Okay, today we got to talk about a business model that very few people really think about that’s not done that often that could actually solve one of the big problems in this industry. And we’ve got real working examples, including a game that just came out. And the problem is this. How the hell do you compete with free? The entire industry is trying to grapple with this problem. And there’s a stat that highlights why. That’s kind of creepy. Across all platforms, 50% of player time goes into the same set of games. And those games are either free to play or they’re COD style incumbents that you just can’t unseat. And that’s a problem. It’s hard for new stuff to actually get cut through. And today’s story then is something we rarely see. It’s a business model called Free to Share. It’s also the first game out from Dream Haven. Dream Haven, of course, is the company set up by Blizzard Entertainment co-founder Mike Moheim. And luckily for them, Serfolk has released in the wake of what’s almost certainly the best performing free-to-share game of all time. It’s called Split Fiction. It’s one of 2025’s bestselling games. And you cannot play the game solo. You literally can’t. Yet, it sold 2 million copies in a week. Not 2 million players, 2 million copies. That’s sales. And as of right now, Circana is tracking it as the 10th bestselling game of the year in the US. Even though perhaps some conventional wisdom maybe would say you sold a lot of copies. Surely you could have sold more if you didn’t well have most of the people who ended up playing the game not pay any money for it. And that’s because Split Fiction has got a friend pass. It’s quite fascinating. It works like this. You buy the game, right? So you pay a premium price for a premium co-op game. And then because of the friend pass, you can play that game with whoever the hell you want because it’s free to share. And Hazelite even convinced Electronic Arts to make the sharing actually be crossplatform. And so with this game, it’s clearly working. I think other companies are going to start noticing. And that’s what brings us to the first internally developed Dream Haven game that’s released. This is Sonderfolk and there are very few games like it. Honestly, breath of fresh air. The entire marketing pitch, right, is that you can quote rediscover game night. So basically, it’s a game made by people who like pen and paper RPGs and that kind of thing, but you know, they kind of want a video game version of that. The recaptures the same energy. And in terms of gameplay, this is reducing things. But you could think of it as being a bit like Balders’s Gate 3 co-op, but where only one person needs to own the game, so most of the people who play this game will not have paid money for it unless they, you know, spotted a few quid to their friend. Now, this is a game that we had our eyes on here because it’s one of the many studios that were formed by Ex Blizzard Entertainment staff. And in this case, it’s Moreheim’s Dream Haven being the publisher and their own studio, Secret Door, being the developer. And much like Split Fiction, it’s a premium game. And I don’t know about you, but whenever I first saw it, I got sticker shock. I thought, “What the hell? How are you charging that much money?” And then free to share clicked. So unlike split fiction where it’s you and a friend, here it’s you and a whole group of friends building characters and running a campaign, but where only one person needs to own the video game. But the thing is, you all will need to own something and uh can kind of resurrect an old legendary quote. Don’t you guys already have phones? Yes. Yes. It’s so perfectly memeable, but it is actually the case that each player will actually play this game using the Sonderfolk controller app. Now, the good news is that app is free. And the reason why is this actually works just like Jackbox but for RPGs. And to be honest, if you ask me, like they’ve absolutely cooked with this. That was a large part of me that says, “God damn it, just let me use a controller.” But actually taking a look at it, you can see that they’re doing cool things with the idea of every player having their own private UI and then the actual game table on your big screen while not having all the stuff it would need to have if everyone had a game pad attached. So, honestly, pretty cool. Now, look, I can see that being a tough sell, but if you look at the Steam reviews, they are 94%. And of all of them, I think this one captures the sentiment perfectly. Quote, “I paid for a game that I can play with my partner, my friends that I play board games with without them having to pay anything.” That just feels good. A bit like you having, I don’t know, a copy of Katan that you can bring and play with your friends. You think about that with video games. The idea of you bringing your video game disc and maybe bringing it to your friend’s house or heaven forbid lending it to your friend, that is a level of unmonetized gameplay that our industry usually absolutely loses its over. But here, they’re embracing that as a way to grow their game. I think it’s goddamn smart. But more than that, it’s important. It’s not generically important. It’s important because of the market today. Free to share has existed for a while. Other games have done this in smaller ways, right? And one of the ways these companies end up competing is a basically a race to the bottom for freetoplay or cramming more stuff into their games. Whereas here, there’s a competitive edge that actually opens up an entire new avenue of game design. That’s why I love this. Like that Steam review said, this is effectively like buying a board game or a tabletop rulebook and then sharing it with your gaming group, but it’s taking the lead from a