History Main / AllegedlyFreeGame

* ''Website/{{Facebook}}'' hosts a wide variety of these types of games. However, many fall under BribingYourWayToVictory rather than this trope.

* ''Website/GaiaOnline'' has become this, especially after the Flynn's Booty fiasco of fall 2013. Thanks to the introduction of it and several similar pure gold generators (which can net the users up to hundreds of ''millions'' of gold, all without doing a thing other than opening it) the only way to obtain the now-daily onslaught of Cash Shop-based items -- as well as older items that have skyrocketed in price in the Marketplace thanks to inflation caused by them -- is to pony up the dough.

* ''VideoGame/Star WarsGalaxyOfHeroes'' has this. E.A. tends to let you unlock three stars of a character and then tempts you to buy the other four with card packs that cost crystals. You can get crystals during normal game play but not nearly enough to pay thousands for a pack. That takes real money. The people who spend money are often the ones at the top of the arena metagame and are often referred to as whales.

* ''Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes'' has this. E.A. tends to let you unlock three stars of a character and then tempts you to buy the other four with card packs that cost crystals. You can get crystals during normal game play but not nearly enough to pay thousands for a pack. That takes real money. The people who spend money are often the ones at the top of the arena metagame and are often referred to as whales.

* The ''{{VideoGame/My Little Pony|Gameloft}}'' game for UsefulNotes/{{iOS|Games}} and UsefulNotes/{{Android}}. Unlike many social games, this one does have an ultimate goal: to defeat Nightmare Moon. In order to do that, one of the things you need to reunite the Mane Six. Twilight Sparkle is free (she's the first pony you get when you start a new game), while Pinkie Pie, Applejack and Fluttershy can be obtained by spending regular game currency (Bits). Rarity and Rainbow Dash, however, cost premium currency to obtain (90 Gems each). You're guaranteed 3 Gems every 5 days and can earn a few more if you accomplish certain tasks. So you can either hoard Gems for 10 months or spend $20 to get 260 Gems immediately. The situation was worse when the game first came out, when Rainbow Dash cost ''500'' Gems.

* ''VideoGame/DeadOrAlive5 [[UpdatedRerelease Ultimate]]'' has a free-to-play version on the UsefulNotes/{{PlayStation3}} called ''Dead Or Alive 5 Ultimate: Core Fighters'' that allows you to use 4 characters -- Kasumi, Ayane, Hayate and [[VideoGame/NinjaGaiden Ryu Hayabusa]] -- in all modes (except Story Mode) for free. The rest of the characters and Story Mode have to be bought. Of course, those who would rather have everything at once can simply buy the regular, retail version of the game.

* ''VideoGame/{{ROBLOX}}''. Like most entries on this page, its biggest advertising point is that it's free to play. Most hats, shirts, gear etc. require you to pay in ROBUX. The only items that are free for the taking tend to be only available for a short time, with the permanent free catalog being rather small. The only ways to get ROBUX without paying out of your pocket includes selling game passes, which invoke BribingYourWayToVictory for your own game in ROBLOX, and if you're not paying for Builder's Club you only get 10% of the profit. The other way to get ROBUX is to advertise the game on other sites. Some items are Builder's Club only, and BC is the easiest way to earn enough ROBUX to get the rest. Plus, there are many BC-only features, such as having more than 1 map/place, more than one group, making badges etc. To alleviate some of this there was a currency called Tickets that non-BC users could save up over time and convert to ROBUX, but it was discontinued as of 2016, effectively killing the revenue stream of free-to-play users.

** This wasn't always the case. Few years ago it was much easier to buy a ready to use ''deck'' of cards for the same amount of Clintz you now pay for a single card. But as a result of [[MoneyForNothing inflation]] and [[{{Metagame}} increasing numbers of meta-players]], prices progressively get higher and higher. There was simply too much in-game money in the system and certain cards became highly demanded, which allowed to leverage prices of other cards, snowballing into current state.

* ''VideoGame/{{Wizard 101}}'' is something of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it has the typical unlimited duration free trial with "[[RealMoneyTrade Crowns]]" to purchase bits and pieces of the rest of the game. On the other, one can simply pay a monthly subscription to bypass all that garbage just like a normal MMO.

