Over the years, game developers have started to lean towards the free-to-play model. Game developers have slowly started to realize that if you give a game out to everyone for free, more people will play it. It’s like as if people really like free stuff. Who knew this would happen, right? However, FPS shooters were a little late to the party. Games like League of Legends, which are very popular, launched as free-to-play titles back in 2009.
Back in the old days of video games, gamers had to pay extra over the base price of the game to unlock features such as new maps and new weapons. We’re looking at you, Activision and EA. After games like Fortnite and Apex Legends launched as free-to-play titles, Activision decided to give it a try after launching a Battle Royale Mode with Call of Duty Black Ops 4 that became a massive failure.
Activision launched Warzone back in March of 2020 and made it free-to-play. It became an instant success, with tons of new players joining the game. The overall design and gameplay mechanics also contribute to some portion of its success. However, the credit mostly goes to it being free-to-play.
How Do Free to Play Games Make Money
Getting handed out free copies of games that a game developer spends tons of hours and money producing sounds great as a gamer, however at the end of the day, game development is a business and, the primary goal of a business is to make as much money as possible.
Then why do game developers do this? Why do they make a game free to play? What’s in it for them if tons of players play the game? The answer to that is Micro-Transactions. Micro-Transactions is how game developers can make money from free-to-play titles. When a gamer pays small amounts of money to unlock in-game features such as cosmetic items, it is called a Micro-Transaction.
Some game developers tried to use Micro-Transactions to make their game “Pay to Win” Suppose you downloaded a free-to-play shooter and you start a deathmatch. The enemy pulls up on you with armor ten times more powerful than yours and a weapon that kills you in an instant. You find out that you have to pay for this stuff. Well, this is what a Pay to Win game looks like, and gamers usually discourage it by completely boycotting the game.
The other more popular way that developers use Micro-Transactions to make money is by making highly desirable skins and cosmetic items. These skins are designed to keep gamers drooling over them while having to pay money for them.
League of Legends and Skins
League of Legends is a MOBA-style game where you have access to tons of characters to play as called champions. A game like this has the potential to make tons of money by releasing skins for these characters. It is actually necessary for League of Legends because it is a free-to-play title.
League of Legends has successfully implemented the free-to-play Micro Transaction focused game model. With new updates and patches coming to the game fairly regularly, new skins are also added to the game. They make these skins so desirable that we just can’t stand not buying them. Just look at the ” and the “skins.
Bothe these skins came out on 23rd September 2021 and, we bought them on the same day. Sure we could have spent that money on necessary things like food, maybe. But who cares, the Prestige Nightbringer Kayn can do cool animations.
Checking How Much Money I have spent on League of Legends
If you are anything like us, you probably don’t know how much money you have spent on skins for League of Legends. After some rethinking, we reckon it’s probably going to be a large number.
A few years back, it was easy to find out how much money you have spent on League of Legends. All you had to do was go to the Riot Games privacy page and, you could retrieve tons of information about your account, including the amount of money you have spent. Sadly this option has been removed. Are they hiding something? Are they secretly part of a cult that is planning to take over the world? Well, no. It was assured to us by a Security Engineer at Riot that they have done this only to meet the newly introduced GDPR standards.
Taking into account the current state of the game and laws that the devs have to adhere to, to figure out more information about your account, what you can do is send Riot a ticket. While sending a ticket to Riot, in the dropdown menu, select “I need help with account management, data requests, or deletion.” After a 30 day waiting period, you will receive a summary of all the information that Riot has about your account.
The other more instant method you can use to check the amount of money you have spent on League of Legends is through the 9th August 2019 Update. Riot has created a dedicated support page for this task. As you go on this page, you will see a “Login” Prompt. After you have successfully logged in, you will see
https://support-leagueoflegends.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026080634
A survey was conducted in 2019 on League of Legends players from the United States. According to this survey, the average player from the U.S. spends roughly 92 USD on League of Legends per year. If the number you got is close to this, you don’t have to feel so bad. However, if the amount of money you have spent in total is anywhere near to the number we got, it’s acceptable if your mind is blown.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104745/video-gaming-dlc-spend-game/