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lordkensal
Founder
Founder

Stadia Need a FREE game - no commitment/ no cc details/ no free signup to Pro option

I posted this in response to another section - but thought it would make a good topic.

You can see my post here

Basically, if Stadia could offer 1 big Free to Play (FTP) - no credit card commitment or sign up to free trial of Pro. It would really help emphasize that STADIA IS FREE.  I still see articles erroneously spouting that "you have to sub to Stadia AND buy the games" .. even though that is not the case and says as much on the Stadia marketing blurb ....

A big FTP game - to try - no commitment, would really bring that STADIA is free to the forefront. As when it comes to value proposition - this is so oft-overlooked with Stadia.

It could be a game from Stadia Entertainment (or 1st party) or a deal with big FTP where Stadia get a small cut of the microtransactions to cover server costs) ... win/win for Stadia/Publisher. [Read my original post where I break it down]

15 Kudos
21 Replies
LordVivec
Founder
Founder

I agree with this completely, something to remove essentially all friction to playing on Stadia.  We know it works, that is why we are here.  But the wider audience (I do understand that that specific audience may not be Google's intended audience) is just seeing parroted sound bites that for the most part are not accurate.  

2 Kudos
JXR
Founder
Founder

I agree, this would help tremendously. I see confusion quite a bit on the reddit feed about whether it's free or not and what pro means.

I think along side what you said these free weekends are going to be a huge helper however i also believe (correct me if mistaken) you require pro for them which is still tough to reach the FTP market

1 Kudo
AmunRa
Founder
Founder

Naild it :index_pointing_up::index_pointing_up::index_pointing_up:

1 Kudo
AmunRa
Founder
Founder

And i can say that also these free weekends will bring new Players, a colleage tryed the free Weekend and gets himself the first Month Pro Trial. He is blown from the speed that Stadia has when you start a Game. He said today to me: If i keep Pro i cant say but to buy upcoming games on Stadia i will keep it and play them in Stadia without downloading anything and a super Speed while the game Starts. And he plays normaly in Xbox or PC :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:

This is it....once the ppl tested Stadia they are overwhelmd from the system

 

1 Kudo
IrnBru
Founder
Founder

FTP games like Fortnite, Apex, Warzone, Hyperscape, Destiny 2, Rocket League, L4D2 would fit really well for this and i don't really understand why games like PUBG are locked behind Pro. I get that on consoles you pay your online subscription and it's never really free, but that's not the case on PC.

3 Kudos
Beachy
Founder
Founder

Walling FTP games behind a Pro subscription drives me nuts.

0 Kudos
Schauschau
Founder
Founder

A free game or a game that use the Hardware to Show : This would be possipble! And a great looking game would move people to the Plattform and rise the pressure to the publisher

1 Kudo
MisterMarcoo
Founder
Founder

yes totally true, before I bought the Founders I thought D2 was completely free, but it isn't. No problem: I keep on paying and playing. However, since there is no other F2P game like Fortnite, it's harder to really sell this to the masses I think. Game streaming is new and "scary" for a lot of people: give em one 100% free game and let them enjoy!

Roses are red, Gaming is fun. You are carrying too much, to be able to run!
1 Kudo
Matty
Founder
Founder

Yeah, they should get F2P game, it could really help Stadia! Other than that it needs a famous youtuber to sponsor that game and maybe a special skin only on Stadia or something like that.

ps. Stadia always gets a cut of MTX if there is any.

1 Kudo
Deleted User
Not applicable

Would indeed be an attractive introduction to the platform.

1 Kudo
DarthTater
Founder
Founder

Stadia gives free hardware and free games. How does Stadia GUARANTEE it will make money from all users in this case?

I have played many FTP and I never pay for any extras on the games because I am cheap. But I do have to buy the console or PC to play them on myself.

Also If no credit card is needed then how do you expect Stadia to make any money off of users.

