Free vs Paid Content

[Jackie Daytona]

How do you define "free"?

If a game has paid content which you can earn for free in-game... is it really free?

If it has a price, it has value... right? So, even if you obtain the content without paying, you are still in ownership of something that would otherwise cost money.

Is it fair for a game to advertise their content as "free" if it can be earned in-game?

[Kargor]

Back when I played Free2Play games, I focused on games that you could play for free. Cash-shop didn't matter, as long as it wasn't required to progress.

I would probably still start with this as a baseline, although "quality of life"-features might be factored into it -- like whether you can actually progress, or whether it's just too slow to be viable.

Same applies to some non-free games. Currently I'm playing "The Secret World" -- which is a "buy once, no subscription" MMO"RP"G. It has a cash shop, but I don't have much of an issue with that since the grinding is not really caused by a lack of cash features.

[Gus the Crocodile]

It's fair for a game to advertise something as free if you don't have to pay for it, because that's what free means.

[Jackie Daytona]

Originally posted by Yuuta:

Originally posted by NoWillPowerForSuicide:

a game has paid content which you can earn for free in-game... is it really free?

Those games called "Free to Play" (except you're talking about something different), which means "Playing is free, but other features may not be free". Like premium accounts in War Thunder or items in DotA 2 - you can buy them for real money, sure, but you play those games for free.

Absolutely. I'm familiar with f2p. In those cases, it makes total sense to say the game is free, but with optional paid content.

What about a game like Overwatch or CS:GO? Sure, you can earn the extra content for free, but you can also pay for it too.

Would it be fair to say that OW or CS:GO has "a ton of skins and you can get all of them for free"?

I mean, it's unrealistic right? You could grind until you get every skin. At the same time, the results are random. At some point you'll need to trade or purchase skins if you want them all.

Note: This isn't about CS:GO or OW. I'm just using it as an example.

Originally posted by Kargor:

Same applies to some non-free games. Currently I'm playing "The Secret World" -- which is a "buy once, no subscription" MMO"RP"G. It has a cash shop, but I don't have much of an issue with that since the grinding is not really caused by a lack of cash features.

The Secret World is very much up-front about their content and policy.

"No membership required. Purchase the game and experience The Secret World without a monthly fee. Optional membership and in-game services offer tons of Loyalty Rewards and more! "

There is wholly optional content, and you can purchase it. That's fine.

Originally posted by Gus the Crocodile:

It's fair for a game to advertise something as free if you don't have to pay for it, because that's what free means.

What I'm saying is...

What if there are 2 options? You can get the content for free, but you also have the option to buy it outright.

Would it be okay to advertise that content as "free"?

Further, would it be acceptable if that content wasn't available to the average player? Like... if you had to be one of the top players on the server in order to get anything for free. Would it be okay to say that "content is free" for your game?

[Gus the Crocodile]

Is this a thing that actually happens?

I mean I think people appreciate (and often expect) that in-game transactions are noted up-front, so if there are items that are available both by playing and through purchase, it's pretty normal for devs to say so. Not sure I've ever encountered a game with that kind of free-or-paid item that ignores the fact that they can be paid for and just says "these items are free" - because what would be the point? You'd be going out of your way to not address community (or perhaps legal) expectation of disclosure of purchase options, and it sounds really weird to boot.

By "sounds really weird", what I mean is, it's entirely normal for games to feature items/abilities/levels etc that you earn access to by playing the game. That's called playing the game. I don't need Blizzard to tell me that Diablo 2's high-level unique items, or, say, the Meteor spell, are free - why wouldn't they be? If a dev goes out of their way to say something is free it makes me instantly skeptical: "okay, that's free, so what, you're saying some things aren't?". So surely that'd be awful marketing; I don't play a lot of games with purchase options, but from my possibly-naive perspective, it doesn't seem like there's too much to worry about here.