The Shop: Supporting an Indie Game Without Pay-to-Win
Talking about money is always the awkward part for a free game. So we're going to do it our way: bluntly. Yes, the Dovion shop exists. Yes, it sells gold packs for real money. And no, it will never sell victory. Here's how we see it, and why we made these choices.
Why a shop in a free game?
Because an online multiplayer game costs money every month, even a small one. There's a server running day and night to host matches, a domain name, and hundreds of hours of work. Dovion is a French indie game, built with passion — but passion doesn't pay the hosting bill.
We had three options: bury the game in aggressive ads, make it paid, or offer an optional shop. We picked the third, because it's the only one that preserves what we love about .io games: you click, you play, for free, no barrier.
What the shop sells (and doesn't sell)
The shop offers gold packs — the currency you normally earn in-game by mining, fishing, and sinking pirates. It also lets you pick up revenge tickets to jump back into a match after dying; worth noting, these tickets can ALSO be earned without spending a cent, for 800 XP each. It's all explained in our revenge tickets guide.
What the shop doesn't sell, and never will:
- exclusive ships: all 31 hulls in the tree unlock by playing, full stop;
- stats you can't find in-game: everything you can buy can also be earned by the sweat of the cannon;
- protection from other players: at sea, everyone sinks the same way.
Dovion's server is authoritative: it's the one calculating everyone's gold, HP, and kills. No one can buy their way into preferential treatment, and that goes for shop customers too.
"But isn't buying gold already pay-to-win?"
Fair question, we asked it too. Our answer: Dovion's gold piles up fast just by playing — it's the core of the game's loop — and it replaces neither aim, nor positioning sense, nor minimap reading. A beginner with a big gold pack is still a beginner; a good captain in a Chaloupe is still dangerous. If we ever find that a paid item genuinely skews duels, we'll pull it. That's a commitment, and this blog will be the witness. To dig deeper into the economics of games like this, we wrote why .io games are free.
Buying is, first and foremost, support
We'd rather put it plainly: every purchase in the shop is, above all, a gesture of support for an independent game. Payments go through Stripe, a reputable provider — we never see or store your banking details. And if you never spend a cent? Genuinely, no worries. You keep the game alive another way: by playing, by filling the seas, by talking about the game around you. An active player is worth gold to us, quite literally. The full pack lineup is covered in our article on gold packs.
The bottom line
The game is free, will stay free, and the shop is basically a tip jar disguised as a treasure chest. Thanks to everyone who stops by it, and fair winds to everyone else: Play Dovion for free.