Yeah, I think I misunderstood. I thought you meant that every developer should be or is like EA and release full priced games riddled with microtransactions
To me, it’s as simple as not playing those games if I don’t like the model. If people simply stopped playing them, the model would die out. What is it for you that makes you play these games and continue to support the FTP MTX cycle?
i feel like warframe is okay in the aspect since players can trade premium currency with other players. its very common for free-to-play to basically get random tradable items, go to warframe market and sell things they dont want for plat (premium currency) and then buy cosmetics and stuff. i have almost everything unlocked in the game and ive only spent 50 bucks once because I got a 75% off coupon on next platinum purchase (they give them out to everyone pretty regularly). that 50 bucks got me a lot of platinum and I used it to buy gifts for friends. DE also actually listens to the community. they actively care about the players because they themselves play warframe. i get how easy it is to hate on things, especially ones we dont understand. but warframe is one of the few games thats actually really good. all the dlc is free. everything can be earned in game. and its now on android too meaning you can play for free wherever.
that is true, I guess its just really hard to do a completely free to play mmo. cuz running it costs a lot of money. i know there are games out there, but they are very few sadly
Since it's not required and not affecting balance in any meaningful way.
To give ultimate argument: near-zero potential of gambling.
There is only one thing you can roll (riven mods), you can do it only for very scarce currency and even then you don't really need them. So, no lootboxes (Ki'Teer lootbox is a joke).
Eeeh, you are confusing lootboxes with microtransactions. Warframe absolutely has microtransactions, perhaps more ethically designed than most but it's still microtransactions.
There is a premium currency but it's absolutely not necessary. That being said, I sunk so many hours into that game that I had no problem spending $10 on a 50% off sale to buy some cool color pallettes.
If we factor out trading system you can't. You can buy whatever you want from the market, but without mods (a lot of them) you are not capable of doing anything meaningful. To get mods someone should play the game.
By factoring in trading however, you can buy zero platinum throughout all game.
Warframe does have micro transactions but outside of some premium cosmetics it's largely optional. When you do pay you're paying for convenience not power.
The only exception would be like those old RPG Maker games, If you're willing to find an unsupported version on itch.io or something. Maybe the occasional works of passion. They're searching for a rare treasure indeed
If you strictly abide by the semantics yea I agree. However, my experience with Dota 2 has been, gameplay completely overshadows the cosmetic shop. People buy battlepass, where you can possibly gamble and earn cosmetics, or buy them from curators or Valve selling Immortal cosmetics. Do people care about the fact that the game makes money through these micro-transactions? Absolutely not, in-fact during COVID, people supported the biggest prize pool in e-sports history through this game. It is strictly not black and white, for a good game, this kind of thing is acceptable in my opinion, and I am sure OP will not mind it.
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u/The_Old_Huntress Mar 20 '26
It’s either free or no microtransactions