Free

Free is a powerful word. Amazon once offered bonus free shipping on products in all countries but France, because the French branch thought 1 penny sounded better. They were noticeably lagging in sales until the main branch forced them to offer free shipping. The sales instantly picked up; that's the power of the word "free". I have played several free games in my time. I got Portal for free when it was on Steam special. I have played free online MMOs Runescape, Flyff, and Corum(no longer available). I downloaded Alien Swarm on Steam only because it was free (and there was a bonus hat for Team Fortress 2). Today, I downloaded Spiral Knights, a free MMO made by Sega. The game is surprisingly fun and well paced, as well as team dependent. After playing for a while, I started to ponder. How does the free business model work for games?

spiral knights knight

Obviously, some of these games are not truly free. Runescape has much more content for its member users, who pay $5 a month. Spiral Knights has a store were users can buy premium items and Flyff has a similar system. But Runescape still has plenty of free content, which they do update. The item stores are totally optional. No player need spend a dime to get plenty of hours of enjoyment. I don't quite follow how these business models can survive. Its not like maintaining these games is free, and they are still regularly updated. Alien Swarm is completely free. There is no way to pay money into it, you would be donating money. I really appreciate all the content available to players free of charge. Thank you.