Posts from Which is more profitable – an MMO with a monthly subscription or a free-to-play game?

Some time ago, Lock and I were arguing about which brings more profit – an MMO with a monthly subscription or a free-to-play game with donations. Lock claimed that the first option is better, not some failed projects that became free-to-play. I held a slightly different view. I agree that things are exactly this way in the West, but in my opinion, it's somewhat different in the CIS countries.


If you sum all this up, then over a year of playing, I donated around one hundred dollars. And since I donated rarely and only when necessary (like, “oh wow, there’s a good item on the auction house/in the shop, I should buy it, but I don’t have enough coins!”), this is a very small amount, especially if compared to the amount invested by other players.
A six-month subscription to World of Warcraft costs 359 rubles, which is just over ten bucks, if I'm not mistaken. You can draw your own conclusions from here.

and you can also play for free without having to pay anything.

Volchik, the point of this topic isn't about what you *should* play, but rather what you *shouldn't* play.

I understand.

The topic title is silly and doesn't stand out in the forum.

But how can an average person, knowing the number of players, calculate the publisher's profit? After all, it's unknown who pays how much; some might leave quite large sums, but most might not pay anything at all and play for free, as you can't donate much with school lunch money.

Even by saving from school lunches, you could probably collect over 359 rubles in half a year.

in just a week and a half!

359 rubles is the price for one month of playing WoW, not half a year. I played and paid for it myself, so you can believe me.

A Russian person is different. If they can avoid paying, they will.

359 rubles is for one month.

Really? I must have gotten something mixed up. But never mind, it doesn't change anything anyway.

It certainly does change things! Six months of playing WoW costs 1800 rubles if paid all at once, and 2100 rubles if paid monthly, which already gives us about 70 dollars. And that's for half a year, not a year. Don't forget about the expansions that come out every year and a half! That's another 700 rubles per expansion, at the very least.
And yes, a lot of schoolchildren play free-to-play games, and even if they want to, they won't be able to donate.

Although, as I see it, there's a reason why LotRO switched from a standard subscription model to a free-to-play one. So, it seems that everything depends on the game's popularity. I also wanted to add something about the target audience, but I doubt it's too diverse. Marketing isn't such a primitive thing.
And, Revan, I hope you'll forgive me for a little bit of moderator overreach. The thing is, I was bribed and forced to abuse some of my official powers.

I explained all of this back then when I was presenting my thesis, but I couldn't quite articulate it.
BECAUSE WITH DONATIONS, UNREAL AMOUNTS OF MONEY ARE BEING SPENT, AND SOMEONE IS DEFINITELY DONATING MILLIONS, ONE OF THREE PEOPLE.

It certainly does! Six months of playing WoW costs 1800 rubles if paid all at once, and 2100 rubles if paid monthly, which gives us about 70 dollars. And that's for half a year, not a year.

Well, it depends. In the year since I registered in PW, I've essentially played for 6-7 months (I didn't even launch the game from late spring to October). In this case, it turns out to be almost the same amount as if I were paying for a WoW subscription monthly. But, as I said, I donated very little. Besides, I'm not a schoolboy or a student, I don't have a job, I only receive some kind of subsidy. Schoolchildren can donate not only with their breakfast money. I know cases where parents, instead of buying a gift for the holidays, gave their children large sums of money to their accounts (not to mention the fact that many parents play with their children, I was in a clan where there was such a situation). And further - after buying a subscription, the player doesn't pay anything else, while in free-to-play games, a player can spend as much as they want, not to mention some characters who wear gear that simply cannot be obtained, no matter how much they grind? I remember meeting some archer with Wistrit, who had gear for the eighth rank, which can only be obtained by having a corresponding amount of reputation. And the amount was so high that it was simply impossible to obtain by playing. The most common way to acquire it was to buy candies in the shop. If I remember correctly, 50 of them cost 50 gold (1 gold is slightly less than 1 dollar), and for the eighth rank, you need 10 thousand candies. What amount does that come to?

The thing is, there aren't that many hardcore players. It's much easier to charge a fixed fee from all players than to collect large sums, but only from a few. Also, consider this: he buys the best gear, and then what? He'll buy more trinkets, but there's nothing else to buy. Meanwhile, someone else might buy only the essentials and perform just as well. A fixed fee is a stable source of income that will continue as long as the person plays. Even if he plays only 2 hours a day and, in another situation, wouldn't spend money on the best gear because he doesn't need it (and there are quite a few such people), he'll still pay the same amount as the hardcore player who, in another situation, would have spent a lot of money on cool gear.