Does Free to Premium work?

[Jontia]

I see a lot of new games coming through at the moment that are initially freely available and then move over to premium.

Is this working as a strategy to convert people over to premium memberships more than just heading straight to premium? Is there a huge downtick in the games played when the categorisation switches?

[Kayvon]

Nothing so conspiratorial from BGA itself. Individual publishers have latitude to choose which of their games are premium and which are free.

[JoysFriend]

Nothing so conspiratorial from BGA itself. Individual publishers have latitude to choose which of their games are premium and which are free.

Why? How does this benefit or harm individual publishers? Why should they care? Do pennies of the premium go to them?

With, what, 600+ games?, I can't see any individual publisher could get enough of the premium fees to make a difference.

[Kayvon]

Yes, publishers get a share of the membership fees based on how much playtime their premium games have.

[Tisaac]

Nothing so conspiratorial from BGA itself. Individual publishers have latitude to choose which of their games are premium and which are free.

Why? How does this benefit or harm individual publishers? Why should they care? Do pennies of the premium go to them?

With, what, 600+ games?, I can't see any individual publisher could get enough of the premium fees to make a difference.

You are forgetting the huge number of premium players. I mean even if only 100 000 players are premium, that's more 2M€ to share amont bga and publisher, so even if your game only has 0.10% of premium audience, it can represents somethink like 1000€ per year, not really negligible for small publishers (and of course the higher the audience, the higher the gain).
And there are probably even more than 100k premium players.

[ChiefPointThief]

Nothing so conspiratorial from BGA itself. Individual publishers have latitude to choose which of their games are premium and which are free.

Why? How does this benefit or harm individual publishers? Why should they care? Do pennies of the premium go to them?

With, what, 600+ games?, I can't see any individual publisher could get enough of the premium fees to make a difference.

You are forgetting the huge number of premium players. I mean even if only 100 000 players are premium, that's more 2M€ to share amont bga and publisher, so even if your game only has 0.10% of premium audience, it can represents somethink like 1000€ per year, not really negligible for small publishers (and of course the higher the audience, the higher the gain).
And there are probably even more than 100k premium players.

I don't think I'm exactly following your numbers but I have also wondered if it's in the best interest for certain games to go premium. Some games are doing this before they even get a player base (like for the king & me which ended up being pulled from the platform). Isn't the premium revenue split based on time spent playing the game? The top 4 premium games by time spent are ark nova, catan, wingspan, and azul. Azul and ark nova get over 750,000 games a month alone. I've recently discovered rest in peace which is premium. This game has now been here for exactly 3yrs and only has a total of 18,000 games played (about 17 games a day but nowadays only about 40 a month). Which means even if the revenue was split only between azul and rest in peace (their are still 181 other premium games) rip would receive .007% (of an annual revenue that would be $140 if the annual rev was 2M). They would make more profit if their game was non premium and they sold 1 more physical copy per year.

[SiRan90]

Why? How does this benefit or harm individual publishers? Why should they care? Do pennies of the premium go to them?

With, what, 600+ games?, I can't see any individual publisher could get enough of the premium fees to make a difference.

You are forgetting the huge number of premium players. I mean even if only 100 000 players are premium, that's more 2M€ to share amont bga and publisher, so even if your game only has 0.10% of premium audience, it can represents somethink like 1000€ per year, not really negligible for small publishers (and of course the higher the audience, the higher the gain).
And there are probably even more than 100k premium players.

I don't think I'm exactly following your numbers but I have also wondered if it's in the best interest for certain games to go premium. Some games are doing this before they even get a player base (like for the king & me which ended up being pulled from the platform). Isn't the premium revenue split based on time spent playing the game? The top 4 premium games by time spent are ark nova, catan, wingspan, and azul. Azul and ark nova get over 750,000 games a month alone. I've recently discovered rest in peace which is premium. This game has now been here for exactly 3yrs and only has a total of 18,000 games played (about 17 games a day but nowadays only about 40 a month). Which means even if the revenue was split only between azul and rest in peace (their are still 181 other premium games) rip would receive .007% (of an annual revenue that would be $140 if the annual rev was 2M). They would make more profit if their game was non premium and they sold 1 more physical copy per year.

That's the publishers decision to make though. Just because a game is free doesn't necessarily mean the player base will increase or that people will be more willing to buy a physical copy.

[Tisaac]

Why? How does this benefit or harm individual publishers? Why should they care? Do pennies of the premium go to them?

With, what, 600+ games?, I can't see any individual publisher could get enough of the premium fees to make a difference.

You are forgetting the huge number of premium players. I mean even if only 100 000 players are premium, that's more 2M€ to share amont bga and publisher, so even if your game only has 0.10% of premium audience, it can represents somethink like 1000€ per year, not really negligible for small publishers (and of course the higher the audience, the higher the gain).
And there are probably even more than 100k premium players.

I don't think I'm exactly following your numbers but I have also wondered if it's in the best interest for certain games to go premium. Some games are doing this before they even get a player base (like for the king & me which ended up being pulled from the platform). Isn't the premium revenue split based on time spent playing the game? The top 4 premium games by time spent are ark nova, catan, wingspan, and azul. Azul and ark nova get over 750,000 games a month alone. I've recently discovered rest in peace which is premium. This game has now been here for exactly 3yrs and only has a total of 18,000 games played (about 17 games a day but nowadays only about 40 a month). Which means even if the revenue was split only between azul and rest in peace (their are still 181 other premium games) rip would receive .007% (of an annual revenue that would be $140 if the annual rev was 2M). They would make more profit if their game was non premium and they sold 1 more physical copy per year.

Yeah audience is based on time spent so it's probably something completely negligible for RIP. Probably money was not the top argument for them to make that choice then, but I would say that in general this is still the main reason.

[ChiefPointThief]

You are forgetting the huge number of premium players. I mean even if only 100 000 players are premium, that's more 2M€ to share amont bga and publisher, so even if your game only has 0.10% of premium audience, it can represents somethink like 1000€ per year, not really negligible for small publishers (and of course the higher the audience, the higher the gain).
And there are probably even more than 100k premium players.

I don't think I'm exactly following your numbers but I have also wondered if it's in the best interest for certain games to go premium. Some games are doing this before they even get a player base (like for the king & me which ended up being pulled from the platform). Isn't the premium revenue split based on time spent playing the game? The top 4 premium games by time spent are ark nova, catan, wingspan, and azul. Azul and ark nova get over 750,000 games a month alone. I've recently discovered rest in peace which is premium. This game has now been here for exactly 3yrs and only has a total of 18,000 games played (about 17 games a day but nowadays only about 40 a month). Which means even if the revenue was split only between azul and rest in peace (their are still 181 other premium games) rip would receive .007% (of an annual revenue that would be $140 if the annual rev was 2M). They would make more profit if their game was non premium and they sold 1 more physical copy per year.

That's the publishers decision to make though. Just because a game is free doesn't necessarily mean the player base will increase or that people will be more willing to buy a physical copy.

I understand that it is the publishers decision but my question was is it the right decision for some less popular games. Even if they initially thought it was the right decision at the time a game like rest in peace should probably revert it back to free. Samarkand is far worse. 2400 games in 2 1/2 years. It's also still in beta. Rough math but considering rip has 7x more games then samarkand would make $20 out of 2M revenue if just split between it and azul. So when you counter in the other 181 premium games they are literally making no money. Why not make your game more accessible to the entire player base? Also you're welcome for the plugs

I did find these games last month because I searched premium games so I guess there is that. But labeling and suggestions based on player preferences could help some of these lesser none games a lot.