Ever since Apple's iPhone made smartphones affordable and extraordinarily usable, with relatively large touchscreens, and opened it up for game developers to publish their games on the platform, and other cellphone manufacturers followed suit, and after a few years later developers discovered that the most profitable way to monetize these games is to make them "free to play" with in-game purchases, such monetization schemes have become a plague of video games, not only in smartphones but to an ever-increasing manner in console and even PC games.
Nowadays we have even reached a point where full-priced triple-A games on the biggest platforms have in-game purchases, commercial DLC, loot boxes and gambling. In other words, developers are not anymore content with providing free games with in-app purchases. In increasing manners they are adding in-app purchases to full-priced commercial games.
But who is to blame for this? There's a Finnish saying that roughly translates to "the crazy one is not the one who asks, but the one who pays". It's easy to think that we have to endure all these predatory and annoying monetizing practices because the majority of players are stupid and buy whatever is offered. Thus the minority of players have to suffer from the actions of the majority.
But this might in fact be incorrect.
The developers of the free-to-play online game Runescape recently revealed that from their entire userspace only 10% spend money in in-app purchases, and this is their entire source of revenue.
This means that 90% of Runescape players have to endure hurdles and endless grinding in order to get the most valuable loot because the remaining 10% make it profitable to the developers to make it so hard, and to offer a "pay-to-win" mechanic where you get the loot in exchange for real money. Essentially, 10% of players make via their monetary actions the lives of the remaining 90% harder.
And there's absolutely nothing that 90% can do about it. They could all boycott the game and stop playing it, and it wouldn't change anything, because the monetary revenue of the developers wouldn't change. (Heck, it might even become better because they wouldn't need to provide and pay for as much bandwidth and server space.)
This is most probably the case with all games that offer in-game purchases, loot boxes and simulated gambling, be it on smartphones, on consoles, the PC, or online: Only a small minority of the players actually spend money on this, but this minority is still so large that it's extremely lucrative for the game company, which is why the remaining majority just has to endure it, and there's nothing they can do about it (unless eg. the government steps in to stop it by legal means).
Nowadays we have even reached a point where full-priced triple-A games on the biggest platforms have in-game purchases, commercial DLC, loot boxes and gambling. In other words, developers are not anymore content with providing free games with in-app purchases. In increasing manners they are adding in-app purchases to full-priced commercial games.
But who is to blame for this? There's a Finnish saying that roughly translates to "the crazy one is not the one who asks, but the one who pays". It's easy to think that we have to endure all these predatory and annoying monetizing practices because the majority of players are stupid and buy whatever is offered. Thus the minority of players have to suffer from the actions of the majority.
But this might in fact be incorrect.
The developers of the free-to-play online game Runescape recently revealed that from their entire userspace only 10% spend money in in-app purchases, and this is their entire source of revenue.
This means that 90% of Runescape players have to endure hurdles and endless grinding in order to get the most valuable loot because the remaining 10% make it profitable to the developers to make it so hard, and to offer a "pay-to-win" mechanic where you get the loot in exchange for real money. Essentially, 10% of players make via their monetary actions the lives of the remaining 90% harder.
And there's absolutely nothing that 90% can do about it. They could all boycott the game and stop playing it, and it wouldn't change anything, because the monetary revenue of the developers wouldn't change. (Heck, it might even become better because they wouldn't need to provide and pay for as much bandwidth and server space.)
This is most probably the case with all games that offer in-game purchases, loot boxes and simulated gambling, be it on smartphones, on consoles, the PC, or online: Only a small minority of the players actually spend money on this, but this minority is still so large that it's extremely lucrative for the game company, which is why the remaining majority just has to endure it, and there's nothing they can do about it (unless eg. the government steps in to stop it by legal means).
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