Many game developers and publishers are turning towards the freemium model with their apps and games, allowing users to download the initial app or game for free, but charge them if they want to unlock further features. The latest app/game using this model is EA’s Real Racing 3, which has stirred up a lot of controversy over its new free-to-play model.

The Office of Fair Trading says they have reached out to publishers of various free games that offer in-app purchases to make sure that the publishers’ in-game marketing schemes toward younger gamers are fair and legal. The OFT also says they have asked parents about any “potentially misleading or commercially aggressive practices they are aware of.”

However, The OFT is seeking to ban these types of games. They’re merely wanting them to follow regulations and guidelines so that children, and even older gamers, aren’t mislead into buying in-app purchases that they ultimately didn’t want to participate in. The OFT plans to take their next actions in October of this year.

[via CVG]

Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, senior vice president of EA’s mobile and social All Play label, Nick Earl, says that a majority of mobile gamers prefer the free-to-play model, and those who dislike it are a “vocal minority.” Earl says that “the market has spoken very loudly that that’s the model they like,” and he also says that “ultimately the numbers would show that they and others all support the freemium model better.”

Earl mentioned Real Racing 3‘s in-app microtransactions, which requires racers to pay money if they want to speed up certain tasks, such as repairs and upgrades, or if gamers want a fast track to owning that Lamborghini, they can pay real money to own one. Of course, users can earn coins throughout the game to help speed along repairs and upgrades, but the real complaint was the implication of these features in the first place.

When referring to the types of gamers who prefer the all-you-can-eat model, Earl notes “that’s the kind of people they are. But at the end of the day, they’re going to pay to eat, if that’s their choice. And they’re happy doing it.” In other words, deal with it if you don’t like it. Read our review of Real Racing 3 to learn more about the game.

[via GamesIndustry.biz]

Appsfire, a service that tracks apps and notices when they go on sale, was the first to notice the change in price, and according to the service, this marks the first time that the original Angry Birds title has been available for free. It’s said that once the app’s price updates for all users, Apple will promote the app as their “free app of the week.”

Rovio hasn’t announced the price cut yet, but they did announce that 15 new levels have made their way to the original game, so not only can you get the game at no cost, but you also get more for your buck (or lack thereof). Of course, the Android version of Angry Birds has always been available for free — one of the benefits of being an Android user.

The Angry Birds series has always been popular, with new sequels coming out all the time, but in order to give the older games a quick boost in popularity again, Rovio is giving the original game away. Of course, thanks to the newer titles, not many gamers play the original Angry Birds, but the 15 new levels and the lack of a price tag should change that.

Sadly, though, FreedomPop only uses WiMAX and the service is limited to just a handful of regions in the US. While the company plans to switch to LTE at some point in the future, availability still may be scarce, but we wouldn’t be surprised if FreedomPop eventually spread the service to most users in the country.

While $10 per month for 10GB of data seems like a steal, some users may just not want to pony up any money at all, but the 1GB of data per month is a rather low amount, especially if you’re using it in a house full of kids. However, as always, FreedomPop offers the opportunity to earn more data by completing different tasks, like adding friends and completing partner promotions.

FreedomPop claims that their $10/month plan is 80% cheaper than your typical DSL or cable offering, but at this point, nothing can really beat the reliability of a solid home wired network can’t quite beat wireless service at this point. However, once LTE rolls around in more areas, FreedomPop may actually become a viable option, but we’ll have to wait and see.

The paid service has different tiers for subscription types. Essentially, though, the more you pay, the more people you can follow and the more files you can upload and share. The service is a lot like in a sense, but without the annoying advertisements. Plus, developers are encouraged to build apps that expand on App.net’s current framework.

App.net currently has just over 30,000 users with just a fraction using the service on a daily basis. The company says that the addition of a free tier will allow more users onto the service risk-free in order to bolster up the activity that the service gets in order, thus making App.net more appealing to possible paying members.

