> Status is a minority interest in games, and sales of status items tend to be small compared to sale of utility items (in cases where both are available).
Funny you should say that - I was just playing TF2, which Valve has called "America's #1 war-themed hat simulator"... which has apparently been successful enough with its move to free-to-play, apparently relying mainly on sales of status items, that Valve will be using the same model for Dota 2.
Of course, both games have solid foundations as actual games, rather than awkward socializing environments.
I play Dota2 and has never bought or traded any item. Agreed Dota2 will be free to play, but compared to TF2 - it brings another aspect which is professional game play and ability to watch it within Dota client.
I am not sure, how much money valve will be making eventually but they are already selling tickets for watching professional games within Dota client. I think once it comes out of beta, selling tickets of professional games is a element we can't ignore. remember nearly 40-50K people turn up to watch any competitive dota2 game.
> remember nearly 40-50K people turn up to watch any competitive dota2 game.
Only while it's free. I doubt that they will start charging money for professional games, simply because no one does that. The only actual advantage of DotA 2 against other MOBA games (LoL, HoN, DotA1) are tournaments with huge prizes ("the International", $1M for first place lots of lesser ones). It's not like DotA2 is so much more interesting to watch than HoN/LoL.
Funny you should say that - I was just playing TF2, which Valve has called "America's #1 war-themed hat simulator"... which has apparently been successful enough with its move to free-to-play, apparently relying mainly on sales of status items, that Valve will be using the same model for Dota 2.
Of course, both games have solid foundations as actual games, rather than awkward socializing environments.