Freemium

The term freemium to describe this model appears to have been created much later, in response to a 2006 blog post by venture capitalist Fred Wilson summarizing the model:[3][failed verification]Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc., then offer premium-priced value-added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.Jarid Lukin of Alacra, one of Wilson's portfolio companies, then suggested the term "freemium" for this model.

Notable examples include LinkedIn,[6] Badoo,[7] Discord,[8]Spotify[9] [10] and in the form of a "soft" paywall, such as those employed by The New York Times[11] and La Presse+.

[16] Beginning in 2013, the digital distribution platform Steam began to add numerous free-to-play and early-access games to its library, many of which utilized freemium marketing for their in-game economies.

Due to criticism that the multiplayer games falling under this category were pay-to-win in nature or were low-quality and never finished development, Valve has since added stricter rules to its early-access and free-to-play policies.

Many are labelled with the derogatory term 'pay-to-win', which criticizes freemium games for giving an advantage to players who pay more money, as opposed to those who have more skill.

In November 2014, the animated TV series South Park aired an episode entitled "Freemium Isn't Free".