidst thousands of paid alternatives, with Dota 2 comfortably owning the top spot.

Their impact reaches such extent that the Steam Marketplace, which uses real currency to trade game items, has an inner meta-economy based solely on select things like Team Fortress keys. Many of Steam's products are traded for keys, due to their high circulation, which transcends the Marketplace to include game gifts.

In turn, Dota 2 offers sizable resistance to competitor League of Legends (LoL) as the arena game of choice, for users as well as in the esports realm. Both of those are highly grossing free titles, with the latter exceeding $100 million in profits in just a few years, by offering content like more playable characters for payment.

Evolution Is A Beautiful Thing

Each market, from niche to main outlet, has shown through its history that free-to-play is a viable option. A critical factor of this is accessibility. Freemium substance is the ground level and it's always liberally available to any user, involving them in the full experience. This differs from the older model of demo fractions, which the Electronic Entertainment Design and Research firm has shown in studies ongoing from 2008 to actually lessen sales considerably. It was backed up by developers such as Puppygames, who saw only 6% of sales try demos first.

A second part of its success is attributed to its own growth. At first, designs favored buying customers with boosted content, to urge them to pay, in order to get an advantage on others. With the influx of players, unbalanced gameplay was a source of community frustration and so projects were modified once more, moving from pay-to-win elements to offer cosmetic items instead. Those inclined could show their support, while staying on par with others. For different games, advertisement support took charge of the marketability, so everyone could get in on the action. Everyone wins and no one has to pay a dime, unless they truly want. It's near perfection.

$60 Or Free Is A Tough Choice

Looking towards the future, the new generation of consumer-approved consoles cements the use of F2P titles, by employing them at launch. Xbox One has formed the long-awaited return of Killer Instinct in a costless, though limited, game to attract users, while the Playstation 4 engages titles like Planetside 2 and Warframe, who proved their mettle on PC. Projects like these show that high production values are available to gamers and that without traditional cost.

What's great is that this will only expand and that on any platform. Mobile devices are putting out much more refined games and that with only a few ads to sustain their cost. Major franchises, like Ridge Racer and Need for Speed, receive free iterations. Users need not open their wallets for any of it.

The freemium business model is so appetizing that even fully priced titles like Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo are employing micro-transactions, in hopes of siphoning some impulse cash.

So, there's a choice to be made here. Either fixate yourself on a small ad in the corner of your screen or join the revolution and welcome games that give you everything for no money, with the same enjoyment and level of success as paid products going for the same market.

Let the stigma go already. Ads are awesome.