Scott Hartsman Explains Why RIFT: Starfall Prophecy Costs Money

The announcement that RIFT: Starfall Prophecy would be a paid expansion was rather surprising. RIFT is a free-to-play title that previously released a free-to-play expansion. Why are players suddenly going to have to pay for new content once again? According to a statement that Trion Worlds CEO Scott Hartsman sent to Polygon, this is what players want.

You see, when Trion Worlds was working on the Nightmare Tide expansion, it was "[...] trying to figure out how is the best way to do an expansion in a free-to-play game." As Hartsman put it, "the two concepts don’t necessarily fit. You still have all the investment of a development team spending a year-and-a-half on content." Eventually, the company decided that it would spread the cost of the expansion across several microtransactions, including the infamous earring slot microtransaction.

Hartsman then explained that the company's "[...] attempts to be very generous and more convenient were strongly not perceived that way." As he put it, "of course if I come in and my friend joins me, and we both do a dungeon, we both get loot from the dungeon, but I bought everything right off the bat, so I can equip it and my friend can’t. That doesn’t exactly feel good." So, with Starfall Prophecy, the company is "[...] returning to the most palatable way that people are interested in paying for expansions."

Furthermore, in response to concerns about the effect a paid expansion will have on free-to-play users, Hartsman stated that "the core audience actually did buy all of that stuff anyway. They were just irritated in how it was presented, so instead we’re putting it up front in what we hope is a vastly less irritating way."

Matt's Take:

I don't imagine that designing expansions in a way that makes them viable is easy. This may, in fact, be the reason that expansions in games that are free-to-play from the very beginning are often much more bite-sized than those of buy-to-play and pay-to-play games and why they are often loaded with new cash shop items. Somehow, the team has to recoup the costs of development the development of that expansion.

Given the response to Nightmare Tide's microtransactions, I'm not surprised that Trion Worlds decided to go back to paid expansions. In addition to the fact that it results in a disparity between players, it's not exactly clear when you look at it that those microtransactions are a replacement for the cost of the expansion. This way, it's presented in a clear manner and you get the expansion's essentials all in one purchase.