* While the source material already parodied and discussed this trope at length (see below), ''VideoGame/SouthParkPhoneDestroyer'' has many shades of this. The in-game cash can be accumulated through normal play, but it takes a long while to get enough to buy a pack with truly good cards inside (free packs are offered every few hours, and you can earn them every few hours through [=PvP=] rounds, but unlike purchased packs, there's no guarantee of special cards. Naturally the freemium nature is lampshaded from the beginning, with characters imploring you to buy things and [[spoiler:getting mad at you if you manage to win the game without spending any real money.]]

* ''Memoir 44 Online'' appeared on UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} as a Free-To-Play title. While this is technically true, you'll be able to play 25 games maximum outside the tutorial before you have to buy more tokens using real money. Since most of the scenarios eat three tokens rather than the minimum 2, it's probably going to be fewer.

* ''JurassicWorldTheGame'' charges up to $50 for dino packs and in things like aquatic packs, species aren't guaranteed, so as to entire the player to spend even more.

* ''[[ShoddyKnockoffProduct Super Monster Bros by Adventure Time Pocket Free Games]]''. This "free" Iphone game was an extremely basic platformer that put microtransactions on '''everything'''. You start out with a single character ([[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} which is basically Charmander with a leaf on its head]]). Additional characters cost anywhere between $25 and a ''$100'', you can buy more lives, buy more BULLETS (only in packs of 30, FYI), and basically are all but strangled to pay if you want to get anywhere with the game's horrible controls.

* ''VideoGame/PokemonGo'' technically allows free players to access everything, since all in-game items are bought with "pokecoins" that you can either buy with money or earn by defending gyms. But accumulating pokecoins for free is heavily restricted--originally to 100 coins (but much less for the average player) every 21 hours, later changed to 50 per day (with a system that made hitting the cap easier, but less consistent). Serious players who want to collect the strongest possible mons and grind through the punishingly steep level curve from 30 to 40 do so by buying tons of incubators (to hatch high-quality mons up to 9 times more frequently) and lucky eggs (double-experience for 30 minutes), and will probably go through several of each every day, especially during events. A free player can't afford more than 1 incubator every 3 days, and that's the best-case scenario; players have very little control over when they get their gym defense rewards. The release of limited-time Legendary raids caused some controversy, since free players only get 1 free "raid pass" per day, plus 1 more every 2 days (at best) from gym-defense coins; catching just 1 of each legendary is a [[LuckBasedMission crapshoot]] without buying raid passes.

* ''VideoGame/Idolish7'' You can play the game for free, but good luck getting a decent rank or getting all the rabbit chats

** Similarly, ''VideoGame/{{Muelsfell}}'' has a building-construction queue, a golem-construction queue, and an item-construction queue, each capped at 1 for non-premium members. Non-premium members also can only accept smaller market offers, have double the return time, can't name their golems, and for a while couldn't set their golem to hang back or pursue targets aggressively -- in essence, they have to spend twice as long to do half as much.

* Amazon is attempting to avert this trope with its new Underground service. Many popular games (some listed above) such as ''VideoGame/SonicDash'', ''VideoGame/FruitNinja'', ''VideoGame/JetpackJoyride'', ''VideoGame/CutTheRope'', ''VideoGame/GoatSimulator'', ''VideoGame/SonicCD'', ''VideoGame/DuckTales Remastered'' and ''VideoGame/MyLittlePonyGameloft'' are 100% free, meaning you do not need to pay anything to download these and they have no in-app purchases whatsoever. This is not even limited to games: you can get several apps as well without paying a cent. This works because Amazon is paying the app developers on a per-minute basis. Unfortunately, [[OfferVoidInNebraska this service is only available in the United States and a few other countries]], those living in countries where the Underground service is unavailable will still need to put up with this trope (if the app doesn't already cost money upfront) on the Amazon Appstore.

* ''VideoGame/NeedForSpeed World'' is a curious case. It's free to play, with the whole game world available without restrictions, but cars are unlocked through an RPG-like progress system. The system [[{{Cap}} maxes out]] at level 10 for free users. Thing is, the supercars are unlocked ''after'' level 10, so if you want that virtual Lamborghini, you're going to have to pay $20 for the [[http://eastore.ea.com/store/ea/ContentTheme/pbPage.need-for-speed-world/?resid=doQMFQoBAlYAACcTy@AAAAAE&rests=1278609457192 VIP pack]], which removes the level 10 {{Cap}} and adds access to the supercars. There's also something called "[=SpeedBoost=]" for the BribingYourWayToVictory file as well.

