The Shameless EXTORTION in Mobile Gaming
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- Опубліковано 25 кві 2021
- The mobile gaming industry has long been dominated by scams, false advertising, and shady business practices but today we can add extortion to the list, because 37GAMES, a world renowned developer with top 100 properties on the app-store, has decided to extort their low paying users (not their whales) for large amounts of cash.
In the world of exploit or "glitch" punishment by gaming developers, this might be the worst response I have ever seen.
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I see you playing Outriders. Looking forward to your take on the state of the game.
Unforunatly nobody cares. The people who are powerful enough to stop it are most likely on the take
Saying that is just the whales is kind of a lie. That is why all this people think is fine as long as they spend 150 and not 10000.
No, the millions that spend 150 also enable them.
If all this millions spend zero then they would have a hard time keeping their microtransaction models going with the few big whales alone.
This is NOT the first time I've seen extorsion by chinese publishers. I played with some freemium flash game for a while in 2010 where a few people really did cheat to get ahead and the supposedly american branch of the company was taking orders from the main chinese company to punish the whole server, demanding tens of thousands of dollars to unfreeze accounts. IIRC it was Heroes of Kung Fu, and all info about it since has been scrubbed.
A lot of games are made to be digital crack.
EA: Write that down, write that down!!
I mean, they sold rare loot packs on the black market, this would be a small step foward.
Players: So you have chosen death.
Now i have anxiety for the upcoming battlefield after they announced it it will have a mobile app
EA would probably do something like this through a black market, like pay someone to hack an account and then have them ransom it back to the owner or they'd get it banned. EA can't hide behind the CCP to cover their ass if they did something like this in any official on the books capacity and they are just barely smart enough to understand that tanking their reputation repeatedly like they have been doing can and will bite them in the ass they've acknowledged as much in some of their, I believe it was a report back to the stockholders regarding strategy that I read it from I can't remember exactly but I know they officially acknowledged at least internally that their bad reputation is a problem so they would want to make it an off the books venture to maintain plausible deniability, from both a criminal liability and public perception standpoint.
Can't imagine how many thousand euros I'd have to "repay" for getting cartel coins off referrals in swtor. xD
I dont touch mobile games. But this subject needs to have a light shined on it. So good job UEG.
There are some gems.
But many mobile games are really predatory or just boring.
Lol that's a fortunate typo given this subject
Like ne0n there are some good ones, ironically I think one of the best mobile games I've seen is OpenMicrowave, which is just Morrowind in fan made engine. (you do need to have Morrowind to copy the game files into the app though for obvious legal reason) Could proababbly even do a multiplayer game or even a new game using the engine, since you can do so with the PC version of OpenMorrowind.
@@edit3891 to find these kind of gems, you need to know its exist on it. The store it self revolve around those scammy lies. You cant trust its reveiw system, recomendation, rating, etc. If you dont know what you searching for in those store, you will only be guided to those scam game.
Three or so years ago, @@ne0ns0wl46, I stopped playing I Got Game's Castle Clash mobile game. For two or three years prior Castle Clash was actually a pretty darn fun and good game. It had a healthy player base on multiple platforms. For the longest time we F2Pers could up to easily contend with even the best P2Wers. This entirely depended on how well you played Castle Clash. Unfortunately IGG became increasingly more greedy after a certain point. We F2Pers began to steadily lose to each other and especially the P2Wers. I persevered though. At least for a long time anyways. Mostly because I had been with the 5150Army guild for about two years by the time I had quit the game. Fantastic guild overall.
When IGG began to move away from being fair to pretty much everyone to a more money-centric business model alot of us in-game and on the Castle Clash forum were increasingly more dissatisfied. For some months before I finally quit the game you literally had to spend a minimum of twenty dollars *daily* just to maintain some sort of in-game fighting edge. This IGG move was contradictory to how IGG originally managed their Castle Clash property. I am fairly certain my guild, 5150Army, was a huge reason why IGG went their money-centric route. The original IGG route for Castle Clash was to make your account as OP as possible with the smallest number of Might you could muster. My guild, we very seriously prided ourselves on this in-game strategy. Even we F2Pers could up to easily compete with some of the top P2Wer guilds in all of Castle Clash.
