Because developer need money!

[Siyano_v1legacy]

Why is this a excuse when I hear people saying they don't want to spend money on F2P? Why is it one of the only media that say this excuse?
I understand that people need money to live but why are you giving this excuse, to me it sound stupid and obvious, everyone in life need money to live, but why particularly more dev?
It likes saying why are you not buying that book? The author need money!
Why are you not buying that clothing piece? The designer need money!
Why do I feel like I am frown upon by not spending money on (sometimes ridiculously priced) skin, xp boost or anything?

It not really my fault if that specific person choose a way of life that its hard to make money.
I should not really spend 5$, 10$ or even 15$ just to go faster, and most of the time all game design and choice in development have been balanced around this, making very very grindy game for free or slightly more standard if you spend 10$.

To me, waiting 8h, 12h or 24h is stupid for anything and doesn't make sense, its not really helping anything and at worst its make people not play your game because they need to wait a day, how do you want to keep your player if you "force" them to watch a timer for X hours?

It just some gripe because sometimes I would like to change the appearance of my character, but when a dev ask 10$ just for a skin, there is no way I'm spending that, I would just prefer go out and buy a shirt for 10$!

Anyway, how you guys are seeing this from you perspective, what your opinion?

 

[RJ 17]

Honestly I've never run into anyone that's actually defended F2P games that are clearly designed to make you spend more and more money, let alone offering a defense on the basis of "because they need money". Pretty much everyone I've spoken to on the subject has only ever called those kind of games for what they truly are: a scam.

 

[L. Declis]

I'll play Devil's Advocate.

Do you know a game called Loadout? It's a free to play game that ultimately hid nothing behind a paywall. It did what we all want free to play games to do; no pay to win or anything like that.

What happened?

Although it had tons of users, the devs recently admitted that they may be about to close the game and studio as simply they were making no money off of it.

The difference between a free to play game and your argument about books is that you are playing that game, using that architecture without paying.

In my opinion, if you like a book enough to come into the book store every day and read it, then you should pay for it as you're using that product. If you like a game, then you should support it as the game industry ultimately responds to cash and cash flow, and it also means you're supporting a game which has given you hours of free fun time.

Unless you think it's okay to just take without giving, of course.

 

[chimeracreator]

The complaint is that people don't like hidden costs or being forced into multiple transactions. They prefer to have a single purchase where they own a thing forever in its entirety. That model doesn't work with Free to Play since as you said developers need money. So instead they attempt to exploit other psychological mechanisms that are primarily tied to addictive tendencies to earn their money. To many this is seen as underhanded, but in the end consumers vote with their wallets, and if enough games that ask for an upfront flat fee for all of their content don't break even then free to play will win the day. Likewise is the free to play Skinner Box fails too often then we'll start seeing less of it.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

It depends on the game. Some games I like being able to buy slices of the game I want and avoid the things I'm not interested in. And if I enjoy the game enough I'll toss the dev's a few bones here or there if my budget can support it.
I play War Thunder from time to time and I think I've paid about $15 total to the devs for various things. I enjoy it because its a decent WWII airplane and tank sim (though I stick to the arcade style matches because I suck at realistic and sim) and have fun.
Its all about fun really and if the game is fun, you get something out of it, why not toss the dev's some money for their hard work so you could enjoy all that free fun? War Thunder never forced me to buy anything, nor has it been intrusive with "Hey! Buy this now!" type pop ups. I appreciate that the option is there, but it doesn't force itself on you.
Heroes of the Storm is another one I have enjoyed though I've yet to give Blizz any more of my money since I've played WoW for most of its 10 year span (been active during every expansion at some point and pretty well completed most of the content). But I've hesitated because I don't know yet if I'm going to continue to play it often, I haven't logged in for a few months so as much fun as I had in Alpha, I didn't feel I was ready to pay them for anything. If they offered a package deal for characters that was reasonable, and I was actually going to play more I would probably pay them for the ones I wanted. Of course I've also already earned enough gold to buy two of the characters I wanted anyway without spending money and I didn't play religiously.
Again, not intrusive and didn't make me feel I HAD to spend money to keep up with the rest of the players.
Some games though... yeah its a disgusting business practice... Free to Play should mean exactly that. Free, with the option of buying more but not gating content that makes you unable to play on a level field (Planetside 2 I'm looking at you...).