So the european commission said that children needs to be protected from not wanted payment in "free" games and that it is fake advertising. This includes the mobile games that everybody , but mostly EA, is milking money from. Will this succed in stopping releases of cheap games that are in beta for years but already have payment requirements?

I honestly hope they succeed. I'm disgusted by how microtransactions are, they really make a game look bad, and having to pay to win is worse.

Candy Crush and Plants VS Zombies 2 have been examples of freemiums, and they should just be free.

That whole "children need to be protected" stuff doesnt have a whole line of reasoning behind it, it's up to the parents to keep their credit cards away from their children, so if that's really their only reason, then mobile games, and games like Killer Instinct (ilu KI tho), are going to continue their depreciate the quality of the free to play market as a whole, and make game devs like EA look slimier and greasier.

I agree that these are bad ideas. I'm sick and tired of starting free games then finding out it's a game for people who can afford to give money to the developers, to stomp on those who actually want a free game. Or seeing "Free" and finding out that two thirds of the game has to be paid for.

Free-to-play, pay-to-win. Annoying, and a bit of a scam in my opinion. My opinion on it is that free games should be free, and paid games should be paid. Blending the two is a terrible idea.

Are we talking about pay 2 win or pay 2 play? By pay 2 play I'm talking about all of these mobile games that basically gives you play points that regenerate every few minutes depending on what the developers set it to. So you play for 5 minutes, run out of tries and if you want to keep playing you got to wait or pay. It is very common these days and I really dislike it. I will also not lie, but I can't remember playing a game that let me play one level or so and then asks me to pay to have access to the rest of the game. Even if I do, it probably says "free version" so it is suppose to be obvious that some parts will be locked. I guess I easily avoid these cause they are flooded with negative ratings and people complaining.



If we are talking about Free-2-play-but-must-pay-2-win-because-deal-with-it-bro than I have nothing to say but good god please prevent these from happening. The first one that comes up to my mind is battlefield play4free. Now since it's battlefield you know it is by EA and let me tell you, it is just impossible to play against people that pay for good guns.



I guess Valve has the best f2p formula. Look at team fortress 2 for example. You can access all maps, all classes and all weapons. Only things you don't have access to and need to pay to have them (premium account) are cosmetic items and trading, which has NO effect on the game. With trading feature available, everyone want these and so Valve makes a lot of money and keep their games balanced. You can pretty much sum it up by, free-2-play-but-pay-2-look-cool.

Team Fortress 2 is the only Free-2-Play game I play cause you really don't need to pay a lot. It's free, but you do need to pay a 1 time fee of 50 cent to unlock a full account (which if you have other steam games, you can afford by selling steam cards). And all the other microtransactions aren't a big deal cause all the weapons you can buy all have upsides and downsides making them balanced, and you can find/trade them with out spending a dime.

I kind of have mixed feelings about this. I hate it because they are essentially tricking us, but most of these games would never be able to release if it hadn't been for this, or continue once they are released.

zanderlex : Early acces / Open beta (I thing this is what you mean) is totally different. But there is Kickstarter to get the games released. TotalBiscuit made a very good video about this on youtube. Games like MechWarrior Onlineare in open beta forever and Planetary Annihilation was funded on Kickstarter the got to steam with full price and now entered "Gamma" development state. Just look at Shadowrun Returns ( I played Dragonfall and it was awesome ), it was funded then competed and got to Steam whe it was DONE. I even put it on the same quality level as XCOM: Enemy Within ( a AAA game).