Why Do FREE-TO-PLAY Games Exist?

I am, what most normal people would consider, a “hardcore” gamer.

I absolutely love to play games, either on my PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch, you name it. But one area of the gaming world that I do not dip my toes in nearly enough is in the world of mobile gaming. Mobile gaming, for those who may not know, is more for a casual crowd of gamers, which is why a Freemium Pricing Strategy works particularly well in that space. And no game shows that fact quite as strongly as “Vampire Survivors”.

Vampire Survivors, at first glance, is just a very simple time-survival game with a minimal 16-bit aesthetic, barely any story whatsoever, and a simple premise: survive as many waves of enemies as possible. If you go onto the Apple App Store right now, this game is completely free with two in-app purchases that you absolutely do not need to buy to enjoy the base game.

So if this game is completely free and you do not need to buy anything to enjoy this game, why would anyone buy the in-app purchases? Because of this:

(Thumbnail created by Switch-Up, a YouTube Channel focused on Nintendo Switch gaming)

THIS GAME IS BEYOND ADDICTING! I particularly enjoy this excerpt from the Editor’s Choice section of the Vampire Survivors game in the App Store, “Vampire Survivors’ retro look may evoke a bygone era of gaming, but the experience represents an exhilarating new genre. The simple, one-finger gameplay is packed with so much depth.”

If the EDITOR’S CHOICE section talking about one-finger gameplay doesn’t convince you to get the game, I don’t know what will.

But that’s key to any Freemium Pricing Strategy: how good is your product and how confident are you in your final product that people will actually BUY that product from you? In the case of Vampire Survivors, the developers and the publisher of the game were so confident that people would buy the in-app purchases, that they made the entire game completely free!

The result? The game has gone on to be placed on all platforms and bought by tens of thousands of gamers even though it’s not free on other platforms. Why? It is well-worth the price because many gamers have already tried it on their phones for free.

The final verdict: it’s a must-buy at ANY price.

But not all games would benefit from this pricing strategy and may be quite detrimental to the studio, especially if their investment into the game was so astronomically large that they may not recoup all their funds, let alone make a profit.

So why make a free game?

Because gamers love a good sneak peek at the next “big” game, and if you’re confident that your game will deliver, then why not go for it?