I'm not completely sure. I'm pretty sure I seperately created a forum account, so I had played the game at least 2-3 months already when I got a forum account, but I can't remember if it was free or not.
What I do remember is that I bought toricredits once (like 1k or so) and I got a link in my email. When I pressed the link I was to write the code I got in the same email.
The minor detail is that I got an aditional 1k toricredits no matter what I entered into the thing, so that was kinda super broken. Now I have like 600tc and a head texture and that's it. Can't remembered what happened to my dolladollabills.
Thing is, I wasn't even 12yo at the time and didn't speak English for shit, so I'm almost 100% sure the game itself was free.