Every frustrating design decision in a free-to-play game is somebody's answer to a revenue problem. This is not an excuse, it is an explanation, and knowing which lever is being pulled makes the design much easier to deal with.
The four revenue types
Free-to-play games earn through a small number of distinct mechanisms, and a game usually uses two or three of them together.
- Cosmetic sales. Skins, outfits, weapon appearances. High margin, zero effect on balance, and the model most respected by players.
- Power sales. Direct upgrades that affect gameplay. High short-term revenue and permanent damage to competitive fairness, because a paying player has an advantage.
- Time gating. Content or progress blocked behind a timer that can be skipped with money. The most contested category, because it sells convenience rather than items.
- Battle passes. A fixed price for a track of rewards over a season. Reliable revenue because it converts a fraction of players at a predictable rate.
What the cost to you actually is
The clearest way to evaluate a free-to-play game is to work out what your time is being sold for. If the game is pay-to-win, someone else is spending money to reduce the thing you are spending time on. If it is cosmetic-only, your time is not the product.
A useful test: if you stopped playing entirely, would the game become worse for other players, or just for you? Games where the answer is no are the ones where you are the customer. Games where the answer is yes are charging someone else for your participation.
Why prices get worse over time
Monetisation in a live-service game tends to get more aggressive as the game ages. Early on, a studio is building a player base and has every incentive to be reasonable. Later, with a large installed base that is not growing and a fixed content budget, the easiest revenue increase is to charge the players who are already there a bit more.
This is why a free-to-play game that was generous at launch often is not a decade later. It is not that the developers changed their minds about the player; the arithmetic changed.