Pay to Play

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What Does Pay to Play Mean?

Pay to play (P2P) refers to online games that customers must pay to access. Some online gaming requires users to furnish payment to play a game or to play certain games within a free game. Some P2P online games are contained within social networking sites.

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Techopedia Explains Pay to Play

P2P online gaming is very popular. Although there are many free games online, P2P games often have more features, challenges and more layers than their free counterparts. This form of online gaming usually has participants who are actively playing at the time a new player joins the group. A phrase taken from the sports world of “get in the game” conveys the nature of virtual or online playing, which is ongoing. So, before getting in the game, users must pay up. P2P is commonly seen in huge multiplayer online role-playing games, although some offer both free and P2P options.

Social networks like Facebook are common hosts for online gaming that require P2P. In August 2011, PayPal estimated that 40 percent of all adult Internet users played online games. Of those adults, 70 percent used PayPal to pay for them. PayPal reported that the most popular P2P games among PayPal users were “Final Fantasy”, “Farmville”, “World of Warcraft” and “Bejeweled”. The majority of multiplayer online gamers and those who play games through social media spend between $10 and $50 to play.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.