There was a time when “free-to-play” was a dirty term in the games industry. There are still terrible, exploitative free-to-play games on the market—more every day, in fact.
But occasionally—occasionally—we get something...miraculous. We get a free-to-play game that doesn’t try to con players out of money or make the design intentionally boring in order to make those purchasable unlocks more exciting.
Here, you’ll find a list of games so good the developers could’ve charged money (or, in some cases, did charge money) before going free-to-play. These aren’t just good free-to-play games, they’re good games, full stop.
But occasionally—occasionally—we get something...miraculous. We get a free-to-play game that doesn’t try to con players out of money or make the design intentionally boring in order to make those purchasable unlocks more exciting.
Here, you’ll find a list of games so good the developers could’ve charged money (or, in some cases, did charge money) before going free-to-play. These aren’t just good free-to-play games, they’re good games, full stop.
1. Dota 2
We might as well start with Dota 2, considering it still maintains the biggest e-sports prize on the planet: The International 5 featured a prize pool of $18 million this year. It’s huge.
Dota 2 is a successor to the WarCraft III mod DOTA, or Defense of the Ancients, the grandpappy of the now-booming MOBA genre. Players pick a hero and battle it out against the other team, competing to bring down the enemy base by out-maneuvering foes with skillful tactics. Or, if you're like me, you pick a hero and mess something up five minutes in and your entire team gets angry because they know you just lost them the game.
2. League Of Legends
And we can't mention Dota 2 without mentioning its counterpart, League of Legends. League is yet another MOBA, again inspired by the original DOTA mod.
So why choose League of Legends over Dota 2? Now we're getting into dangerous "Mac versus PC" or "Schwarzenegger versus Stallone" arguments—the type where nobody wins. The truth is you should just pick whichever your friends are playing or whichever looks best to you and jump in. The differences when you're starting are minimal—you probably won't even notice most until you've reached an advanced skill level in one or the other.
3.Team Fortress
Team Fortress 2 is the first non-MMO, the big-budget game I remember transitioning from “You pay for this” to “This is free.” Whatever deal with the devil Valve made to turn Team Fortress 2 into a free-to-play shooter/hat simulator, it clearly worked: Eight years after release it’s still one of the top-five most-played games on Steam on any given day, still receiving updates, and still kicking my ass.
4.Path of Exile
Path of Exile is an action-RPG in the Diablo II vein—you explore randomly-generated maps, click things until they die, collect loot, and repeat. There are seven classes (six to start) and the skill trees are so complicated you might have an aneurysm.
This summer’s Awakening expansion added an entirely new chapter to the story, plus made the leveling even more modular than before. Simply put, this is the best action-RPG of the last few years. If you were disappointed by Diablo III, try Path of Exile. If you weren’t disappointed, try it anyway. The game’s free, after all.
5.Marvel Heroes
If you prefer your action-RPGs with a bit more spandex, Marvel Heroes is where it’s at. The game plays sort of like a free-to-play version of the fantastic Marvel: Ultimate Alliance series, with a wide roster of classic characters available to unlock (if you have the time) with in-game currency.
I highly recommend it, if Path of Exile is a bit too grimdark for your tastes.
6.War Thunder
If you prefer your combat in the air, try War Thunder. War Thunder is a World War II (and a bit later) flight sim that throws dozens of players onto the same map in massive battles.
Listen: Gaijin (the developers) have made some horrible decisions with this game. It tries to get you to spend money at every turn, they’ve made some questionable balance decisions, et cetera. So why is it still on here? Because it’s also a much better simulator than World of Tanks or World of Warplanes. And it has the potential to be great again! If it continues its rather prodigious decline it’ll get pulled from the list, though.
7.World Of Tanks
Wargaming has built up quite a catalog of games in the past few years, but it’s still World of Tanks that gets most of the attention. Sick of War Thunder’s asinine updates? Or simply tired of all those planes buzzing around with their dumb propellers? World of Tanks is all-tanks-all-the-time. A veritable planet full of tanks.
But it’s just one slice of Wargaming’s ever-expanding combat empire. If you start to miss those dumb propellers you can always check out World of Warplanes, and old salts can sail to their heart’s content in World of Warships.
8.Star Trek Online
You're captain of the USS WhatsItsName. Your mission? Well, that's up to you.
While Star Trek Online has a lot of content even if you stick to developer-created missions, it's actually far more interesting due to The Foundry—a mission-building tool for players to create their own missions. Some players in Star Trek Online have recreated entire arcs from the TV shows using The Foundry, while others have crafted new stories for the Trek universe that rival the complexity of a plot you'd see on TV.
It's an impressive effort and testament to the benefits of user-generated content—it's kept Star Trek Online alive long after the gaming community-at-large wrote the game off.
9 .Tribes: Ascend
Last but not the least.A few months ago I would’ve cut Tribes: Ascend from this list. Developer Hi-Rez had basically abandoned the game to work on Smite, the community was dead, and all hope seemed lost—though the core shooting experience has always been fast-paced, high-flying (literally) fun.
But in September Hi-Rez released a patch, appropriately named “Out of the Blue,” and suddenly...I don’t know. I find myself hoping Tribes: Ascend can resurrect itself and become great again. The world needs a shooter that makes you hate yourself even more than Counter-Strike.
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