Video game monetization in the context of "Downloadable content"

The video game industry is a significant segment of the leisure sector, straddling the tertiary sector, which provides services to people, and the quaternary sector, which focuses on knowledge-intensive activities such as research and technological development. This industry includes the development, marketing, distribution, monetization, and consumer feedback processes related to video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide. The professions involved range from game designers and software engineers to sound designers, testers, marketers, and customer support staff. Video games have gradually gained increasing relevance as a widespread cultural phenomenon, exerting significant influence on many areas of contemporary society: from the economy and the labor market to education, from consumption patterns and daily habits to architecture and urban planning, passing through sectors such as healthcare, the automotive industry, cinema and television, fashion, and sports.

The video game industry has grown from niche to mainstream. As of July 2018, video games generated US$134.9 billion annually in global sales. In the US, the industry earned about $9.5 billion in 2007, $11.7 billion in 2008, and US$25.1 billion in 2010, as per the ESA annual report. Research from Ampere Analysis indicated three points: the sector has consistently grown since at least 2015 and expanded 26% from 2019 to 2021, to a record $191 billion; the global games and services market is forecast to shrink 1.2% annually to $188 billion in 2022. Video games now compete with movies, music, and television in terms of both popularity and revenue.

The video game industry in China currently is one of the major markets for the global video game industry, where more than half a billion people play video games. Revenues from China make up around 25% of the nearly US$100 billion global video game industry as of 2018. Since 2015, China has exceeded the contribution to the global market from the United States. Because of its market size, China has been described as the "Games Industry Capital of the World" and is home to some of the largest video game companies. China has also been a major factor in the growth of esports, both in player talent and in revenue.

China has not always been a major factor in the industry, having been on the verge of economic recovery during the industry's formulative years in the 1970s and 1980s. With the introduction of the second-generation home gaming consoles in the mid-1980s, a new black market of illegally-imported goods and video game clones arose to avoid the high costs of imports, driving away foreign companies. Notably, China imposed a near-complete ban on video game consoles in 2000, fearing the addiction-like impact of games on its youths; the ban was ultimately lifted in 2015. During that time, China's video game market greatly expanded in the area of computer games (including massively multiplayer online games, browser games, social network games, etc.) and later mobile games, all which could be free to play titles with monetization to appeal to the average lower income of Chinese players. This massive growth from 2007 to 2013 led the games' publishers and operating companies like Tencent and NetEase to become large global companies. Despite the legitimate growth of the industry, China's video game market continues to be offset by illegal importing, copyright violation and intellectual property theft.

A season pass is a form of video game monetization in which consumers purchase a discounted package for current and future downloadable content (DLC) and/or expansion packs for a video game atop its base cost. A game may have a single season pass or, for some lifestyle games, new season passes over time. The name originates from the concept of a season pass/ticket for sports (although more akin to acquiring the box set of a season from a TV series). First introduced around 2011, the use of season passes became commonplace among triple-A and mobile game publishers by the end of the 2010s. Season passes can be controversial because the contents of a season pass are not fully itemized beforehand or may not contain all planned DLC, with some instances of season passes being called scams by the gaming press.

In the video game industry, a battle pass or rewards track is a type of monetization approach that provides additional content for a game usually through a tiered system, rewarding the player with in-game items for playing the game and completing specific challenges. Inspired by the season pass ticketing system and originating with Dota 2 in 2013, the battle pass model gained more use as an alternative to subscription fees and loot boxes beginning in the late 2010s. Battle passes tend to offer free passes, which are available to all users, and premium passes that require annual or seasonal charges in exchange for enhanced items and cosmetics.

Battle passes may be given different terms depending on the game. For example, Rocket League and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds offer a "Rocket Pass" and "Survivor Pass" respectively.

In the video game industry, a live service game (also referred to as games as a service, abbreviated to GaaS) represents providing video games or game content on a continuing revenue model, similar to software as a service. Live service games are ways to monetize video games either after their initial sale, or to support a free-to-play model. Games released under the live service model typically receive a long or indefinite stream of monetized new content over time to encourage players to continue paying to support the game. This often leads to games that work under a live service model to be called "living games" or "live games" since they continually change with these updates.