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Pay-walling or paywalling consists of the action of setting a restriction to part of the content from a software or a service that can be only accessed if the user pays a one-time purchase or a suscription. This restriction of features that require payment are known as paywalls. Paywalling is a very common practice on websites, video games and on software as a service.
How it works
Companies or developers can add or block features under a paywall in order to increase their revenue.
Why it is a problem
Monetization overload
- Main article: Monetization overload
Aggressive paywalling could lead into monetization overload, paywalling a significative amount of the available content, even when similar content might be found for free.
Decrease of quality
Paywalls can block essential features that were originally for free, or even be more limited for users who already paid for them. In some cases, the usage of third-party software to bypass paywalls can penalize the user for doing so. An example for this is YouTube that restricts the amount of videos that someone can watch if the platform detects an ad-blocker running on the browser, forcing users to find another alternative or paying for Premium instead.
Affordability issues
Excessive paywalling can be an issue for people with a limited income, specially if the prices of the paywalls increase.
Examples
- Paywalls are a common thing in video games, specially in games targeted for mobile devices. Some paywalled things that are often paywalled are cosmetics and special features that cannot be obtained by playing a free-to-play user.
- Several newspaper websites paywall their articles by limiting the viewers the amount of articles they can read or by allowing them to see only a portion of the article. An open-source extension compatible with Chromium-based and Firefox-based browsers allows to avoid paywalls from most of the newspaper websites.
- Consent-or-pay is an aggresive form of paywall used by some websites, disabling web trackers and cookies only if the user pays a suscription.