What’s y’all’s guys thoughts on making the base game free? It would greatly increase potential buyers for the xpac but also would grow the interest in the Grim Dawn brand. GD is already established by people as a very good ARPG so it being free shouldn’t give off that vaporware/trash game vibe many f2p games do.
What do u guys think?
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I would not make it free. This is not a F2P game where Crate makes money off some cosmetic or P2W stuff.
The game is discounted frequently enough (and chances are it will also be when the expansion hits imo) for anyone interested to pick it up during a sale.
Free accomplishes nothing imo
How does Crate make money this way?
How do the employees pay their rent, eat, etc?
Why do you think this is viable?
Do you work for free?
Sounds like a great way to stop making money for Crate.
I guess they could give the base game free, then charge $50 for the xpac.
That should go over well.:rolleyes:
In the far future maybe, after Crate release Grimmer Dawn: Death to Empyrion or Grimmest Dawn: The Zantai Wars.
I think you mean Grimmest Dawn: jiaco Wants His Royalties.
POE had to be kick started just like GD. A large portion of that cash went into servers and they are f2p and are doing great with 50 plus staff… Believe me I’m a Crate and GD loyalist and I want them to make money as well. The idea is to grow the player base with the vanilla game.
Even with rough and under valued numbers like 800,000 copies x 13 bucks you get 10,400,000 dollars made. That’s still a lot and more than enough to payoff debt and fund them for several more years if they never made another penny off GD.
Copies sold is probably real close to 1million or more with steam,gog and GD site sales. 13 made per copy is probably realistic after taxes and DD cuts are taken.
Still, the business model is completely different. If GD is free, Crate makes no money. PoE is free because GGG makes money via micro transactions, not via selling the game.
This simply does not work for GD.
They would still make money from the xpac and crucible and other dlc they make. Many companies have a free base game but make good money off content updates or xpacs.
Honestly I could see them making a move like this several months after the xpac hype dies off.
The larger the player base the larger potential buyers for future content there is. If you make GD free and the player base triples to say 2.4mil from 800,000 in a year. That’s a huge increase and possible if the base game goes free with xpacs costing cash.
these magic numbers are meaningless.
you have to use evidence when you present this stuff. and unfortunately there is no evidence to support your position.
GD is not an MMO. it is a mostly offline game with peer to peer multiplayer
I don’t know of a single “F2P” based peer to peer offline arpg game with this level of quality. because they can’t / won’t make money if they release it that way. listing some rpgmaker game or flash game as comparison isn’t valid btw.
game has no microtransactions and no “online” mode. so there is 0 secondary revenue besides the game sales.
This suggestion is plain obsolete. Why would any company make their non-microtransactions SP game free? (Unless they published 4 new game over on it like gta 2)
GD is already a bargain for what you get. Personally, I think Crate should charge more for the base game.
Yeah this suggestion doesn’t really even compute for me.
If there is ever a GD2, maybe. But the thing is…Your suggestion MIGHT make sense, IF they are planning a second expansion. Are they? I can’t say as I’ve heard that, and I HAVE heard that they are planning a different game unrelated to GD. If they were going to/willing to make two more expansions, then yes, now is the time to make the expansion 30 bucks or so and make the base game free. If they aren’t planning any more expansions, then it makes no sense at all, being a single player offline game that’s moddable.
What about “no”?
No.
If someone can’t afford to pay $25 for Grim Dawn, why are they sitting around playing video games instead of trying to earn enough money to afford the things they want? Video game prices are the least of your problems in that case.
its not like you have to pay tax, pay steam/gog for each unit sold there, nor put aside a budget so you can invest into the next project without having to worry about going broke…
people with their over simplification of income :rolleyes:
$25 for Grim Dawn is a bargain, BARGAIN I SAY!
One of those rare things where I’ve happily handed over money for a quality product and found I got more value than expected. So I bought copies for friends 
But even with the travesty above, I could see it…in a few years. Buy the xpac, get the base game free kind of thing.