Free-to-Play, Where Is It Taking Us?

If you're a PC gamer and avid in surfing the web then you've probably realized the vast amount of games being released that are free to play. Many of these games have been developed with just as much time and effort as their pay to play counterparts. However, you may be asking, why do companies make their games free to play? Don't they need to make money? Well, if you've played any of these games then you probably have encountered "micro-transactions" that offers a fake currency that can be purchased with real world dollars, and this purchased currency can then be used to purchase various in-game items that enchane the overall gameplay experience. So now that we know there is money in free to play, it begs the question, why all of a sudden are free to play games on the rise? It seems that there are almost more PC games coming out under free to play, than the standard "purchase the disc method." Maybe developers believe that the fact that you can play the game for free with lure more gamers in and then once they get into the game they will want to purchase items via the microtransactions. However, there are a lot of gamers that just play the game for what it is on the free side of things, and complete disregard the microtransactions, therefore, using the developer's product with no profitability. Maybe free to play is the future of PC gaming, and maybe it isn't. One thing is for sure though, for the time being and for the foreseeable furture, free to play games will almost dominate the PC gaming market as we know it.