Free-to-play monetisation has barely changed in ten years

September 27, 2026 — Notes, Game Development

In 2016, Torulf Jernström gave a talk called Let's Go Whaling: Tricks for Monetising Mobile Game Players With Free-to-Play. It is a remarkably direct presentation about using behavioural psychology to make players spend money.

There is no euphemistic language about delighting players or creating value. The talk opens with whales, moves through loss aversion, anchoring, scarcity and social proof, and ends with a recommendation to make games less dependent on skill so that paying becomes a legitimate way to progress.

Nearly ten years later, the slides look dated. The playbook does not.

Start with the whales

The first point is also the premise behind the title: a large part of free-to-play revenue comes from a small group of high spenders, commonly called whales.

Jernström argues that the best way to monetise them is to put two wealthy, competitive players against each other and sell each of them a small advantage. The purchase is no longer evaluated in isolation. It becomes part of an ongoing competition in which every advantage bought by one player creates pressure on the other.

This is why competitive monetisation has such a high ceiling. A cosmetic has a fixed price. A rivalry has no natural endpoint.

But there is a fragile balance. If the advantage is too obvious, everyone else concludes that the game is pay-to-win and leaves. The ideal commercial design is therefore not necessarily a fair game. It is a game in which paid advantages are strong enough to matter but ambiguous enough to defend.

Build an economy large enough to hide the price

The next recommendation is to create an in-game economy worth tens of thousands of euros. This does not mean that a player is expected to buy all of it. The size of the economy creates a reference frame in which almost any individual offer can appear cheap.

If an upgrade is notionally worth EUR 150, selling it for EUR 5 looks generous. That comparison only works because the developer also controls the original price, the exchange rate, the supply and the meaning of the item.

Virtual currencies make the comparison even harder. A pack of 1,200 gems costs one amount, an item costs 800 gems, and the player is left with 400. The real price becomes less visible, while the remainder encourages another purchase.

The economy is doing more than supporting gameplay. It is also constructing the context in which prices feel reasonable.

Sell progress, not just cosmetics

The talk uses the four Bartle player types as a monetisation map:

  • sell faster progress to achievers;
  • sell customisation to socialisers;
  • sell competitive advantage to killers;
  • sell content to explorers.

Jernström expects most revenue to come from progress. Cosmetics are safe but limited. Competitive advantages are profitable but can destabilise the game. Content is expensive to produce faster than players consume it. Progress, by contrast, can be stretched almost indefinitely.

This leads to one of the central tensions in free-to-play design: the developer controls both the inconvenience and the product that removes it.

A long timer may be a meaningful pacing mechanic. It may also exist because skipping it is for sale. Inventory limits may create interesting decisions, or they may make an upgrade feel compulsory. The interface can look identical in both cases. The difference is whether the friction improves the game or mainly improves conversion.

Hook, habit, hobby

The talk divides a player's relationship with a game into three stages.

The hook gets someone through the door. This is where the game presents an "icebreaker" purchase: a starter pack with so much apparent value that refusing it feels irrational. The immediate revenue is less important than changing the player's identity from "someone who never pays in games" to "someone who has paid in this game".

The habit is the repeatable middle of the game. The player returns several times a day and pays for convenience or faster progress.

The hobby is the late stage. Progression may already be exhausted, so the game sells consumables with no upper spending limit: faster healing, instant army creation, repeated event entries or whatever the endgame loop consumes.

The important insight is that the store does not offer the same thing to everyone. It evolves with the player's commitment.

Random rewards are content multipliers

The talk then moves to gacha systems: pay for a random item and repeat until the desired one appears.

Randomness does two jobs. Variable rewards make each opening emotionally charged, and duplicates extend the time or money required to complete a collection. If players could directly purchase exactly what they wanted, they would finish sooner and spend more predictably.

This mechanic did not disappear. It became more structured. Modern games may disclose probabilities, guarantee a high-rarity reward after a number of attempts, carry progress between banners or let players exchange duplicates. These "pity" systems reduce the worst outcomes, but they also make continued spending easier to justify: stopping now would waste the progress already accumulated.

Transparency helps, but knowing that an item has a 1% chance does not necessarily make the decision intuitive. Most players still do not translate that into the likely cost of obtaining a specific reward.

Sell in the hot state

One of the most practical recommendations is to ask for money when the player wants an immediate result.

A permanent coin multiplier requires calculation: How often will I play? How much value will it create? Is it worth the price?

A "continue" button shown seconds after losing requires almost none. The player is already emotionally invested and can instantly remove the frustration. The analytical decision has been replaced by a reaction.

Loss aversion makes this stronger. People tend to value avoiding a loss more than receiving an equivalent gain. A game can therefore let players collect rewards during a level, then threaten to remove them after failure unless they pay to continue.

The player is not buying a future reward. They are paying to keep something that already feels like theirs.

