How Path of Exile Makes Money
Path of Exile has been one of the most popular free-to-play games for quite some time now. For 6 whole years now, the game has managed to remain as one of the premier action-RPG's on the market, but one question seems to crop up more often than not. How in the world do the developers make any money when it comes to Path of Exile? If you didn't already know, the only microtransactions in the game are entirely cosmetic and prevent the player from managing any sort of pay-to-win scenario. This is something that the developers have been doing ever since the conception of the game, but with that lack of availability with the microtransactions, how do they make any money with this game?
Considering that the only thing players can buy in this game is cosmetics, it should come as a surprise that people use that system, should it not? Well, in actual fact, a lot of people have put a fair amount of money into the cosmetic microtransactions for this game, and the number only proceeds to grow every single time they release new items into the game. There are a vast number of players in this game who fall into one of two separate camps: the one's who wish to support the developers and the game, and those who simply just want some awesome cosmetic, but end up supporting the developers all the same.
For the first of the two camps, they're happy to put money into the game when they feel the need to help keep the game's servers up and running and keep the developers doing what they love, without necessarily falling in love with a certain cosmetic. On the other camp, however, they will pick and choose exactly the cosmetics that take their fancy and will more or less purchase anything, providing it's of great design and worth the price. Of course, some players will buy currency. Just like any game, not all of the cosmetics in this title are worth your money, but a lot of the cosmetic items look great and can really differentiate you from other players, especially ones that haven't spent money on the game. This means that anyone who is willing to pay for cosmetics will have a truly unique character, one that a lot of people don't get to see or appreciate.
While Path of Exile could definitely put in more in their in-game store to make money, cosmetics clearly does more than enough to keep the game up and running for over 6 years at this point now. The fact that the game is still up and running just goes to show that Grinding Gear Games knows what they're doing with their free-to-play title and they earn every single penny they've ever made with this game, even if they do it in a completely different way than some other games.
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