Updated on February 17, 2021, by Reyadh Rahaman: The main draw of an open-world game is the sense of freedom it grants to players. According to Metacritic, these are the best open worlds a gamer can dive into without spending a dime. However, that hasn't prevented some from taking a different approach to monetization and releasing their big, beautiful digital worlds for free, though perhaps at the cost of paid DLC or microtransactions. This is largely because open-world games such as GTA V, Watch Dogs, Skyrim, or Red Dead Redemption 2entail high development costs and a market value that's difficult to ignore.

RELATED: 15 Open-World Games That Take The Longest To Beat The free-to-play market is dominated by battle royales like Warzone, and team-based multiplayer games like Team Fortress 2. There are some free RPG and co-op games here and there but rarely do open-world games go the free-to-play route.