The gaming industry fortunately figured out awhile ago that P2W mechanics in non-mobile games won't fly. (which is why Star Wars: Battlefront II got amazing backlash when they tried to sneak it in)

Of course there are games that already have proven this, most notably League of Legends (which is also mentioned in the article).

I'm thinking candy crush was pre-league of legends. It brought in $1B revenue for 2018, which is the highest ever and still growing.

Wow I had to look this up. Didn't know it was so big still.

https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/candy-crush-saga-1-bill...

League of Legends has been around since 2009, versus Candy Crush Saga in 2012.

Dota2, CS:GO, team fortress 2

Don't you need to pay for "champs" in LoL? That sounds very P2W to me.

All champions, including the free ones on rotation, are balanced with each other (in theory); there is no real-money-only-champion with blatantly-boosted stats as is often in more P2W variants.

See Jarwain's comment in a sister thread.

Champions buy you playstyle, not straight advantage. At best, they give you options - but by the time you have played enough that a reasonably varied roster improves your chances to win, you have earned plenty to afford a varied roster. If you pay for hero it's because you want that hero, not because you need it.

You do, but the points needed to buy a new champ (I believe it's 6,300 IP) doesn't take too long to get.

Getting down-voted by LoL fanboys is pretty funny.

Riot is notorious for releasing new heroes that are behind a paywall and that are overpowered.

Huh? LoL is blatantly P2W, they sell two kinds of in-game advantages.

What are those?

Heroes. A good hero selection is p2w because you may not have a reasonable counter to xyz enemy. They used to sell Runes too (I believe an update made this invalid). Of course, you can get all this stuff for free just by playing 100s of hours, if you have the time/will.

Champion advantages can be mitigated with playstyle and itemization. You can do well in League without having too many characters; Champs aren't hard counters to each other in the same way Dota heroes can be. Buying a certain champion is no guarantee of victory, especially if you don't play them well. Skill plays a much larger role than the champ you play.

As for runes, IIRC you couldn't buy them with the paid currency, Only with the currency earned from playing. It's a moot point since they merged runes and masteries anyways.

It's true that this disadvantage can be mitigated but we should be clear. Riot does limit your play style if you choose not to pay (or grind to get certain champions).

You don't have the same pool of characters as other players who've chosen to pay for their favorite champions and this is clearly a disadvantage.

This is different from games like, say, Overwatch, where the entire hero pool is available to everyone (different game, sure but the point stands).

Steam has been doing this for awhile. CS:GO, DotA2, etc come to mind.

Steam is a product, Valve is the company.

TF2 was arguably Valve’s first testbed in this space.

TF2 was their first major release that was free-to-play with purchasable cosmetic items, but their games have never been pay-to-win. They were historically pay-once-to-own, free to continue playing.

Tf2 is somewhat pay to win. You can buy additional weapons with different stats or abilities.

Sounds like you haven’t played it much.

Firstly, stock weapons are typically the strongest among each class.

Secondly, you can get every item in the game without spending a dime via one of the following: 1) the drop system, 2) the crafting system, or 3) trading.

> Firstly, stock weapons are typically the strongest among each class.

While this is partially true, there's also a large set of items that are straight upgrades especially in competitive. The Cruisader's Crossbow, Ubersaw, Escape Plan and Gunboats are just a few examples of completely superior weapons and while their usage in casual isn't as wide spread you'd be hard pressed to find to find a serious competitive match where these aren't all being preferred.

There are also an assortment of weapons that are banned by competitive leagues because they practically break 6v6 gameplay. A good example is the wrangler + Rescue Ranger combo. With a good engineer it makes it practically impossible to kill a sentry.

I still agree with you that this doesn't make TF2 PTW for the other reasons you've listed, but it's occasionally been a problem in competitive when players don't have the "required" unlocks or the item servers are down.

I have about 250 hours in it, but I stopped playing in 2013. At the time, I found the drop system to be pretty unrewarding unless you paid for keys (or just bought what you want). Has it changed since then?

Yes, it has changed a lot since then. Most significantly, Valve did a ton of re-balancing, making stock weapons even more viable in regular play.

Not sure where I mentioned it being pay-to-win? I put ~1500 hours into TF2...

> Hopefully this shows others that you can make successful games without pay to win mechanics.

Overwatch also has zero pay-to-win mechanics.

I want to like overwatch, I really do, but on my Ubuntu system with an AMD RX 550, it just lags, and lags, and lags. The other modes all work fine. I'm hoping it just needs some updates..

WoT proved it 8 years ago.

World of Tanks? It was definitely pay to skip the grind.

Well, duh. It's a completely different model than pay 2 win.