First purchase timing matters: Monetization and churn in Free-to-Play mobile games — A survival-analysis case study of “Dealers Only Squad”

The Free-to-Play (F2P) business model relies on in-app purchases, and practitioners encourage early monetization under the assumption that faster conversion improves long-term retention. Whether first-purchase timing is actually protective against churn, however, remains empirically underexamined in longitudinal settings. This study addresses this question using survival analysis of service-long gameplay logs from the mobile idle RPG “Dealers Only Squad,” as a case study of a commercial F2P title. Contrary to the initial hypothesis that immediate converters would exhibit weaker protection due to limited product knowledge, Day-0,converters are associated with the lowest churn risk relative to non-payers (45% reduction over the follow-up window), while later-converting cohorts show smaller and more uniform protective effects—a pattern indicating that early conversion reflects pre-existing user–game fit rather than impulsive purchasing. Product type and price significantly moderate this relationship: immediate converters of mid-priced, low-complexity products show some of the strongest protective effects, whereas late converters of low-priced, low-complexity products show weaker protection than non-payers. These findings suggest that conversion strategies should be tailored to player tenure rather than simply pushing low-price products for rapid conversion.