However, there are some obvious restrictions with free accounts on App.net, but thankfully none of them deal with advertisements. Free users will be limited to a max of 40 people to follow, and will only have access to 500MB of storage, with a max file size of 10MB. However, App.net will be giving away extra storage space to users who invite people that end up sticking around.

With PhysX Turbulence, Hawken‘s developers are going to turn the particle effects up to 11. Turbulence uses velocity fields to show particles-in-action, which will make things like health pickups, fires, and shields look even cooler in-game. The developers have teamed up with NVIDIA to launch a new trailer showing off what Turbulence is capable of in Hawken‘s world, and it can check it out below.

While you won’t be missing anything from the core gameplay experience if you don’t have PhysX (and by extension Turbulence) turned on, the feature definitely makes for some impressive visuals. In the trailer, you’ll get a side-by-side look at Hawken’s visuals with Turbulence turned off and on, and the differences are pretty obvious. If you’ve got a rig that can handle it, playing with PhysX enabled definitely seems to be the way to go.

The only problem is that Hawken doesn’t support Turbulence just yet. Though support for other PhysX features is already there, Turbulence functionality is still on the way. Adhesive Games says the feature is coming soon though, so you can bet we’ll keeping an ear to the ground for more information. Stay tuned.

Kotaku reports that this is merely an alpha release and that the game’s microtransaction system isn’t in place yet, but the game certainly is much closer to a final launch with today’s alpha roll out. Call of Duty Online is the product of a team up between Activision and Tencent, a company which among other things publishes games in China. Tencent is actually responsible for CrossFire, one of China’s more popular shooters, so it could end up cutting into its own CrossFire audience with the release of Call of Duty Online.

For the moment, Call of Duty Online will remain exclusive to China. It will almost certainly stay that way until long after the game officially launches (and leaves the testing phase behind), but if it turns out to be a success, that could mean big things for Activision and for the series in general. If Call of Duty Online takes off, then Activision will have found another way to monetize the immensely popular series beyond just releasing a new game every year and selling it at $60 per copy.

If that happens, then perhaps Activision will want to test out its Call of Duty Online strategy in other countries. So long as Call of Duty remains the best-selling franchise in the west, it’s doubtful that we’ll see a freemium online version launch in North America. However, if the model ultimately works, then it’s possible we’ll see Activision try the same thing with other, less popular franchises in North America and Europe. We’ll just have to wait and see how this whole thing plays out, but for now, just know that Call of Duty Online has entered alpha and will soon be showing us what one of the biggest franchises in the world can do when it adopts a freemium model.

At the moment, details are pretty slim, presumably because S2 Games is still assessing the extend of the attack. Players are being told to change passwords that were shared with their Heroes of Newerth account but not their actual HoN password at this time. Shortly after announcing the breach, S2 took the game offline to “fix things on the backend,” and though the game is slowly coming back now, it still doesn’t seem to be fully operational.

Those who want to get in touch with the development team are encouraged to follow Heroes of Newerth on Twitter, but throughout the day, updates have been few and far between. When you couple that with the fact that S2′s breach announcement was pretty vague, you’ve got some pretty annoyed gamers to deal with. S2 says on Twitter that “It’s simply not smart to make announcements until we have all of the important information,” so it looks like the development team is still mostly in the dark about what’s going on.

This should go without saying, but if you have any online identities that share the same password as your Heroes of Newerth account, it’s probably a good idea to change them now. Also, as stated above, you should change passwords for accounts that were linked to your Heroes of Newerth account as soon as you can. We’ll be keeping an eye on this throughout the day, so keep it here at SlashGear for more.

Those who don’t pay anything will have a full list of restrictions to deal with, and recently Damion Schubert added one more limitation to that already long list. If you’re playing for free, you’ll still be able to level your character all the way to 50, but expect it to take a little longer than if you were a monthly subscriber. That’s because Schubert says free players will earn experience at a slower rate as they play the game, though experience boosters will be available to purchase with Cartel Coins.

