I ask this because my friends and I got into a debate recently. My friend and I both agree that playing the free game but not spending any money still benefits the game company. Where we disagree is the value of the player count. He believes that the cost burden he imposes by playing but not buying outweighs the benefits of increasing the player count. I believe the opposite.

And we are looking at this with a microscope. We understand that there are the ‘whales’ that spend tons of money that make of <1% of the player base but are >99% of the revenue from cosmetics.

What we are pointlessly trying to determine is if playing the game without spending is a net gain or net loss to the company.

I get that, but looking at just me right. Does the benefit of me adding +1 to the player count outweigh the negatives of having to pay for 1 more player? I would imagine that game maintenance costs sorta plateau for AAA games but player count is a volatile and indicative of a games likelihood of receiving more investment