The Problems with the Buy to Play Model

Free to play is currently the dominant business model in the world of MMOs with Subscription being the second biggest and buy to play being the smallest. Guild Wars popularized the buy to play model for MMOs, and despite it's benefits, it has quite a few problems.

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The Elder Scrolls Online - Another buy to Play MMORPG

Since NCSoft's ArenaNet revealed the pricing for the upcoming Guild Wars 2 expansion, Heart of Thorns, ArenaNet has been the target of a lot of criticism. Veteran players were upset that the expansion included the vanilla version of the game and that they couldn't buy an upgrade for less than the price a new user would pay for both the expansion and the original game. After all, why should someone upgrading their existing product pay the same price as a new user who never bought the original one? Seems like a valid complaint. So why did this happen? Well. It's actually pretty simple. ArenaNet makes a lot of their money from up-front purchase of Guild Wars 2 and subsequent expansions. This means that  ArenaNet has every incentive to ensure that they sell as many copies of the game possible. All the hardcore Guild Wars 2 fans already bought the vanilla game, so they won't make much extra money by selling the expansion separately. Someone who has never bought Guild Wars won't be excited about the expansion, but if the expansion includes the original game, they're much more likely to purchase it and give it a try rather than having to original game AND the the expansion.

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Guild Wars 2

Not to continue on with Guild Wars 2 as an example (It's actually a great game!), but one user recently commented on a piece of news about the Lion's Arch Rebuilt update complaining about the slow pace of updates and bug fixes. "Ivan" complained that this update was more a quality of life update than anything else and simply fixed the things that players have already been complaining about for "months, if not years". Logically speaking, a game that makes most of its money from up-front retail sales has little incentive to keep updating a game and polishing it the same way a free to play or subscription based game would.  This doesn't mean bugs will go ignored and exploiters be left to run amok, it just means that the developer incentives aren't always aligned with the players. Luckily, in the case of Guild Wars 2, this isn't a big issue because the game has an in-game cash shop which continually brings in revenue for developers, which keeps them motivated to continue providing content updates, events, and other goodies.

Another problem with the buy to play model is that unless a game is extremely popular, the initial sales can never support the game for the long term. Just look at Natural Selection 2. It launched with a bang and was extremely popular for a long time, but died down since the studio behind the game did nothing to monetize it aside from the initial sale. It's easier for MMORPGs to monetize, because they can open up a cash shop, but it's much harder for a non-MMORPG to run a cash shop - especially in a game like Natural Selection 2 where players run their own servers.

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Natural Selection 2

Don't get me wrong, the pay once and play forever model also has huge benefits. They typically don't suffer from the pay to win elements that free to play games have. Plus they're a lot easier on the wallet than subscription based games like World of Warcraft and Eve Online. It just seems like developer incentives are poorly aligned with the buy to play model. Free to play games have to constantly add content and keep their players happy otherwise they'll just switch to another F2P title. There's no shortage of them. Plus, expansions are always free which is great. Subscription based games like WoW require users to buy expansions too, which I don't particularly like, but if things are left unfixed players can just cancel their subscriptions. I think Eve Online has the best model in the monthly subscription arena - as expansions are completely free of charge and even the base game is free. Just pay the monthly fee and you're good to go.

So what does everyone else think? What do you think is the best business model for players - buy to play, free to play, or subscription?