NOTEWORTHY: Up to 65 percent of MMO players play for Free

When it comes to Free-to-Play games, quite a few players actually make money off of playing.

Here is how it's done. Find a bot program to farm gold or valuable items fast. Make enough money to equip superior gear, increasing the chances of winning in competition. Win the most valued items in the game. Sell those items for real money on the black market.

Variations on this strategy: trade bot-farmed gold for any cash shop items that are "tradable" in-game. Or, trade the valuable item of game credit codes instead of real money: thus the Freeloading player gets the benefit of cash shop items without ever actually paying their own real money. There are also various forms of blackmail, protection money, racketeering, scamming, and outright theft that can enrich a Freeloader.

The really sad thing is these cheaters set the bar very high on rapid levelling, powerful gear, rare items, gold: this tempts otherwise honest players to turn to the black market to "catch up".

I've only played Free-to-Play games, and this has been the dynamic everywhere: many cheaters trying to gain the ascendancy they need to make money instead of spending it: and a number of honest game players who are basically chumps. The less successful cheaters and the chumps eventually leave. Then the successful cheaters leave because there are no customers and the game has become "boring". Then a good mmorpg dies because the game operators didn't understand the player-scamming-player model ultimately hurts them.