How to make money with a free game?

News & General Discussion
1

Hello,
I am about to release my game and i am thinking of making it free until i get it out of beta.
Is there anyway to monetize or earn money off game portals?
Or what is the best way to put a free game on the internet? like sites or making my own website, advertising, just any advise you can give

Thanks

1 Like
2

Increase the price. (Sorry)

3

Game portals often give you advertising revenue. It doesn’t get you much, but it’s something.

4

Free games make some money off of in-game ads, but not much (unless you’re Rovio with a billion downloads).

Otherwise, free games typically only make money by drawing in a massive following. The developers then leverage those numbers to get an investor.

5

Some free games offer stores to buy in-game items, but just don’t do it so it’s P2W. A example of a good in-game store in TF2.

6

I recommend in app purchases.

7

Basically if you make a game where you kill zombies, you force gamers to use a slingshot until they pay you some cold hard cash , or play for 12hours until they get to use a gun for 10 minutes .

I’m only half joking

8

One sales angle that has gone the way of the dodo is to make the game, then have a free version that has all of the content but uses harass screens that slow down the fun and ultimately convinces the player to cough up the dough to get rid of it. Ads are a perfect thing to harass them into buying it, but I’ve also seen people make screens where the team lays a guilt trip on you to pay.

9

I think implementing in-app purchases is what you’re looking for. That or implementing non-intrusive ads here or there.

10

Ads + IAP.

Maybe have some IAP to remove ads. For the most part the games have to be designed from the ground up to work with IAP, so you might have some leveling up system where a poor student could keep playing the game for hours (grinding to unlock it) but a "rich’ person could simply buy the gold to unlock the shit (so he doesnt need to do any grinding). Now the deeper the game is the more likely the person is to actually spend and the more they will likely actually spend at that time – so the deeper your gameplay is the longer time it takes them to beat your game the more likelihood you can really “hook” a person, and a non-poor person could spend up to $50 on IAP once they are sufficiently hooked.

11

My current plan to monetize my game (if I ever finish it!)

  • Buy multiplayer access (one time only purchase). Im going to give people access to the game for free, but if they want a MP experience, they can pay. The logic behind this, is if they enjoy the game enough SP, then they will want to pay to play MP. If they dont like it, they’ve lost nothing.

  • In game purchases. This will generally be skins (new hats, armour, whatever). The stat’s wont be better, it will only be an aesthetic thing, maybe pets, increased xp, etc. Generally you want to avoid purchases that will give people an advantage, unless the only advantage is time spent playing (ie XP boost)

  • Fully custom skins. This will cost more, but you can design your own skin texture so you look unique on the battlefield.

Granted this might not work for your game, but its all food for thought.

12

I’m pretty sure it went the way of the dodo because it didn’t work particularly well. If it made people money I’m pretty sure they’d still be doing it.

13

another way of thinking about IAP might be more like a soap series model. You have a few levels you get to a new gun and a cinematic of a level boss and there it stops, you will have to wait 2 weeks for you can play or you can “insert coin” and continue playing. This only works if your game is really good of course.

14

What platform are you releasing it on?
If it is a web game, release it on a site like Kongregate, where you can get ad revenue from visits.
For an iPhone/Android game, it would be a good idea to place ads and in-app purchases like others have suggested (don’t make it all in-app purchases though).
For a downloadable game, you might be out of luck. The ad revenue will probably be small but you could use Ad Fly.

15

My understanding is that in-game purchases work best (or perhaps only work at all) with the following scenarios:

  • Very small purchases (generally called “micro-transactions”) of maybe 1 dollar or so for each item. This often appeals to the impulse buyers who have a small amount of extra cash that they don’t mind parting with, but they won’t spend $5. The big companies always abstract the purchase by telling the player they’re only spending “credits” or “gems” or “magic gazoolas” or whatever euphemism their marketing genuises have invented to replace the term “money” - the idea being that if you don’t call it “money” some people will be subconsciously fooled into thinking they aren’t paying (or something).
  • Multiplayer games in which a certain type of player will spend real money (sometimes lots of it) to gain a crucial edge over human opponents by buying better weapons, ships, etc. But this can ruin the game balance and alienate most players if it becomes a matter of “paying to win” (sometimes referred to as being a “wallet warrior”).
  • Games (usually multiplayer) which award non-crucial but desirable advantages for money, such as a certain degree of automation (e.g., the ability to write scripts which automate some of the tedious tasks). This usually doesn’t ruin the game balance or alienate people, but merely removes some of the tedium and is therefore seen by veteran players as a big bonus that they might pay for.
  • Games (either single-player but I think usually multiplayer) which give players customized items - a personal logo on their in-game car, or helmet, or gun or spaceship, etc; or their own “home” somewhere in the game (e.g, a building somewhere on the map that their character can live in).
  • “Pet” games in which the player raises a virtual pet (dogs, horses, etc) by spending real money to “feed” it or provide a nice new doghouse or luxury velvet rug to sleep on, etc. There have been games of this type that sometimes net huge amounts of money because a small percentage of players will spend money, sometimes up to thousands apiece in rare cases, on the virtual pet. In this case, it’s not competition that drives the purchase, but sympathy or love for the virtual pet.
16

the standard is In-App purchases, little cosmetic items or weapons that they can buy from a few cents to a few dollars.

If you game is larger, you could consider paid DLC or expansion packs

This is what I have been thinking lately. The original game is free. You offer up the expansion to the game for a price of say $2, which the user pays for and plays. After X amount of time however (maybe 1-3 months?) the expansion will become free and added to the regular game. Just maybe you add an alternate payment option that allows you to buy the entire game with every upcoming expansion for $10 or so. I’m pondering how well a method like this would work out.

17

Merchandising. Sell t-shirts, plushies, keyrings, etc. This is where Rovio make a lot of their money.

18

That’s only because they built up a big brand first. If you found a random free game on the App Store that you liked, how likely would you be to go look at their website and buy merchandise?

Generally merchandise only works if the product/service was successful in the first place as it essentially rides on the popularity behind it.

19

Low, but that’s only because the vast majority of random free games on the App Store don’t have interesting characters or worlds that I’d want to have in other forms. Of the games I own, I could imagine buying a plush Epic Knight from Tiny Heroes if the price were right.

If you’ve built a strong IP, you can sell some t-shirts. You won’t sell anywhere near as much as Rovio do, but you can still sell some, and it’s not that expensive to get into as a channel.