There was a time when all PC games cost around $50 or $60, practically without exception, and no one thought that things could ever be sold for less. What’s more, there was a clear differentiation between releases that hit stores (or started selling on Steam) at full price and those that ended up on old newsstands selling for $20 or less and were perceived as lower-quality video games.
Mobiles have broken the market
Thus, those games of just 20 euros were imposed and, quite quickly, some companies took advantage of this change in perception to succeed. In Spain we have the example of FX Interactive, which was one of the first to see what the market trend would be in the years following the beginning of the new century. Although what no one expected was the emergence of smartphones as platforms to play and the radical transformation that they were going to force us to live.
Indeed, with these mobile phones came the so-called free2play , that is, games that we can download without spending a single euro and that save all imaginable payments and disbursements for when they already have us hooked. At first, these payments were to advance in the game ( pay2win ) and be able to finish them, although in the case of the PC the evolution was favorable to the player and all those items that it was possible to get by paying only affected the cosmetic appearance of our characters.
The result of this genre is that if we look at the Top 15 of the most played releases on Steam , we find that about 60% are titles in which it is not necessary to pay a penny to start playing with them. And an obvious sign of the times?
Do you know how many free2play there are?
If we take a quick look at the Top 15 most popular games on Steam, that is, the ones that users enjoy the most and that daily break records for connected players, we will see that nine are completely free , so you can enter their official pages right now , download them and start enjoying them. This is the case with CSGO , DOTA 2 , Lost Ark , Apex Legends , PUBG , Team Fortress 2 , Unturned , Warhammer: Vermintide 2 and Destiny 2.
The other six that are paid are games like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 , GTA Online , New World , Rust or Naraka . Wait, we left one. Which? Well… you’re going to freak out.
The most amazing thing about the list of most played on Steam in recent weeks is that it appears, intermittently among the most popular, a title that is not a video game and that simply serves to create wallpapers for the PC, especially elaborated that yes. In the last week, Wallpaper Engine has managed to maintain the third position within the digital store, only surpassed by CSGO and DOTA 2 , although it has since dropped to position 25 and, at the time of writing this article, has climbed again to the eighth.
Don’t explain to us why, but there you have it, with its functions to generate animated wallpapers and with many options for customizing colors, 3D models, etc. Proof that users seem determined not to want to pay to play but to obtain certain cosmetic elements that not only affect those free2play that we all have in mind, but also the appearance of our PC’s desktop.
The fact is that fewer and fewer users want to pay (first) to play… don’t you think so?
