
Like Team Fortress 2, Valve make DotA 2 free to play - revenue via in-game store - Smerity
http://blog.dota2.com/2012/06/introducing-the-dota-store/
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Legion
I am becoming a big fan of the free to play model. I think it serves a lot of
players well:

* When you're a kid, money is a scarcity. I would have loved to have had a bunch of quality F2P games when I was a kid. (Of course, these games tend to be online-based and the commercial Internet wasn't around back then, kids today don't know how good they have it, off my lawn, etc etc)

* When you're a working adult, it's free time that's the scarcity. I'm happy to throw some coin at Tribes: Ascend to give me some of the equipment that I wouldn't have the time to grind and unlock.

* If you're my wife, it's interest level that's the scarcity. She finds game here and there that _really_ grab her interest, but everything else just gets a "meh". F2P means the ability to sample, no sunken cost besides a little bandwidth usage. It's better than demos were, because if the game is a winner, there's no transition hassle from demo to full product - you just keep on playing.

~~~
cageface
_I am becoming a big fan of the free to play model. I think it serves a lot of
players well_

Probably, but not me. I'm the grumpy old curmudgeon that prefers to pay a one-
time fee for a quality game and compete purely on skill, not on hours spent
grinding or real money spent flipping bits in a DB somewhere. And even at $50
a pop even the typical teenager should be able to pay cash down for a game
every month or two.

What this is really about is shutting down piracy.

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Laremere
There is absolutely nothing in the dota2 store which affects gameplay. All
items are 100% cosmetic. This allows anyone to go in and play any hero on even
ground, but if you like a character you can spend a little irl coin to
customize and stand out.

~~~
cageface
Yeah I was referring to the comment about buying gear in Tribes. I don't have
a problem with cosmetic in-game purchases except maybe a worry that they give
game designers the wrong incentives.

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soup10
They pretty much had to make it f2p to have a chance against LoL, the
currently dominant game in the genre.

Dota 2 vs LoL should be pretty interesting. I'd argue that LoL has an
extremely strong first mover advantage. Dota was technically first, but it
wasn't a standalone game, and was completely inaccessible for new players, so
I don't really count it.

What i'm curious to see is if a company with as much reputation/money as valve
can overcome that. If I was a gambling man i'd guess that LoL is going to stay
#1, both because they have the first mover advantage, and because this is
Riot's only product, so they have way more at stake than Valve, and are going
to work harder to make sure they have the best product.

~~~
mquander
I expect that LoL might retain a devoted playerbase, sort of like Runescape,
but I definitely predict that Dota 2 will be making a ton of money and getting
all the attention.

\- They seem serious about sponsoring tournaments and making it competitive
and balanced

\- LoL turns off a lot of people with pay to win

\- Their interface and client is already _holy shit way better_ , like night-
and-day better, and I expect that it will just get more better, since they
have more talent and more man-hours

\- They should know how to promote and run F2P games as well as Riot, since
TF2 was a big success for them

~~~
SoftwareMaven
When I worked on LoL, there was a lot of focus that it _not_ be play to win
(this right up to release). I wondered how that would turn out. What would you
say is wrong?

(I'm not a big fan of the genre [I'm not a pvp guy], so I haven't kept up on
the game.)

~~~
mquander
As a semi-casual player -- maybe I played 200 games ever -- I could not
possibly play enough to earn many of the champions, so I get to choose between
not having them or paying a _ton_ of money (IIRC, many are like five to ten
bucks a pop.) In addition, the newest champions are typically both the most
powerful (at least for a while, until they are nerfed) and the most expensive,
so those who pay get them first.

Stronger players could also buy XP boosts, to level their summoner faster than
I could, and IP boosts, to buy better runes than I could -- those are just
strict improvements to their characters' stats with no caveats. The only way a
non-payer could achieve parity on these metrics would be to play many hundreds
or thousands of games.

~~~
astrobe_
Upon reaching competitive level (level 30), you must have won a descent enough
amount of free points (IP, as opposed to RP that one gets only by paying) to
have a bunch of champions with appropriate runes. I think it is not really a
problem, because you need to master the champions you play anyway to have some
fun and win games. Then, if one really enjoys the game, one plays just for the
fun and IPs can stack up without you noticing.

The IP boosts thing is actually not a good idea: you reach higher levels
artificially, without gaining real experience with the game and the champions
you play. If you go straight to ranked games at level 30 by this mean, your
ELO will probably be very poor; you'll be flamed by your team for your poor
play, and that's a really bad experience (you'll have to learn to ignore
clueless flamers though).

It should also be noted that Riot is not very greedy: sometimes you get free
IP boosts, and even free RP (not enough to immediately buy something though -
well played). And upon a recent server incident they refunded me RPs without
asking questions - even though they could see I never bought anything from
them.

The only things one cannot get just by playing are skins (custom outfits for
the characters). As strange as it seems to me, it is actually the first thing
that some players buy - instead of things that would improve their character's
stats.

It seems to me that it works in a similar way as shareware games works. I also
think it is an interesting response to the problem of piracy. See for instance
Blizzard with Starcraft 2, who apparently refuse to offer LAN mode just
because of that.

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gnufied
There are few concerns about how ability to customize a hero can affect
fantasy aspect of the game. It will be weird if a hero called Anti-Mage
suddenly walks around with cowboy hat. There is also a concern of heros
suddenly not being recognizable at all, but I think valve will provide various
options to get around that.

All in all pretty good move though. It will help propel Dota2 to biggest game
in China etc where Warcraft3 engine based DOTA is already very popular.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Ten Cent made an investment in Riot Games with the plan to take League of
Legends into China. How is it doing against DotA?

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omgsean
I really think Valve knows how to do this right. If you get people hooked on
the gameplay they'll pay for silly extravagances. See: Basketball and LA
Lights.

~~~
Smerity
For the community generated content, Valve pays the creator twenty-five
percent (25%) of the Adjusted Gross Revenue[1]. TF2 has already paid out $3.5
million to creators, so it's reasonable to assume the TF2 economy has rewarded
Valve to the tune of ~$10 million.

I think this could work out very well for them.

[1]: <http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/workshoplegalagreement>

~~~
Laremere
That number doesn't include items which they don't pay the item creator. Most
notable as far as I know keys don't pay anything towards content creators, and
they're a very important piece of the economy.

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gosub
Is it possible to play a dota-like game in single-player? I don't enjoy
playing multiplayer games and registering to play.

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haar
Dota2 has a co-operative play against AI players, and I assume you can play
this mode on your own if you wish; however this entire genre typically focuses
on multiplayer values to get the most out of the game. For example, there is
no storyline, and the gameplay depends entirely on working together with your
team-mates to overcome a huge range of situations that develop from different
hero line-ups.

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wiradikusuma
in my previous company, a large national financial institution, we (IT dept)
had "dota hour" almost every day during lunch time. the interesting part is
the teams were divided by "managers/supervisors vs staffs".

