Dev Blog #5: Let's Talk About Money

Hey everyone,

Most games talk about pricing as late as possible, in the smallest font possible. I'd rather do the opposite. Money is the thing that kills trust in this genre faster than anything else, so here's exactly how I'm thinking about it, including the parts that aren't decided yet.

Where This Game Actually Comes From

Some context first, because it matters for everything below.

Eternal Realms Online is funded by one person: me. No publisher, no investors, no crowdfunding. I've been playing MMORPGs since I was ten years old, all the way back to The Realm Online, one of the first MMORPGs ever made, and I've spent my life in these worlds. Today I work as a software developer for a living, and this game gets built around that job, funded out of that paycheck, for one reason: it's the MMO I've been waiting my whole life for someone else to make.

That's the honest origin story. Nobody's salary depends on squeezing you. Which is exactly why I can afford to be this blunt about the rest.

The Part Nobody Can Wish Away

An MMO is not like other games. When you buy a single-player game, the developer's costs basically end at the sale. An MMO runs. Persistent worlds, online 24/7, for every player at once, and that costs real money every single month, forever.

I've engineered the server setup to be seriously efficient (it's a big part of how a three-person team can even attempt this), but there is no clever architecture that makes a living world free to operate. And there's a second reality: if the alpha lands and people genuinely love this game, I'd need to shift most of my focus from my career to building it further, and likely bring on additional people to help. That's the actual dream scenario, and it's also the expensive one.

So the game has to sustain itself. The only question is how, and I think some ways are honest and some aren't.

Why a Subscription

The plan is $9.99/month, and here's the reasoning:

A subscription is the only MMO business model where the developer's incentives point the same direction as yours. A cash-shop game makes money by designing problems and selling you the solutions. Inconvenience you can pay to skip, power you can pay to buy, whales to catch. A subscription game makes money one way only: by being worth playing next month. Every design decision flows from that.

That's why the no-pay-to-win pledge isn't marketing for me. It's structural. There is no cash shop to protect, so there's nothing to corrupt.

There's also a cost problem that a subscription is the only honest way to solve. There will be a free tier, and free players still cost real server money every hour they play, with no income coming in from them to cover it. Right now that comes straight out of my pocket. The tempting "fix" every other game reaches for is a cash shop, and I flatly refuse to do that. A monthly subscription from members is the only model that keeps the world running without corrupting a single design decision, and there's genuinely no way to fund a living MMO like this without one.

On the exact number: I want it as affordable as it can possibly be while still covering what it actually costs to run the world. We've run a ton of simulations trying to pin that down, but nothing is as solid as real players in the first few alphas showing us what average server cost actually looks like. That real data is what lets us set the price honestly instead of guessing.

I'll be straight about one possibility too: it's on the table that, once the alphas are over and if the feedback is good, the game carries a one-time purchase on Steam. If it did, that purchase would come with a month of membership included. Honestly, I'd really rather not go that route, and if anything changes you'll read the reasoning here first.

When Would I Actually Charge Anything?

Not for a long time, and this part is decided:

• The first closed alpha, around 100 players from the waitlist, aiming for early 2027, is completely free. No purchase, no sub, nothing.
• There will likely be several closed alphas after that as the game grows, and I don't plan on charging anything while the game is still in alpha.
• Real pricing only enters the picture once the game is genuinely past that stage and worth your money.

No Kickstarter, No Founder Packs, No Pre-Orders

One more thing, because it's the standard indie MMO move and I'm deliberately not making it: I am not seeking funding. No Kickstarter, no early-access packages, no $500 founder tiers with exclusive mounts.

This genre is littered with games that collected the money first and delivered later, or never. I'm doing it in the other order. Deliver first. Then ask. If I ever take a dollar from you, it'll be for a game you can already log into and judge with your own eyes.

That's the whole plan. Realistic about the costs, boring about the business model, and allergic to taking money I haven't earned yet. As the numbers firm up, I'll keep posting them here.

More soon.

- Anxiety