The counter-intuitive upshot is simple: charging money for the game client was a loser.  Making the game play free, but being good at commercializing the space around the game, was the winning strategy.  The analogy for the music industry is pretty obvious: digital music has zero monetary value by itself.  Digital music, as a tribal flag, has as much value as the tribe is willing to claim for itself, and the monetary future belongs to those who can reach far beyond the mere musical realm and organize (and monetize) a larger cultural phenomenon.  And of course this is precisely the thesis of the MTT article The End of the Music Album as an Organizing Principle.