On the other side of the coin, those who continue to pay a monthly subscription fee after the switch will actually earn experience faster. Schubert says paying players will earn experience as if they were using these aforementioned experience boosters. He also said that paying players will be given “two more quick slot bars, a new purchasable Cargo Hold tab, and a monthly grant of Complimentary Cartel Coins,” so there are some clear benefits to remaining a paying subscriber once the free-to-play option goes live.

Finally, he pointed out that everyone who has ever paid a subscription fee will automatically become a “preferred status” player, which means that you won’t face the same limitations of free players. Free players can get preferred status by spending a total of $4.99 in the store, though Schubert reassures that free players can get to level 50 and experience what the main story has to offer without ever paying a cent. Will you be checking out Star Wars: The Old Republic when it goes free-to-play next week?

[via Eurogamer]

In fact, the only thing that free players will have full access to is story content, meaning that they’ll be able to level their character from 1-50 and experience class stories in their entirety. Aside from that, though, you’re going to have use Cartel Coins or subscribe in order to get the full Star Wars: The Old Republic experience. For instance, free players will only be able to participate in three Warzones, Flashpoints, and Space Missions each per week, and they’ll be locked out of Operations entirely. In order to do more than what’s allowed, players will need to purchase weekly passes.

Character creation will also be limited for free players, as will the number of inventory slots. Free players won’t have access to the cargo hold until they shell out the Cartel Coins needed to unlock it, and even then, the space in the cargo hold with be limited until players pay more Cartel Coins to expand it. Fast travel cooldown will be longer for free players, and they’ll only have one available Crew Skill slot, with the option to buy more slots with Cartel Coins.

While all of that is sure to make players at least mildly upset, BioWare has put in place one restriction that might make their anger boil over: free players won’t be able to equip most purple items. Sadly, if you want to equip some of the best items in the game, it looks like you’ll have to pony up for a subscription or purchase a license from the Cartel Shop. Whereas once we thought that going free-to-play would be a great idea for Star Wars: The Old Republic, after seeing all of these restrictions BioWare and Electronic Arts are placing on free players, we’re not so sure that’s the case anymore. What do you think?

The first job post in this round up calls for a Global Community Manager who has an “unhealthy passion for MOBA games,” while another is seeking a Game Character Designer who has “work experience on MOBA, Action RTS, Action RPG, or Related Genres.” Not enough evidence for you? Visceral didn’t stop there, also putting up a posting for a Lead Multiplayer Map Designer who is familiar not only with multiplayer gaming, but also with games in the action/shooter genre.

So, it seems that Visceral will soon ramp up production on a new MOBA shooter title. Electronic Arts has already hit the free-to-play scene hard, so it isn’t much of a surprise that it wants to put Visceral to work on a MOBA game. That’s especially true with all of the hype currently surrounding DOTA 2 and Blizzard All-Stars (which was formerly known as Blizzard DOTA).

Of course, we probably shouldn’t hope for this game to arrive soon, as Visceral’s first priority will be finishing up Dead Space 3, which isn’t due out until February 2013. That’s still about four months away, and Visceral may not want to get to work on this mysterious MOBA title until Dead Space 3 is finished. Then again, the studio could put these new hires to work straight away, so it might launch sooner than we’re expecting. In either case, we’ll be keeping our eyes out for more details, so keep checking back here with us at SlashGear for additional information.

That’s why the publisher will now be focusing on free-to-play, because Guillemot says that will guarantee income for the company. According to him, free-to-play will allow Ubisoft to get payments from countries where its games are pirated the most, and he continued by saying that such a transition is a way to make sure that the company gets long-term income:

It’s a way to get closer to your customers, to make sure you have a revenue. On PC it’s only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it’s only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It’s around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage. The revenue we get from the people who play is more long term, so we can continue to bring content.

