A bunch of games rely on cosmetic/content purchases for their F2P model. Fortnite and PUBG are completely playable without spending a dime but the intent is that you’ll eventually want cool new costumes or gun skins or effects. Team Fortress 2 was doing this ages ago – free to play the whole game but you need to spend money to unlock the crates and see what neat stuff is inside. My kid used to play something called Toca World which was essentially a giant dollhouse like town: dress characters up, visit locations and tap on things. The base was free to play but the intent was that your kid would want you to unlock the School (with ten new characters and 50 new items!) or you could pay an annual sub to unlock all of it. But there was no progression to be locked out of, the only frustration was that you wanted to play in the Zoo area.
Sims 4 is basically the same thing as the Toca game. You don’t need progression, you just need players attached enough to their little computer people to buy them the home office pack or a pretty pink cat-ears headband.
So there are differences between a F2P game that’s designed to be F2P at the start, and a developer deciding to make the base game free late in the cycle when sales have slowed down. The game is 8 years old. They probably don’t have a lot of sales for the base game. But they probably do have a decent amount of sales every time an expansion comes out.
So by making the base game free - without any redesign to monetize it with typical f2p mechanisms - they get some publicity and maybe some people who wouldn’t ordinarily buy it will play it, get hooked, and buy some of the $1000 worth of downloadable content. If a few people buying an expansion offsets the loss of a very small trickle of sales, it’s a net positive for them, no redesign needed.
I have no idea why you would conclude that. I think you’re making a much bigger deal of this than it is. It’s an 8 year old game. Everyone who was ever going to buy it has already bought it. There’s not much harm in throwing it out there for free and maybe selling a few expansions or getting more people interested in The Sims 5 when it comes out.
In fact, it’s very common to make a game free as a way to raise interest in a sequel. Players get a game because it’s free, enjoy playing it, then when they see a sequel coming out they anticipate it because of how much they enjoyed the previous one.
Runbow is the party platformer you’ve been waiting for! With tons of characters, costumes, and crazy game modes, Runbow is full of colourful chaos that you just have to experience for yourself.
The DRL Simulator is the premier FPV racing game and simulator. The DRL Sim offers a robust, evolving feature set, including high-intensity drone racing. It packs tracks that DRL’s real world pilots compete on, with more added every season.
You can play solo, but there’s no single player. So no, the single player storyline and gameplay isn’t decent. It’s non-existent.
IMHO the game desperately needs a single player offline mode that allows mods. They seem determined to keep it online-only though.
I just downloaded the game yesterday. Haven’t played it yet. We’ll see how it goes. I refused to buy it at any price, but I’ll give it a shot for free.
There’s no monthly fee.
There is the optional Fallout 1st which is something like $13 per month. Doesn’t seem worth it to me but you can look at the benefits of it on Bethesda’s site.
It has a pseudo-campaign mode where you have quests and missions to complete up to a final mission. The campaign is repeatable by creating a new player character back in the starting vault and you can have up to 5 characters in your stable.
As far as quality, it’s alright. I’ve played worse single player games.
I don’t think they are, they were made by completely different developers and publishers. I don’t think they have anything in common except the name “Hell” in their names, and the fact that they are both being offered for free by Epic this week.
They’re not even the same kind of game; one is a side-scrolling combat game with puzzle aspects, the other is a platformer with rogue-lite features.