Cosmetic-only purchases
The game is free or fully fair to play, and you pay only for looks.
Watch · Fine if you understand it
Skins that change nothing but looks are the fairest way to fund a free game, but an everywhere item shop pressures kids to keep up, and tradeable skins can lead to gambling.
What it does to the fun
In the fair version the match itself is untouched: a player in an expensive outfit is no stronger than one in the default. The pressure moves off the field and into the playground, where a new skin is something to show off and the default look can mark you out as the kid who didn't pay. A shop that changes every day adds a reason to check in even when you don't feel like playing.
What you're actually buying
Looks only: skins, outfits, emotes and effects. In the 'fair' version everything that affects play (champions, weapons, characters) is earned through play and the shop sells nothing that makes you stronger. The same model appears as optional cosmetic extras in full-price games.
How it works
Western publishers rebuilt free-to-play around fairness: stop charging for entry, and sell optional cosmetics to a small paying minority while keeping everything that affects power earnable, so the free majority stays competitively equal. A free download removes the only wall between a game and a mass audience, and a bigger audience makes a multiplayer game more valuable to everyone in it. The item shop then stopped being an experiment and became a standard fixture, a shelf bolted onto every Western multiplayer game and funded by a paying few.
When it's fine
When what you buy can't help you win, nothing is locked behind random draws, and the game is fully enjoyable without the shop.
Where it came from
Oblivion's Horse Armour (3 April 2006, $2.50) was an early, much-mocked example: purely cosmetic, and a signal to publishers that players would pay for cosmetic add-ons bolted onto a full-price game. League of Legends launched on 27 October 2009 with every champion earnable through play and only skins costing money, and SuperData estimated it earned about $1.7 billion in 2016, almost entirely from cosmetic skins bought with Riot Points. Team Fortress 2 went free-to-play on 23 June 2011 and Valve reported its revenue rose roughly twelvefold, sold almost entirely through its crate-and-key economy. Warframe and Path of Exile (both 2013) built 'fair' reputations by keeping everything earnable. Counter-Strike's 2013 skins update created a tradeable economy, and real money invited real gambling.
Historical prices and revenues are in US dollars at the time unless marked A$.
By the numbers
League of Legends launched on 27 October 2009; SuperData estimated it earned in the region of $1.7bn globally in 2016, almost entirely from cosmetic skins bought with Riot Points.
Team Fortress 2 went free-to-play on 23 June 2011; Valve reported the game's revenue rose roughly twelvefold in the following months, driven by its key-and-crate economy.
Warframe and Path of Exile (both 2013) built 'fair free-to-play' reputations by keeping every weapon, Warframe and item earnable through play, selling only cosmetics and convenience.
Games that use it
Related badges
Covered in Video Games & Money: Ep 20 · F2p west, Ep 25 · Dlc.