Comments on: Top 10 Free to Play Publishers

By: Mikey

Mikey — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 02:37:08 +0000

Some of these companies only have 1-3 very successful games. I’m surprised Disney made it on this list but I guess they do make F2P games that target young kids. I don’t think they make as much for their free to play games though.

I think IGG should’ve been listed here.

By: T=Machine » GDC09: Online Games: Europe Challenges

T=Machine » GDC09: Online Games: Europe Challenges — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 06:28:14 +0000

[...] it’s interesting to compare this to my F2P.biz article from last year, which picked out 10 of the top free to play publishers worldwide, and note that 3 of them re-appear on this list. It underlines the strenght Europe has in F2P, [...]

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 10:38:05 +0000

Hi Adam,

How do you differentiate between Publisher and Operator?

Steve

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:25:48 +0000

YNK
Gala-Net
K2 Networks

The Korean F2P are the strongest for now.

By: Zills

Zills — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 01:53:15 +0000

Runescape is the #1 f2p game not those loser games… Runescape has 15 MILLION active free users, 135,000,000 + accounts created, 23 skills, and 100+ quests. Some people have been playing since the beginning (2001) and they have not finished the game yet. This game is looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong

By: Maxim Predtechenskiy

Maxim Predtechenskiy — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 10:08:30 +0000

“That ARPU figure stands out for being around 50% higher than most other operators.”

I guess that covers only Chinese operators. The reason is that the GDP per capita in China is considerably low (~5000 USD). An ARPU of over $40 a month is common in richer countries like South Korea or Russian Federation. We personally treat an ARPU of under $40 as “low”. “Decent” ARPU for us floats around $50-$70.

By: Anatoly Ropotov

Anatoly Ropotov — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 20:45:20 +0000

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/china-online-gaming-market-hits-645-million-in-q2

Either do it right, or don’t mix everything… You can’t make worldwide F2P overview in few paragraphs.

There are publishers, developers and operators. Each of them mix & matches their duties, by sublicensing, licensing in, licensing out in different territories.
There is value for non-IPO dudes, market cap (for those gone through IPO) and revenues.

There are different delivery methods: downloadable games, persistent browser based games (astrum online/bigpoint/gameforge), thin clients (Java/ActiveX)

There are different biz models – f2p, subscription, ads, activation that could be mix & matched: _ads_ on the site, _trial_ up to level 10, _subscribe_ to unlock further and remove ads, _pay_ more to get more money.

This post could only be called “some random companies”. Writing a decent industry overview or region analytics takes many sleepless weeks of filtering based on facts, not assumptions.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:06:10 +0000

HanbitSoft was recently purchased by T3.

Frogster is an operator, not a publisher, based on their interaction with the developers.

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:01:19 +0000

Mary – some good points which I agree with.
I would like to discuss this more but cannot get your email from the system. Perhaps you would be as kind as to contact me at phil [at] psfei [dot] co [dot] uk?
Thanks

By: Adam Martin

Adam Martin — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:42:45 +0000

Thanks for the information, especially on HanbitSoft’s chequered past. A couple of things spring to mind:

Gravity – my understanding was that GungHo (http://www.gungho.co.jp/english/) is a Japanese conglomerate that owns a publisher, called Gravity, that owns a South Korean developer, also called Gravity (c.f. http://www.gungho.co.jp/english/about/group.php). Perhaps I should have listed them as GungHo instead of as Gravity, or put both names side by side?

NCsoft – all the games you list apart from one are subscriptions, and the one that isn’t is a retail boxed product. None of them are F2P. Having worked at NCsoft for a couple of years, I can confirm they are not an F2P publisher, hence they are not included in this list.

Any more info you can share on companies missing from the list etc will be greatly appreciated, thanks!