Report: 82% of US gamers made an in-game purchase in freemium titles in 2023

Comments

• wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨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.

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  • paddirn@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨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.

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  • BudgetBandit@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨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.

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  • zigmus64@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I tend to avoid free games as best I can…

    If it’s free, you’re the product.

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    • Psychodelic@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That doesn’t make sense here, does it? The product is the digital skins or whatever

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• HeavyRaptor@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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• Maestro@fedia.io ⁨4⁩ ⁨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.

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  • BrikoX@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨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.

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