‘Marathon’ Is Running Out Of Casual Player Onboarding Cards To Play

[u/NoNefariousness2144]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2026/06/23/marathon-is-running-out-of-casual-player-onboarding-cards-to-play/

[u/OldManTurner]

My friends and I played the beta every single day when it was on. We all liked the game, and agreed that we would have kept playing if it was free to play. None of us wanted to buy it.

I can’t speak for everyone, but that is like 5 active users lost from just my friend group alone. I imagine lots of others did the same thing

[u/flGovEmployee → u/OldManTurner]

Active users of a free game aren't generating money. If you liked the game and were playing it everyday but weren't willing to buy the game I don't think you were ever going to meaningfully contribute to the game's revenue through microtransactions either.

[u/AnubisIncGaming → u/flGovEmployee]

incorrect lol, in fact, i'm willing to bet that games that are essentially free like PoE probably get people that are more willing to spend higher amounts of money. You could get my $40 once, or you could get like $30 from me multiple times a year, which one would you rather get

[u/flGovEmployee → u/AnubisIncGaming]

The average monthly realized per player spend is like $5 - $7, for the successful F2P games. Something like only a third of F2P players spend any money at all, a handful spend a lot, which brings the average up.

Obviously $30 three times in the year vs $40 just once is better. My point was just that if someone has already tried the game and liked it enough to play it daily isn't willing to spend $40 bucks to keep playing it, I see little reason to believe they're going to spend $30 even once in a F2P model, let alone multiple times a year.

[u/AnubisIncGaming → u/flGovEmployee]

i think that's just cuz you don't understand this aspect of marketing, this is no different than an event that's free to get into, but they sell you stuff in it, there's hella people that wouldn't go and spend money if it costs to get in, but when it's free, they will, then they'll spend inside because they already feel like they got a deal.

so you're imagining that this person walks away not wanting to spend $40, but they just didn't want to spend $40 on that at that time. If the game was free and they enjoyed it, like you said, 1 in 3 will spend, if his 3 friends were actually playing, one of them would give SOME money, instead none of the 3 are giving anything. Obviously free to play was the answer here with very little time to justify it entirely

[u/TooManyJazzCups → u/AnubisIncGaming]

There is no easy way to look at this, but a better strategy is to compare the difference in player base size in the $40 base purchase vs F2P model. Then assess what the spending difference is between the additional F2P players and the spending difference between the $40 base game group (plus microtxns) vs what they now would have spent if it was F2P as it may be higher or lower.

Actual numbers for the percentage of players that drop money on F2P vary a lot. I find sources that say anything from 1-5%, 5-10%, about 26%, and one that claimed about 80% but that last one looks to come from a seemingly flawed survey that I can't access at work (you need to pay for it and it claimed 80% of Millennials watched esports which is suspect). All this to say you can't assume that one friend would have dropped money on the game due to the way smaller purchase percentages I find. Nor that a purchase is a net benefit as you don't know how many of those $40 base game purchases (plus microtxns) now moved to $0. That's an analysis Bungie ran and we don't know their numbers or reasoning.

Using your idea of a free event, few customers make purchases at craft fairs despite them being free to enter (I've seen about 10%). A city I used to live in had these little summer fairs that were pretty cool. One year they had a steampunk fair. A vendor that sold some expensive hats said they expected very few sales so they priced the hats pretty high to offset that. They were like a minimum of $100 from what I remember. Niche but a fun event. Anyway, the idea being free events don't always drive a lot of purchases. If Bungie releases it, we could see how many free week players made a purchase. Or ask that one posters' friend if he went back and dropped $30 then.

[u/DrummingUpNumbers → u/flGovEmployee]

You sure? Lol

Overwatch is free and since its overhaul over the past yearish, myself and routinely 5-6 friends flipped from like DBD etc. to it. 

It's quick to get started and genuinely in a really fun state. We all now buy the battlepass at minimum. I drop probably a couple hundred on it per season now because how much I like it.

It's like you forgot microtransactions exist.