Everyone is talking about how OW1 business model is unsustainable. That FTP is good for the company so they can make the money that they need to continue providing content.
However, they forget that Blizzard is basically printing money (making a lot of money) with World of Warcraft. There are business that have a profitable side, so they can off things that are no profitable as much.
This is why I don’t understand why OW2 has to be FTP?
it doesn’t have to but they do need to change their current model because they’re honestly losing money with it outside of lootboxes I guess but so few people buy those anymore
they could have gone the WoW route and make us pay for a subscription but instead they chose battle passes because it’s the closes model to current, very little money required (10$ a month) and it only paywalls cosmetics, I’d say that’s pretty generous considering they could paywall the whole game if they wanted to
Thing is the business model wasn’t the problem with OW1, it was they were to under staffed or lazy to upkeep it. There hasn’t been a new item in the basic loot box in years, in fact I don’t think there has been a new skin in the basic loot box since year 1 outside of new hero releases trash skins.
Event skins came out like once every 3-4 months, and usually only had one or two you might like at best. Meaning most people who play the game had more than enough credits to simply buy them. Within about a year you’d have every normal skin in the game, earning even more credits to buy things out of event boxes.
Simply put the Loot box system failed in recent years because Blizzard just never put anything in it. Preferring the instant money options of limited time exclusive releases with the OWL and such skins over more long term profits, as no one who wasn’t playing the game when they were released could ever get them.
It’s why I have little faith in the OW2 F2p system. It wasn’t loot boxes that were the problem, other than possible legal issues from people hating them as gambling for kids.
The problem was Blizzard couldn’t be bothered to put anything in them people might want.
oVeRwAtCh 1 bOx pRiCe mOdEl iS UnSuStAiNaBlE!
Meanwhile, Jeff commented previously that it made over $1B on box sales alone during it’s like, first year of life, and that they didn’t need a F2P model to make money or continue to be live service.
Free to play lowers the barrier so much and encourages literally anyone to try your game. There is a reason it has become so popular in recent years.
Its all a numbers game. If ten million people try your F2P game and only 5% stay, that’s still 500k new players and likely a good chunk of them buying either battle pass or at least a few skins. Also the more people that try the game the higher chance they get a whale who wants to own everything.
Whatever your opinion is of Blizzard, at the end of the day they are a company and they are going to do whats profitable. They are also likely moving away from loot boxes because of increasingly amount of laws restricting how and where they can be implemented.
The main reason companies like the Free to play model is trash MTX are always geared towards new players. People who own nothing are more likely to buy something. And the free to play model has the highest chance of pulling in new players.
That said it’s not the “easy money” system so many companies think though. It takes constant updates to give people a reason to play and you always need both sides of the coin. The people who have the desired items, and those who don’t so they can flaunt it over them. The game has to be playable for both sides that coin.
After all if all the whales played by themself, and every one had every thing there would be no real point to it.
Problem is, Blizzard isn’t a independent little indie company that will keep funding unprofitable projects out of passion. Hell, the shareholders aren’t even going to settle for just “decent enough” profits, they want record breaking numbers every year. Best case, you get to have the servers kept up and get the occasional numbers patch like HoTS, but you aren’t going to get long term content that way.
Add to that, the leadership really floundered in handling Overwatch’s initial success and then made the decision to focus all resources on a PvE sequel and totally abandon PvP in the meantime. It was only as of a year ago when Aaron took over that the team refocused on PvP and providing long term live service content. A lot of the original player-base isn’t going to easily return and trust Blizzard again.
With F2P having proven to be by far the most successful model for all non-MMO multi-players at this point and all the competition being F2P, the mass influx of new players it’ll bring is the best chance OW has of getting back on track to its old glory.
It doesn’t….that’s just what they claim
$$$$$
This is a joke right? WoW is all but dead, and each game has to justify it’s existence financially regardless, business 101. And please, don’t confuse revenue with actual operating profit, two different things.