* ''VideoGame/{{Bombergirl}}'' initially started off as a arcade MOBA game and spin-off of the ''Bomberman'' franchise that was released exclusively to Japan via Konami's e-Amusement system. It had a short-lived open beta that was pulled from distribution due to server connectivity issues, but it was silently released onto PC in December 2021 but as a pay-to-play game. Around September 2022, the game moved away from being pay-to-play on PC and became free-to-play instead. The game features various aspects in common with a GachaGame, such as various collectible items, clothes, music tracks, characters, alternate skills, and so fourth all being obtainable through the Bomber Gacha where players can spend either in-game Gacha Allowance Tickets earned through completing daily tasks or spending money on Bombergirl Tickets (these tickets however cannot be used together). The chances of getting 4★ or even 5★ pull are very slim, and the game does not have a pity system, meaning there's no compensation for poor rolls.

* ''VideoGame/FallenLondon'' is edging toward this — players have always been able to use real money to purchase Fate, which allows you to refill your actions, get new opportunity cards, start a Soul Trade storyline, reset your Ambition, etc., but they were also able to collect Fate through dreams and a few other events. Then the dreams stopped granting Fate. Then the devs added a few more storylines that could only be opened up with Fate...and started adding options to existing cards that provided new storyline paths only available with Fate, so it's getting to the point where you can't play any of the new content (which is the only thing you're there for, if you've hit all the content caps) without spending some Fate. In fairness, the game has no ads and needs to make money somehow, but it's a little disappointing when the majority of the new content is available only for those who can pay for Fate.
** The February 2011 update increased the number of Actions that a paying player can make per (real-time) day (by 10), and decreased the number of actions that a non-paying player can make (by 30). This was changed back on the January 2012 update gave everyone unlimited actions a day.

* Parodied in the WebAnimation/''Jaltoid'' video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzafqZqFf0 "Free to Play."]]

* Parodied in the Jaltoid video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzafqZqFf0 "Free to Play."]]

For a small fraction of the player base, these games are very susceptible to becoming SeriousBusiness, with some players spending astronomical sums just to get the best equipment and CharacterClass. Game design jargon calls these players Whales (a term originating from casinos to describe someone who spends extravagant amounts of money) -- they are usually the major source of a game's income and how badly you should milk them is a permanent ethical question for any game company. There's also the need to maintain a balance so that the whales don't become ''so'' overwhelmingly powerful that they drive everybody else out of the game...which in turn can lead to the whales themselves also moving on to another game after the "massively multiplayer" portion of your MMO is gone.

* The Macintosh beat 'em up ''Kung Fu Chivalry'' only had one item locked behind the registration fee; the passcode to continue from a level where the player character died. With practice, a player could very well beat the game without it.

* ''Oxyd'' itself is free to download, but for [[CopyProtection the codes to pass the magic tokens in later levels]], you have to purchase the Oxyd Book.

* Compared to the rest of the MOBA genre, ''VideoGame/Dota2'' averts this completely as its entire hero roster is playable. The only stipulation is new accounts have a limited pool of heroes that are considered easy to play in order to help ease new players into the game for the first dozen or so matches. However like the rest of the genre, the real money pit is the cosmetics with the annual battlepass for ''The International'' being the biggest one in the game.

* Compared to the rest of the MOBA genre, ''VideoGame/Dota2'' averts this completely as its entire hero roster is playable. The only stipulation is new accounts have a limited pool of heroes that are considered easy to play in order to help ease new players into the game. However like the rest of the genre, the real money pit is the cosmetics with the annual Battlepass for ''The International'' being the biggest one in the game.

** That said, even with limited characters and maps, you have access to almost all types of cards and all other core mechanics even if nothing is purchased. Buying cards and dices via in-game purchases to aid the game is possible, but is almost entirely unnecessary because one can simply [[SaveScumming force quit the game and reload it in case things go wrong]], unless they are going for unlocking special characters, where loading a save file will forfeit the process. The only other paid feature that could potentially affect gameplay is character-specific cars and bikes, which will only affect one character per purchase, and it extends the effects of cars and bikes for just 5 days, making the worthiness of these purchases other than collection purposes questionable. Furthermore, some characters don't have these upgrades anyways.