While being poor I had a lot of fun from games. It’s called piracy. And once I stopped being poor, I largely stopped pirating. I have no hesitation torrenting The Sims or The Witcher (since CDPR refuses to take my stinky Belarusian money), but I see no problem paying for anything else if it’s sufficiently convenient. And even when I didn’t have time or just wanted quick fun, there was a way to do so. It was known as “cheats”.
“Free to play” incentivizes a certain game design where a game is so terrible you want cheat codes, and then selling those cheat codes to the player. Additionally, it preys the most not on the people who have money to burn but on neurodivergent folks predisposed to addictive behaviors (like I am but thankfully I dodged the worst of it and learned to just never touch the stuff at all). Hell, that’s why the game is not sold — the point is to probe the market for vulnerable people with the free first dose. This is immoral, predatory behavior, and while nobody would argue that a developer needs money, it’s this particular way the developer skills are used to make said money, and from whom, that people rightfully find repulsive.
Thank you for your answer. It clearly challenges my position regarding f2p games. I completely forgot about piracy, now having the chance of earning enough to pay for stuff, but you are correct and that is a very good argument.
it preys the most not on the people who have money to burn but on neurodivergent folks predisposed to addictive behaviors
I would be really interested in reading studies on the classification of whales. If that assertion is true, this would change my mind about f2p in a split second.
While being poor I had a lot of fun from games. It’s called piracy. And once I stopped being poor, I largely stopped pirating. I have no hesitation torrenting The Sims or The Witcher (since CDPR refuses to take my stinky Belarusian money), but I see no problem paying for anything else if it’s sufficiently convenient. And even when I didn’t have time or just wanted quick fun, there was a way to do so. It was known as “cheats”.
“Free to play” incentivizes a certain game design where a game is so terrible you want cheat codes, and then selling those cheat codes to the player. Additionally, it preys the most not on the people who have money to burn but on neurodivergent folks predisposed to addictive behaviors (like I am but thankfully I dodged the worst of it and learned to just never touch the stuff at all). Hell, that’s why the game is not sold — the point is to probe the market for vulnerable people with the free first dose. This is immoral, predatory behavior, and while nobody would argue that a developer needs money, it’s this particular way the developer skills are used to make said money, and from whom, that people rightfully find repulsive.
Thank you for your answer. It clearly challenges my position regarding f2p games. I completely forgot about piracy, now having the chance of earning enough to pay for stuff, but you are correct and that is a very good argument.
I would be really interested in reading studies on the classification of whales. If that assertion is true, this would change my mind about f2p in a split second.