Ubisoft has come under fire many times in the past for implementing DRM that forces consumers to have a constant Internet connection while playing. It’s also caught some flak for habitually releasing the PC versions of its games after the launch of the console versions, which is a trend it will be continuing with the upcoming Assassin’s Creed III. There has been no lack of negative comments directed at Ubisoft for these practices, so maybe this increased focus on free-to-play titles will mean less always-on DRM.

That 93-95% piracy rate quoted by Guillemot seems to be incredibly high, but if it’s legitimate, then it’s kind of hard to blame Ubisoft for implementing that DRM gamers hate so much. Nevermind the fact that Ubisoft would be missing out a lot of money that way, but shareholders would be on Guillemot’s case all the time, trying to get him to come up with a solution to the problem. We’ll see if this free-to-play shift ends up working out soon, as the company announced a number of new free-to-play titles at Gamescom. Stay tuned.

Madfinger announced the milestone on its Twitter account today, but it’s unclear whether this 1 million figure includes the number of purchases that took place before the free-to-play transition. Either way, 1 million downloads is still a substantial amount, especially for a small indie developer like Madfinger.

Of course, it isn’t very surprising that Dead Trigger has hit 1 million downloads. It’s a flashy FPS, and Madfinger got quite a bit of publicity when it announced that the game was going free-to-play on Android due to rampant piracy. The studio got even more attention when the game mysteriously went free-to-play on iOS, so it was the perfect combination of publicity, controversy, and the word “free” that propelled Dead Trigger to this 1 million milestone.

Madfinger has yet to divulge any Android download numbers, so perhaps it’s safe to assume Dead Trigger isn’t doing as well on Android as it is on iOS? Even if that’s the case, we imagine Madfinger is experiencing a sizable boost in Android numbers, so it seems that the switch to free-to-play was once again a winning decision. Now that the game has gone free-to-play, those who actually paid for the title will be getting a gift of 25 gold and 10 casino chips with the next update, and that bonus appears to be coming to players on all platforms. Keep it tuned to SlashGear – we’ll be sure to update you if Madfinger shares any additional details about Dead Trigger‘s newfound success!

That’s a pretty huge gain, and it isn’t hard to see why Wedbush thinks EA’s stock will skyrocket. Yesterday’s financial report was more or less in line with the company’s expectations, so it really wasn’t anything to get excited about. However, The Old Republic‘s upcoming transition to free-to-play is something to get excited about, considering that making the switch has worked wonders for other MMOs in the past, such as Lord of the Rings Online.

Speaking about The Old Republic‘s transition specifically, Michael Pachter predicts that the change to free-to-play will bring BioWare‘s game “10 million MAUs indefinitely, with upside to perhaps 50 million.” 10 million monthly users certainly isn’t anything to scoff at, but 50 million players? Apparently Pachter thinks that the Star Wars name will be able to pull players in by the boatload. That could very well happen, but The Old Republic definitely has a long way to before it can boast 50 million players.

Still, stranger things have happened before. Ultimately, Pachter and Wedbush say that the switch to free-to-play will be good for Electronic Arts and BioWare, stating that the large margins BioWare will be making on Cartel Coin sales to the game’s increased user base will bring in more money than charging $60 for the game and then hitting players up for a subscription fee every month. We’ll see if the switch was a good decision soon enough, as Star Wars: The Old Republic is set to go free-to-play this fall.

After the transition eventually happens, SWTOR will come in two different flavors: a subscription-based model and a freemium model. Those who choose to pay the monthly subscription fee will have access to all of The Old Republic‘s of features, and will be getting a monthly Cartel Coin bonus. Cartel Coins are BioWare’s funny money for The Old Republic, as they allow users to buy “customizable gear and convenience features” from the new Cartel Store. Free-to-play users will be able to play all of The Old Republic‘s 8 classes to level 50, but there will be a few restrictions that can be removed through microtransactions.

