We’re not exactly sure if the guys at CCP know what the term “Free To Play” means. The developer behind the upcoming Dust 514 announced an initial “cover charge” for the first-person shooter, expected to be around $10-20. The one-time fee is to cover the costs of the game’s initial launch and support, and CCP states that it has no plans for recurring charges behind that.
“You’re really getting the game for free but you have to pre-buy credits in the beginning.” CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Petursson explained to GameIndustry.biz (Registration required for full article), “We might go fully free-to-play down the line, but in the beginning we have a cover charge just to manage the initial launch of it…We have always been a big believer in growing up a social network behind the game in a slow and predictable way. Because we have seen that if you don’t do that you can end up with a very unstructured experience, where there’s no cohesion to the community…By growing it at the beginning we help to make a healthy environment initially.”
Cry foul, EGs? Or is an initial $20 investment a worthwhile one for potentially future F2P games like Dust 514? Comment below!
Initial investment is understandable. You still have to buy the full EVE Online game, which costs $15 (subscription is separate, but can be free if you save enough ISK to buy PLEX from some other player; they are paying for your subscription essentially).
Free to play means they will not charge you a subscription fee to participate in the mercenary wars on the planets which benefit corporations in EVE. Though they might have a store in the game where you can make micro-transactions (kind of what is going on with the fiasco in EVE right now).