Explain how they could just do development and keep the doors open for free? They have to have zero-cost-to-entry model to then monetize in today’s market to compete and stay in business. People will not stick with a game with little fast development, and it can only be done with a monetization method on a routine basis to cover costs and provide an incentive.
First of all nobody said anything about free…
There are OTHER monetization policies
I would gladly take pay up front or subscription based policies over what we’re getting…the latter of which might end up being more expensive….but at least it’s not restricting the content
Oh. Well, you see, the point of a business is to make money.
Does that help clear things up for you?
People don’t run businesses just to break even, because “they can.”
What an ignorant and entitled little kid you are. You are a clueless little kid with no idea how business works in the real world. The only incentive for business to develop and launch any title is to profit its shareholders. The idea the Blizzard should not monetize a game it developed because its profiting off ANOTHER UNRELATED TITLE is the most colossally stupid take i’ve heard in my entire life.
I find it funny you saying that I do not know about business. You do know that some business operate at a loss in one business so that they can profit more in some other business that they hold. Not saying Blizzard is/wants to do this just saying they can.
There is a reason World of Warcraft has not gone FTP. Maybe FTP will work for OW2 we will see.
Have you been paying attention to WoW as of late? Literally the lowest player count to date, presumed to be just around if not under 2 million players. And I want to say it’s been stated before, unsure though. But I feel like, each game and respective dev team, keeps to their own portion of the pot. So to speak. 
It doesn’t has to be anything. But considering 3 years of drought, and or no content with OW2’s development. F2P is the best to way secure players, the business model being an entirely separate topic.
In saying that though, Overwatch’s business model was bound to change regardless of whether it went F2P or not.
I am a strong advocate of a sub - a BP is effectively that with some restrictions. The problem is the market in live-service FPS demands zero-cost-entry with back-end monetization optional purchases now. The consumer supported this crap because little Timmy doesn’t want to sub anything these days and feels entitled to non-stop free entertainment so he can spend his money on lattes to meet his friends every day.
World of warcraft isnt Overwatch lol. Any money they make doesnt just get put into Overwatch’s development.
Also f2p isnt just about money but also allowing consistent updates and accessibility to the game. A game like Overwatch cannot compete as a paid game when you have their competitors like apex and fortnite f2p. Why would someone play Overwatch when there are so many other games available for free
Asking for a Subscription would fall into the same accessibility problem. Why would someone pay a monthly fee for just Overwatch when services like game pass exist. Also a subscription model would be even more expensive than currently to just play the game. If it was like $10 a month to play. That’s the price of a full game in 1/2 a year. Whereas free to play it costs nothing
Either they’re losing money or they’re not.
You can’t just say “they are losing money except loot boxes”, it’s one or the other lol
Before they removed the incentive to buy lootboxes it was (no dup protection and no way of buying event items with coins) it was. Now its not anymore.
OW is still a product. WoW is also not doing well. Blizzard in general is living of Hearthstone and Diablo Immortal right now. WoW behind that. OW2 and D4 are the pillars that they want to build up upon. They killed everything else.
Its also a product and they exist to make money. They have 3 games that they already could have shut down because they are not profitable: SC2, D3 and HotS. OW should not join them…
To get with the time. A big mistake that blizz has done is to do the same things over and over again but did not go with the time and are now staring at the face of games like Fortnite, Valorant and Apex.
F2P for OW2 is huge for all. For us players, for the devs and for the game itself. I will continue so say that until they show me something that disproves me. I played a ton of F2P games after OW stopped brining out content. They are really good. If OW2 has a chance to be a big hit again, it’s with the modern F2P model. Otherwise it would go down under the a lot stronger games around.
Because every team is treated as their own cost centre.
Essentially, every game has to be profitable in its own right, otherwise it’ll get shut down.
Pretty standard business practice.
All the people asking for a subscription model be like
I dont want to pay for optional cosmetics
I want to be charged $10 a month to even be able to access the game 