Current and former subscribers will get 150 Cartel Coins for each month they paid the subscription fee, so if you were planning to return to The Old Republic once it went free-to-play, you might want to consider jumping back in before the transition happens. BioWare also says that starting in August, the game will be sporting a new $14.99 price tag, allowing users to get in on the cheap before the switch. BioWare has launched an FAQ that answers many more questions about the transition to free-to-play, so if you’re currently subscribed, we recommend that you give it a look.

Making the switch the free-to-play has worked wonders for many MMOs in the past, and we expect that The Old Republic‘s popularity will skyrocket once the change is implemented. BioWare and Electronic Arts stand to make a lot of money if the transition is successful, which begs the question of why this didn’t happen back in February, when user numbers started making a sharp decline. It was probably pride that made them resist, but once the transition actually occurs, we have a feeling that both companies will wish they had bitten the bullet sooner.

FreedomPop is said to have signed a deal with the Now Network that would make use of 3G and 4G services later on in the year. The company plans to offer an iPhone case that will have WiMAX, LTE, and CDMA radios for the best possible coverage. As the licensor’s LTE network becomes more robust in 2013, FreedomPop will begin to phase out the WiMAX radios and rely primarily on LTE.

500MB of free LTE access every month doesn’t sound so terrible. More data can be acquired too, with FreedomPop hoping users will leverage social networks to promote the brand and earn up to 1GB of access. FreedomPop customers can also transfer data between each other’s accounts if they’re feeling particularly generous. Even if you go over the free limit, data can be purchased outright as normal at one cent per megabyte.

This game was originally launched all the way back in 1999 and has claimed the highschool careers of many midwesterners, not to mention vast packs of college students from around the world even through the release of the second edition – called EverQuest II, of all things. This game joins its second edition in free-to-play-dom now along with DC Universe Online as well, this model sitting next to pay-to-play enhanced editions appearing to work quite well for gaming companies. While there may now be masses of players looking to get in on the fun for absolutely no cost at all, the server hosts that make playing this game online with others possible has got to get paid – so the payment model will remain in-tact for the time being.

If you’d like to join in on this newly minted GDC Online Awards Hall of Fame entrant this week, you can simply head on over to http://everquest.station.sony.com/free/ and get down to business. This should keep you busy enough while you wait for the 15th of May when you’ll be wanting to head on over to Blizzard Entertainment to play Diablo III. The Diablo series of MMORPGs has and we hope will continue to always be free to play online – and we’ve been waiting 10+ years for that as well!

Time to bring the greatness back to epic online game playing!

The game switched to the free-to-play (or “freemium”) model in June 2011, and the very next month revenue shot up 12-fold, the company said at a Game Developers Conference panel. In addition, sales of in-game items alone was four times greater than previous revenue earned from game purchases. If that’s not a resounding infomercial for freemium games, we don’t know what is.

The freemium model has become the de facto way to monetize online games these days. In fact, in the world of apps, the freemium model has exploded among games that are mainly played offline as well. Because of the ubiquitous nature of broadband connectivity, the hard part is no longer getting a game into someone’s hands. That’s easy. So by pulling players into the experience and getting them hooked, the lifetime value of a game is increased significantly.

[via Eurogamer]

Dust 514 was built on the freemium model, which means that players can download and play the game for free, but as they progress and want new items or expanded feature sets, that’s the point at which they’ll need to start forking over some cash. The price that would have been charged, around $10 to $20, would have been immediately converted into in-game currency, so gamers weren’t actually paying for the download but were forced into investing at least some money in the experience.

In an interview with Eurogamer, CCP executive producer Brandon Laurino was quoted as sayin, “It was a relatively confusing proposition and we wanted to make it unambiguously that this a free-to-play game” (sic). The freemium model has become increasingly adopted in the world of digital downloads, where getting consumers to actually own a new product is simple and as such, there’s no need to charge a price at the outset. Some studies have suggested that freemium games actually earn more money than games that charge a small price but have no in-game transactions.

[via Eurogamer]