[Samson]

However, the food, drinks, souvenirs, magazine, and memberships are unrelated material. Unless any of these things are required to access parts of the museum. Not the same thing if the perks are directly related to game play. It would be more like "You can visit the first 2 floors free. The others you have to pay for." Or.... "You can play here for 50 levels free. But in order to be level 51, a donation of $50 is required."

So the Smithsonian is a MUD selling t-shirts on the website basically. 100% free. Unless you want the silly t-shirt that has no affect on your character or the game. Since that box of animal crackers also has little or no relationship with the museum itself.

espn.com is a "payment-required to unlock all levels" MUD. Not 100% free.

Kingdom of Loathing is a pay-for-perks MUD. The Mr. Accessory is not free, so the game isn't 100% free.

The top 100 "free games" list in PC Gamer et al are a mix of pay-for-perks, pay-to-unlock, and truly free games. They're not all 100% free. PC Gamer et al like to throw the word around like crazy though. I'm sure those "free" games paid plenty for that.

My definition of free wasn't "no possible chance of monetary exchange between anyone or anything" as you seem to be suggesting, so I'll take that to mean I'm not one small handfull of people you're talking about. You quoted me even, and still didn't get it right. What 3rd parties do on the side isn't relevant.