The freemium or free to play (F2P) business model is still new and in an immature state. There are some early adopters that have used exploits or tricks to squeeze money from their players, while others created what we call a “pay-to-win” experience where you’re almost guaranteed to win if you pay money. While these tactics may have generated a lot of revenue for these developers, as the market, business model and player expectations mature, these tactics will become less and less accepted by players. They probably won’t go away all together, but it’s better to get ahead of the curve and start designing and executing smarter games today. Here are examples of 5 of these tactics:

There are a lot more than five ways to screw up the free to play model, but these are five big ones. The one that particularly galls me is “Design a free to play Player vs Player (PvP) game to be pay-to-win.” That drives me absolutely bonkers.