Cousins: Free-to-play is not exploitative

F2P Summit: Majority of people don't pay yet play the most, says Ngmoco Sweden manager

Ngmoco Sweden executive Ben Cousins opened the inaugural Free to Play Summit with a staunch defence of the freemium monetisation model that sometimes divides audience and industry opinion.
Addressing attendees at the Shoreditch, London event, Cousins said he’s often asked by journalists whether freemium pricing strategies are ethically sound.

“My response always is: Any business model where 95 per cent of people who don’t pay cannot be exploitative,” he said, referencing the common understanding that only about 3-6 per cent of customers will pay for extra goods in free games.
His comments come as the free-to-play model is increasingly utilised by developers and publishers – a trend which results in more customers playing such games and, in turn, more occurrences of people claiming they were ‘fooled’ into spending more than expected.
One of the most famous of such issues was with Smurfs Village; a game which made national newspaper headlines after an infamous incident where a young customer maxed out his mother’s credit card.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/4...t-exploitative