How in-app purchases have destroyed the game industry

Re:How in-app purchases have destroyed the game industry by kmfrk on Saturday February 01, 2014 @12:21PM (#7162262)

I think we have to give additional purchases some degree of legitimacy; look at EVE Online and the upcoming Star Citizens of examples of in-game purchases that, at the very least, are not dark user patterns or scams.

I generally find in-app purchases on iOS games to be scummy as hell, though, so the big problem is probably that it's a Wild West for dark user patterns in games on the App Store.

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Re:How in-app purchases have destroyed the game industry by danielweber on Saturday February 01, 2014 @12:29PM (#7162329)

Online games are more amenable to legitimate purchase models.

When the game is entirely offline, though, it's just nuts to require the player to put in more money.

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Re:How in-app purchases have destroyed the game industry by AJ007 on Saturday February 01, 2014 @01:22PM (#7162633)

Contrarily, if you introduce pay for performance in to a competitive online game, it completely fucks the competitiveness.

We can accept sports where players and teams spends millions of dollars of on training, equipment, etc. What if instead the team just paid the money to buy additional points from the referee?

Yeah, that is not a game.

The appropriate way to do this is to make premium/paid items cosmetic only with zero influence on game play. If your game blows, this model doesn't work.

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Re:How in-app purchases have destroyed the game industry by saraid216 on Saturday February 01, 2014 @02:25PM (#7162977)

Sure it is. It's called "United States national elections".

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