longunning series to make it actually work in the context of video games. And that series is Jackbox. And there’s a reason why half the Steam reviews explicitly call it Jackbox Cross Gloom Haven in that it’s a party game paired with a board game, which is real cool. And if you ask me, it fixes one of gaming’s largest problems. A problem that has led to more and more studios going into that awful race to the bottom. It’s simply the game economics are not working for players, for game design itself, or many, many game developers. And that is felt the most keenly in indie multiplayer titles. that problem, right, where a game never reaches critical mass in terms of players. And because it never reaches critical mass, it never catches on, which then means that its value is worth zero. And I say that as a day one purchaser and player of lawb breakakers. Don’t I feel smart? And it really is a problem because when you have the fear that your purchase can literally be worth zero because it’s a multiplayer game that collapsed, you’re just not going to want to buy that game. And when I mentally flipped the script on this, it began to feel completely absurd. Imagine a world where to play Settlers of Katan, you and everyone around the game board like brought their own little slice of Katan and it’s only by all of you buying it that you’re able to play Katan. That would be absolutely silly and ridiculous. Yeah, that is the complete standard and norm for multiplayer games, assuming they’re not freeto plays. And I think that’s a real problem. It’s killing innovation. It’s killing so many games. And if I’m just to set aside the idea that this would enable whole new types of video game, we’re actually seeing it being used in a few other contexts. And this one’s real fascinating. It’s a PVP game that’s called Midnight Murder Club. Now, it’s a game from Velon Studios. And they just, man, they’re a goddamn case study in this. Their prior game was called Knockout City. It was a dodgeball PvP game that had 12 million total players, but only lasted 2 years because it couldn’t retain people in the long term. Does that not show that the games industry is basically right? I mean, does it not show that? How can you have 12 million players and uh well, because that cannot be people’s main game that they play forever like a Fortnite or a Call of Duty, oh, sorry, it just can’t be viable in the market. That’s the thing. Whenever everybody goes freeto play, there’s a certain level of scale that you need to keep that going. And with Knockout City, apparently 12 million total players was not enough scale. And what that means for you and me is quite simply less games, less options, less creativity. Now, what’s interesting is their new game, Midnight Murder Club. It’s trying to solve that problem, and it’s trying to solve it by using guest passes. The way it works is that up to five people can play the game, earn progression, and all that stuff without buying a copy. Now, there is still a pricebased barrier to entry, but the principle here is that those premium costs mean that these indie games don’t have to go the way of a free-to-play live service in order to survive. This means, right, this is insane, but this means you can have a game that’s fun, that’s designed for multiple people, but that does not require, say, I don’t know, 40,000 concurrents all the time. In a world where business models allow that to make sense, we the gaming audience will have a much better time. And to carry forward the idea of one of your friends owning katan and that meaning you can all go and play katan together. Well, how do people play video games these days? It’s no longer in siloed party chat stuck within a game, right? It’s not that. It’s not even on guild chat in whatever MMO you’re playing. It’s in Discord servers that are centered on crossgame groups. that is the perfect audience to target this business model at. But as much as all of this could be me glazing this new business model, this is all not to say that free to share is going to be the new big thing and that it will dominate cuz we do have to look at the sobering realities. The big problem that this will face obviously is getting the game in front of people and being successful in the long term. I’ve just described a load of positive network effects and things about the business model that I think are really cool and I love the idea of the Jackbox model being applied to more games. I think that will open up new types of creativity. I love it. And putting my business hat on, I do love that it still has a strong network effect. You can sell lots of copies because player A will buy a copy. They will play that copy with, say, three or four of their friends. Then maybe player B plays it, plays it for free with player A. Then player B wants to play it with their other friends. Oh dear. Now they go and they buy the game, but they’re predisposed to buy the game because they already enjoyed it. They already enjoyed it with their friends. Now, it’s not something we talk about much in games, but you know the way in like sales and marketing, you’ve got the idea of leads, nurturing leads, and having a warm lead. Well, I think with a game like this, how have you just played Sonderfolk? Oh, you just played it with your friends. That means you’re going to have a better time. That probably means you’ll be more willing to spend $50 on this compared to another game because guess what? You played it with your friends. You’ve all had some good fun. That does make a lot of sense, but in this case, we do have to contend with the price tags. So, Serfolk is a $50 game. That’s about the cost of a new double A release. And I think it’s fair to say that’s actually what this game is. It’s a full premium game. That makes sense. Now, another