A new report has found that 82% of American gamers made an in-game purchase in freemium titles last year. That's accord…

A new report has found that 82% of American gamers made an in-game purchase in freemium titles last year.

  • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.worldEnglish
    161·
    6 months ago

    Woo, I’m part of the 18% who doesn’t fall for shiny virtual objects for credit card swipes. Annoying in ‘free’ games, infuriating in paid ones.

    That 18 should be way, way higher though.

    • paddirn@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      6 months ago

      I see it as a challenge, what’s the most I can do in the game, not paying for anything? It gets annoying with some the arbitrary restrictions they put up though, meant to slow your progress and just make the whole experience suck. The incentives seems to be, “Buy this pass and you’ll blaze through these boring parts!” But the “benefits” are just based on bypassing some digital numbers that they’ve purposely made as annoying as possible. They made it slow just by tweaking a number in some code, they could just as easily dial it to another number, but likely it’s at the optimal number for whales to start paying money. It all feels very predatory.

    • BudgetBandit@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      The question is: does “ad-free” or “purchase the whole game” affect this percentage? Because there’s games, like Super Mario Run, where you get the whole game downloaded, but World 1 is the demo and after that there’s an in-game purchase for the full game.

        • zigmus64@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          Makes perfect sense. Those free games are generally funded by advertisements. You are the product being provided to the people paying for the ad time.

          • Psychodelic@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            5 months ago

            I just realized you must be talking about mobile games or something. lol

            I was thinking of the finals or even warzone. Completely free games where you can just pay for a skin for your gun. Seems pretty great to me. I never pay for another COD game while then some poor addicted souls pay for everything they can. I mean, it works out pretty well for everyone… except those people, since they end up paying way more than what a game used to cost

  • HeavyRaptorEnglish
    12·
    6 months ago

    Sad, but this includes mobile, so PC only numbers are probably a bit better

  • Maestro@fedia.io
    7·
    6 months ago

    I don’t mind paying for something if the game is good, as long as it is not pay to win. I bought some starter pack for Path of Exile. I have hundreds of hours in that game, so I bought some stash tabs and cosmetics.

    • BrikoXOPEnglish
      52·
      6 months ago

      Path of Exile is an okay example, but even the most basic tabs being pay only shifts it to pay2win. These days, if you want to do anything more than try the game through the campaign, you need at least a few paid tabs.