[alstonite]

In my experience most free-to-plays just use a battlepass nowadays and don’t rely on whales (though obviously all games have them)

Gambling based games like cs:go and genshin absolutely apply to what you’re saying though

[whateveracct]

Battle Pass is just a subscription with more steps. It was cool when I could just pay $50 for an online game and play it for years in dedicated servers so long as there were other people who paid $50 out there.

[StableAlkyne]

I miss community-hosted servers in games.

Nowadays it's all servers that are only run by the developer, who could just flip a switch tomorrow and tell you "Remember that $80 you spent on Game 1 few years ago? You're gonna have to pay up again for Game 2. Also we're turning off the servers for Game 1."

[mathgeek]

Many use both in order to capture multiple types of buyers.