Turn retention into pressure

Several techniques in the talk connect monetisation and retention:

  • Scarcity: an offer or item disappears soon.
  • The IKEA effect: players value things more after investing effort into them.
  • The Hook model: trigger, action, variable reward and investment create a repeatable loop.
  • Anchoring: an expensive first offer makes later prices look reasonable.
  • Social proof: showing that friends or clan members spend makes spending feel normal.
  • Availability bias: broadcasting rare wins makes those outcomes feel more common than they are.
  • Choice architecture: a small, curated set of offers converts better than an overwhelming shop.

None of these ideas is exclusive to games. They are familiar parts of behavioural economics, advertising and product design. Games are unusually effective at combining them because they control the economy, timing, social environment and emotional state in which the offer appears.

The talk's most revealing recommendation is to route the core loop through the store. Play, receive resources, see upgrades, encounter a shortage, spend, then play again. The shop stops being a separate destination and becomes part of how the game is understood.

What changed after 2016

The underlying psychology stayed the same, but the delivery became more sophisticated.

Battle passes packaged several techniques together

A battle pass combines progression, scarcity, investment and loss aversion. Players pay first, then must continue playing to claim everything they bought access to. A visible premium track repeatedly shows the rewards they could have earned, while the season deadline makes unfinished progress temporary.

It is often more predictable than a loot box and can provide good value to an active player. It can also turn leisure into an obligation. The same design contains both interpretations.

Live operations made scarcity continuous

Limited events once appeared occasionally. Modern live-service games can run overlapping calendars of seasons, tournaments, collaborations, rotating shops and event-specific passes.

This solves the old content problem by recombining systems and rewards rather than relying only on permanent new levels. It also ensures that there is nearly always something about to end.

Offers became segmented

The 2016 talk discusses different player types. Modern analytics can segment players by behaviour: progression speed, purchase history, session frequency, churn risk and response to previous offers.

Two players no longer need to see the same shop. A game can present the right bundle at the moment each player is most likely to accept it. Machine learning can make this targeting more precise, although the basic idea is still the same old one: learn which pressure works on which person.

Monetisation became hybrid

Many games no longer choose between advertising and in-app purchases. They combine them.

Rewarded ads are the most interesting example because the player opts in and receives something useful. But they can still affect the design around them. If watching an advert doubles a reward, the original reward may quietly be balanced to feel incomplete.

Subscriptions, battle passes, consumables, cosmetics, random rewards and advertising can now coexist in the same product. Instead of one conversion funnel, there is a ladder of ways to pay with money, time, attention or social participation.

The counter-pressure also grew

The industry is not operating under the same level of scrutiny it faced in 2016.

Apple requires apps selling loot boxes or other randomised virtual items to disclose the odds before purchase. UK guidance calls for parental approval for purchases by children, accessible spending controls and transparent information. In the United States, the FTC's case against Epic Games resulted in a USD 245 million settlement over allegedly deceptive interfaces and unwanted Fortnite charges.

These changes target specific implementations rather than the complete behavioural playbook. A timer can still create urgency. A battle pass can still exploit sunk cost. A virtual currency can still obscure prices. A disclosed probability can still be difficult to reason about.

Regulation can prohibit the clearest abuses. It cannot decide whether every moment of friction serves the player or the payment screen.

A more useful line than "ethical" versus "predatory"

It is tempting to sort mechanics into two lists: good and bad. Reality is less convenient.

Scarcity can make a world feel alive. It can also manufacture anxiety. Random rewards can create surprise without involving money. A progression boost can let a busy adult catch up, or let a wealthy player dominate. Social proof can celebrate community support, or pressure everyone else to spend.

The better questions are about control and consequences:

  • Is the real price easy to understand?
  • Can players buy the item directly?
  • Is there a meaningful spending limit?
  • Does paying remove inconvenience deliberately added to the game?
  • Is the offer presented during frustration or excitement?
  • Can a player take a break without losing something they paid for?
  • Does spending affect competition?
  • Would the mechanic still be enjoyable without the purchase attached?

The same psychological knowledge can be used to improve a product or to weaken a player's resistance. The mechanic alone does not tell us which one is happening, but the answers to these questions usually do.

Ten years later

Let's Go Whaling remains useful because it says the quiet part out loud. It shows that monetisation is not a shop added after game design. It can shape the progression curve, difficulty, economy, social systems, interface and even the emotions a game tries to produce.

The talk is not a complete description of modern free-to-play design. Battle passes, live operations, subscriptions, rewarded advertising and personalised offers changed how the techniques are packaged. Platform policies and regulators placed some boundaries around their most aggressive forms.

But the foundation is almost untouched: create investment, introduce friction, present relief at the right moment and make spending feel normal.

Once you recognise that loop, it becomes difficult not to see it.

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