full premium game, of course, is Split Fiction. It’s a double A that was able to ask that price because it’s the follow-up to a universally regarded game of the year in the form of It Takes Two. And it’s from a studio that’s been cultivating diehard fans all the way since Brothers Tale of Two Sons. So, obviously, it’s got a hell of a lot going for it. With Thunderfolk, then it’s in the multiplayer space. You could maybe say it’s sort of akin to something like Repo. Now, Repo costs $10, and that can become a problem in comparison. In theory, right, it all averages out. Four players spending 10 bucks for an early access game versus one player buying well, one $50 game that they can play with basically whoever they want. But the theoretical is not necessarily practical and that still takes one person to take the plunge to actually start that whole thing rolling. And it’s this comparison that I want you to think about and do leave your answer in the comments. I will tally them up and uh yeah, we’ll talk about them later. But basically, right, what do you think is better? That you could buy a game for $10, you could play with your friends, they’d all have to spend $10. or do you prefer the idea a little bit more like a board game of the $50 game like Sonderfolk? What would you actually buy? 10 bucks as an impulse purchase. The other thing is I think with 10 bucks you get a lot of Steam algorithm friendliness. You know, ah, what the hell? $10. I think a lot of people will do that and they’ll put money in. That’ll be good for the game algorithmically, good for its visibility. Uh, when you look at $50, look, you get sticker shock. And here’s the thing, right? My personal experience of Sonderfolk was I was linked to it in Steam. So I went to the link, I saw the price tag, and I basically thought, “Oh my god, are they insane? That’s so much money. What the hell?” Of course, I didn’t immediately think, “Oh wait, it’s a free to share business model, so this is actually a hell of a good deal.” And I can see how it makes sense. So I think that will be something where it’ll put people off, even people who would love free to share because you only know about free to share once you actually click into the thing. So, that does mean that a game like Sonderfolk, I think, will struggle per algorithmic growth. But what it’s well set up for is viral word of mouth, which personally is my favorite. But what if I told you that not getting viral success was literally the goddamn point of this video. Take a look at how many Steam reviews Sunderfoke has got. It’s got like eight. Okay, it’s not. It’s like 250. Now, it probably didn’t help Sonderfolk that it was, you know, dropped the same week as uh two of the biggest RPGs of the year with Oblivion and Expedition 33. So, that was a tough place for them to start. I have a feeling a lot of Oblivion players would also be interested in this game. But even with all that said, Sunderfolk was always going to be a niche game. I don’t think they were ever planning to, you know, take on World of Warcraft with a Jackbox RPG. Come on, they were never going to try and do that. The entire point, and the reason why I’m excited about this business model is it allows for niche success where a product has got evergreen value. Now, that could just sound like me spitting out a whole bunch of words, but again, think about my purchase of Lawb Breakakers. It wasn’t worth anything. That went to zero. And at least, hey, the people who bought Concord did get a refund. The point though in those cases is there was a large critical mass of those games needed to hit to be viable in the market. I would hope that with something like Serfolk, the whole point is it’s a load of value. It can be financially stable whilst being niche and they don’t need to go freetoplay and completely ram it full of cosmetics or any of the other goofy annoying that we’ve all had way too much of by this stage. I want a world where niche games can be successful and where the unit economics actually say, hey, you only need, I don’t know, 30, 40, 50,000 sales, which I mean it’s a lot of sales, but still it’s not astronomical. and uh where a game does not need to post a continually massive concurrent player base. The idea that you could play a game with your mates and then just wait, you know, wait 6 months, play it again, and it always is of value because it’s a thing that you own, just like how you may only play Katana with your friends every 6 months, but um that doesn’t mean that suddenly Katana is a dead game. And while I’m not sure if it’s a success yet, I don’t know their margins or anything like that, I do think that free to share is something that could catch on and I think it’s got a real place in today’s market. I think it will be better for us as gamers. I think we’ll get more interesting, more unique things. But again, for every repo, Valheim Lethal Company, there are a dozen games that just don’t take off that release that the same time. I think free to share is a model that can try to carve out niches in an industry that currently is all about the biggest success being rewarded with more success and a winner takes all attitude that’s just bad for innovation and bad for creativity. And to wrap that up, I’ve got one line. This line is a certified godamn banger. And I can say that cuz I didn’t write it. Connor did on our team. Here’s the line. These developers have to compete with free, but they don’t want to feel cheap. Bravo. That is the best line. That’s what I want more of in this industry. Good luck to them. Let me yeah, I don’t know. I have an emotional horse in this race. I really want to see disruption and innovation in games. I think free to share could do it. So yes, let’s compete with free, but not by being cheap.