The industry actually has a term for people who spend compulsively like that. They literally call them "Whales"

And it all started with a Horse Armor.

Yep the industry took an arrow to the knee.

You were downvoted because you referenced the wrong game. ;P

Maybe it passed into Oblivion ;)

Devil's advocate: It's not 4500$, but a lot of microtransactions. A lot of mobiles games make most of their money on "Whales" that represent less than 1% of their playerbase.

That doesn't make this pricing model any more ethical.

To Roblox's credit however, they did refund the money when asked.

No one putting gun to their head to cough up $4500. They are paying because of their own weakness or maybe because of market forces as they can't get their fix elsewhere.

I can easily justify it ethically as "it's what my offering is valued by market". All my engineering education skills have not gone waste, those sleepless nights, missed dates - all paid off finally!

Revs up Lamborghini bought on installment paid with $4500 check

They are paying because app stores are allowing "authorize one payment" to mean "unlimited transactions are authorized". This is fraud, which is why Apple had to settle a class action for the exact same problem. Relying on a password, pin or parental control to prevent unauthorized purchases is irrelevant since in their absence, fraud is still illegal.

https://www.macworld.com/article/2029384/apple-to-settle-law...

I think there are basically four categories of big spenders:

(1) People who don't understand that they are spending actual money. Kids can fall into this category. Also people who are confused by an intentionally obfuscated user interface.

(2) People who are spending someone else's money, so they don't care. Kids can also fall into this category. (And when they do they may pretend they are in category 1.)

(3) People who can't afford it but have some kind of compulsive shopping disorder, addiction to the game or spending, etc. (People in this category might pretend they are category 1, i.e. request a refund and blame it on children who might even be fictional.)

(4) People rich enough that they will feel no ill effect from dropping $1,000+ on something of little value.

Whales are, at least theoretically, presumed to be category 4. There really isn't too much of an ethical problem IMHO with category 4.

The real ethical problem comes from the fact that you don't truly know which category the user is in.

Anyway, I think you are talking about category 1 and the person you replied to is talking about category 4.

If #4 actually existed platforms and developers would put real prices in the games instead of obfuscate the transactions and currencies. This would make them the same as every online and brick-and-mortar shop, where children and adults alike are not inadvertently spending thousands of dollars stemming from a single small purchase but may do so with explicit consent.

There are definitely millions of #1 though, we know this because Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google have all been sued for the sheer volume of #1s they allowed/enabled to be defrauded.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/09/googl...

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/01/apple...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-classaction-idUS...

https://www.ftcadlaw.com/ftc-scores-big-win-against-amazon-i...

I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic or serious.

I’ll just leave this here: https://youtu.be/2luhwy3KAE0

Did you forget to end your comment with a "/s"?