We all love something
for nothing, don’t
we? Personally I love
being given free
games to review
and free faketinis at
game launches; I love
those free chocolates hotel maids leave
on pillows, or free pretzels you get on
planes. Or Free, the ’70s rock band.
I also love it when games PRs send
free cakes to OXM Towers to publicise
their titles, even that hideously
disturbing Agony booby-demon cake that
once turned up at the office. Free cake,
even that one, is good.
But free-to-play games? Hmm. These
things are more popular than ever, with
publishers making money from selling
lootboxes or in-game currency. Which
is fine – you can spend if you want to,
but you can still play for nothing. Being
from the north of England, specifically
the stereotypically spendthrift county of
Yorkshire, it should be in my blood to like
anything that doesn’t cost money. So
why is it I’m still so wary of games that
are free-to-play?
I’m loving the free-to-play Apex
Legends, like everyone else, and I love
Path Of Exile. I love Fortnite, and I’m still a
big fan of Save The World, where, thanks
to V-Bucks being rewarded for playing,
I haven’t actually needed to part with a
single real-world penny in two years. So
far, so good, right? Yay, free-to-play!
However, I was also a huge fan of
Marvel Heroes Omega. As a devotee of
dungeon-crawlers like Diablo III, and
Marvel, I loved everything about it – its
roster of heroes, having Asgard, New
York and more to hack’n’slash around in,
and it was free-to-play. You could unlock
more heroes with currency collected by
playing, but I was also happy to part with
a little real money, too, reasoning it was
no more really than I would have spent
on a full-priced game. The outlay seemed
justified to get skins for Guardians Of
The Galaxy’s movie-Rocket, Deadpool,Gazillion, and the game just stopped
existing. It was as if Thanos himself had
clicked his fingers. Just... gone.Para-gone
And that’s the rub. Free-to-play games
tend to be MMOs or battle royales that
only exist in some ‘cloud’ of nebulous
cyberspace, on servers whose continued
existence are predicated on a) the
game’s popularity, and b) the permission
of licence owners and commitment
of the publishers themselves. When a
game stops bringing in the numbers, the
servers could be shut down, regardless
of the feelings of its fanbase. Just ask
players of Paragon, Epic’s MOBA title that
the Fortnite creator shut down last year
to focus on its smash hit. For all I know,
there may have been only two Paragon
players left in the world, and I don’t
knock the business sense of that – the
games industry has to make money. But
still, those Paragon fans lost their game.
For every game sitting neglected on
my shelves, there’s always the option
to dust it off and return to it. But Marvel
Heroes Omega is gone forever. And it
makes me sad. And I didn’t need it to
be free, or even online in the first place.
Even without updates and daily quests, I
would still be enjoying the game if only I
had actually owned it. The money I spent
in-game was refunded by Microsoft,
which to its credit did not hesitate to
reimburse the many players finding
themselves with nothing at all to show
for their purchases. But it demonstrated
to me how precarious a thing free-to-
play can be. I’m wary of getting too much
into any free-to-play game now, because
I fear it could one day just be taken away
from me. Yeah, it’s free, but it’s not mine.
It’s a bit like the old saying, “you can’t
have your cake and eat it”. Unless it’s
free booby-demon cake, in which case
you can have it and eat it. Even if it feels
so very, very wrong. QFollow us on Twitter @oxm.Black Cat and more. It was an MMO, but
I didn’t care about that. I just loved the
fact that it was couch co-op, as did my
young daughter, and she and I spent
months playing the game together... only
to be utterly, devastatingly heartbroken
when Disney severed ties with publishersINSIDER OPINION
Chris is distrustful of getting something for nothing
The Editor
Chris Burke is...
“I would still be
enjoying the
game if only I had
actually owned it”
022 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE