How do the Developers make money?

[Forgemaster]

Trying out the game for the first time, but was wondering. How do the developers make money to keep supporting this game?

[psyc1one]

microtransactions, and none that give you extra power ingame

[Jakrhovir]

Originally posted by psyc1one:

microtransactions, and none that give you extra power ingame

Well, yes and no. The stash tabs are a HUGE advancement factor.

Without premium tabs, you must list any items you want to sell manually on the PoE forums (which is eventually picked up by poe.trade if you do it right) or spam-sell in Trade chat (which is like throwing your needles into haystacks full of needles and hoping someone picks your needle, except virtually everyone still trying to shout-trade is actually combing for noobs who don't know they're getting a really bad deal.)
With premium tabs, items are automatically listed to poe.trade with minimal effort.
Of course, the premium tabs are a moot point if you play exclusively in SSF mode, but then you are entirely at the mercy of RNG.

Secondly, the currency, cards, and esence stash tabs are a huge space-saver. You can EASLY fill a tab with currency, cards, or essences alone. Buying these tabs will free up all that space. Space is a big deal in PoE, much as it is in virtually every other MMO out there.

In conclusion, if you intend to play PoE for more than 200 hours, I really recommend buying at least one stash tab bundle OR quad stash tab, and the currency, card, and essence tabs. They go on sale often and you'll end up paying ~$20-$50 depending on what you choose, which is about the minimum of what a game of PoE's quality is worth anyway.

[Fatty McGassy]

It's easy to justify buying tabs...you easily get one of the best games for free, if you hate dlc or microtransactions just look at it as if you were buying the game,, put down $40-$60 in points and call it a day.

The currency, premium, essence, and card tabs are awesome...I wish they would make one for maps and I would be set.

So you have one of the best games for free which you actually don't need to buy anything for and on top of that I think they have one of the best customer service!

So yea, how do they make money with their great services...no clue haha.

[Awesome!]

the only thing in the whole store that i think is a little scummy is guild member slots. its not that bad if you split the cost between guild members (and they even make it convenient to donate points to your guild) it just doesnt feel great to me to have to pay for that.

i would buy a special map tab in a heartbeat but there are issues that prevent that being a thing currently. right now i just use a quad tab for maps.

[Lagwin1980]

Originally posted by Alice Of The Twist:

Originally posted by psyc1one:

microtransactions, and none that give you extra power ingame

Well, yes and no. The stash tabs are a HUGE advancement factor.

Load of bollocks really, once you pass a point with the tabs they become more of a burden than a benefit (see all the whine posts begging for a delete all every time a league ends)

Also an advantage you can work around via mule accounts.

[Nakos]

Enh... I'd say a few tabs are indeed a necessity, but you don't need THAT many. If you want to be frugal, you can but ONE premium tab (which will allow you to trade easily) and a couple of packs of plain ones.

It shouldn't cost more than $20 USD or so, and honestly that's really not much to spend on a game.

The developers allow you a huge amount of freedom to try out their game. I really don't get why people complain about having to pay if they decide to keep playing. The Developers really do deserve to make some money off of the IP they created.

[Zi]

Devs just now got little money from me. Bought 100 points for currency+premium+one additional tab. Its all kinda needed after playing further than 70+ level. Need to trade and too much currencies can waste all the space you normally get for free.

Anyway, I like this way much better - when you buy the game after seriously tried and liked it.

[-]

+1 to purchasing currency, essence, divination card and at least 2 premium tabs. I wish I would have bought a quad stash tab back when I had enough to do so. Maybe later down the line

[mss73055]

If I were to be a developer I'd farm bitcoins with your GPU :)

[Defektiv]

I've spent over $1000 on this game to date.

[cujo]

the .... heck.. $1k...bro.. you might want to step out of that basement . celler..just saying.

[Awesome!]

you think his mom is giving him 1k to spend on games? he probably has a decent job and lots of disposable income.

[Defektiv]

Originally posted by Awesome!:

you think his mom is giving him 1k to spend on games? he probably has a decent job and lots of disposable income.

Pretty much this. I have 1302 hours showing on Steam and I started playing on the standalone client in closed beta. So that's easily less than a dollar per hour of entertainment, probably a lot less than that even. That's pretty cheap entertainment.