4 Kudos
VitaminJ
Founder
Founder

It basically comes down to a numbers game.  A certain percentage of users of free-to-play games do buy premium content.  You may not be one of them but the more people who play a game the larger the number of people who are buying premium content.

It would also offer Stadia a low-friction way to attract new people to the platform since the cost to entry would effectively be zero.  When those folks see that Stadia works they are now more likely to buy a game or maybe even a Pro subscription if they really love it.

Either way, as a marketing tool, I don't see how it could do anything but good for the platform.

1 Kudo
DarthTater
Founder
Founder

I understand exactly where he is coming from. I also understand that enough people buy extras on FTP games to make it profitable.

However everyone is forgetting how Stadia works. Google has a very finite amount of Stadia instances. It also needs to make revenue off every user and not just an average across all users.

Consoles, PC, phones/tablets make money off of the hardware so users are managed by the expense of the hardware. The dev can develop on these and share some revenue on certain platforms. Once hardware is sold to the user there is not more maintaining from MS, Sony, Nintendo, and so on. So they manufacture as many as they can project sales for.

Stadia manages this by requiring revenue after a trial period to play games. Devs can develop on Stadia and share revenue but Google will always have a limited amount of Stadia instances. If too many users are online at once then we start getting queues. GFN does this but I have yet to wait long enough to play on the free tier on GFN and it is limited to 1 hour.

0 Kudos
IrnBru
Founder
Founder

You don't need to make money from every single user, you just need to make enough money from paying users to cover the costs of running the service for everyone + profit.

0 Kudos
lordkensal
Founder
Founder

It's a loss leader (can be covered under the marketing budget) - Epic of based their whole business model on basis that, no, not everyone buys a skin ...but enough do. Give 'em taste, and if the product is good enough - reel 'em in....

 

1 Kudo
Fafner
Founder
Founder

You can play adds when you start the free game. Maybe you are still faster in the game then on the pc. 🤪

0 Kudos
VitaminJ
Founder
Founder

I couldn't agree more with your sentiment.

I'd like to suggest the following as possible Free-to-Play games as I'd personally love to see both on Stadia.

  • Path of Exile
  • Killingfloor 2
1 Kudo
Chupacabra
Founder
Founder

I definitely agree- but there is a lot of work that would go into making this safe for the community!  Think of this situation:

You want a totally 100% no-strings-attached free game.  But some of those strings, like CC details, or even just creating an account, are some layers of protection from attacks against Stadia and the servers.  If you offered a way for people to just click a link and play a game directly in the browser, and it was a full, free, multiplayer game, someone would most definitely find a way to DDoS the entire network, trying to take down all of Stadia's server farms by completely overloading it with millions of connection requests.

I know it's a pipe dream to think that you could link your friend a URL and they just click it, and go into a game with you, but the steps of setting up an account, registering it with at least an email address, that goes a long way to providing security and stability for the entire platform.

That being said, I would ABSOLUTELY love to see the sign-up process streamlined, and would love to see a shift from "give us your CC info you're subscribed to Pro now!!" and more of a focus on "hey welcome to Stadia try out these free games and if you want more after 30 days just pop in your CC info and you'll get more :)".  I think a lot of folks would be happy to sign up, if all they had to do was pop in their gmail account, make a password, and accept a short 1-page intro and then bam, they could enter games with friends.

0 Kudos
____
Founder
Founder

I think most people already have Google accounts that they can use when they click on a link.

As long as a google account is required, I don’t think Google would need to worry about a DDoS attack.  A CC number wold be great further variation.  No charges needed.

2 Kudos
GraceFromGoogle
Community Member

Hey @lordkensal friendly reminder that this is not a Founders-specific support forum and all support inquiries (including specific feature requests) should be directed towards the main forum. I'll be moving this post out of the Founders Hub to give all Stadia Community members the opportunity to chime in.

Thanks for understanding. 

1 Kudo
Caleb08
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

 
0 Kudos