I finally decided to quit the game after IGG gave Pets to the Pets. Yes, it is as stupid as it sounds for the idea. It was extremely lucrative for IGG who stayed behind to still play the game. By this point in time I was legitimately about to throw my smartphone through as many walls, floors, ceilings, what have you just to make the agony cease. I did not want to stop playing Castle Clash because I did not want to let down my guildmates. I originally started to look for a new mobile game to play. Unfortunately, by this point in time I could not find any mobile games that did not follow IGG's business model in any sort of way or ways. Since then I have not played any mobile games. I find it it to be much too heartwrenching and breaking to play any mobile games.
The broken english makes it so much better.
"That extortion."
What is that link?
It’s like a Nigerian prince developed this.
@@RobTheDoodler "Please kindly note it" more like an Indian Raj.
Oh my shit! You actually discovered the secrets of that extortion for mobile phone gaming!
Thanks farmville and candy crush for the proliferation of preditory casual/mobile games. It all became mainstream from these two.
Nah, Game of War, well before both of those two.
Toon Blast be hiding.
Angry Birds as well but that game wasn't so bad, the monetization was more like expansions which is fine. I don't spend money on games anymore, the sickness that's developed in the industry over the last decade or so has me feeling completely numb to any hype for upcoming games. It seems to me I'm always asking myself now-a-days whenever I see a new game, I temporarily almost feel hopeful that it'll be good but wonder what the catch will be that ruins the experience. There's a few great games every once in a while that genuinely strive to deliver the best experience the developers could manage to envision within the creative limits that the tech could allow but I know video games are art, not just monetary scams that depict art, so as long as passionate individuals can see the potential in their visions of an experience like no other, then we will get great games no matter what happens we may just have to wait longer between releases. xP
@@shadow_psych7069 Angry Birds never sold loot crates. IIRC they only sold level packs and then later versions of the game. Far from expositive like Farmville's paying for crops to complete that would normally take days/weeks...
@@shadow_psych7069 Couldn't agree with your comment more, because of all of this monetisation I too no longer get excited for upcoming games or consoles. I'm now constantly wary and pessimistic about games and the industry in general. Gaming was my childhood passion, one I wanted to share with my daughter as she gets older but now I see how every company, even good ole wholesome Nintendo target children and psychologically manipulate them to spend, spend, spend. Its a control that stays with kids well into adulthood and gets them addicted to gambling mechanics. I just can't do that to my kids and so now, I can't share with them an activity I once held so dear. I'll never be able to get excited for a videogame ever again and that just sucks. Fuck this industry and its never ending greed.
Their ignorance and negligence towards their former moderator's concerns gave me an impression that they know EXACTLY what they're doing...
Of course they do. As with any $Million+ Chinese company, the whole Chinese government probably has their back.
They know from experience that western companies, ie Google, don't want to ruffle their feathers and disrupt the lucrative Chinese market.
And therefore western customers have absolutely no recourse. You can't take a Chinese company to court if you're a single user. And I'm not a lawyer but I very much doubt that even a class action would reach that far.
Without a doubt. It is a Chinese company after all. It’s like SOP for them...
@@XHackManiacX Consumers can't take this company to court if it is based in China but they can still try to force take Google to court if it refuses to remove a company extorting players.
They can make the courts force Google to remove the games of this company.
This sure looks like an intentional “bug” than an accidental one!
Dude, they're Chinese, of course they intended it.
I remember the good old days when this sort of thing happening in gaming was horrifying and shocking.
Even remember UEG's older videos reacting to this sort of thing with sheer and utter disbelief.
Seriously puts into perspective how much worse things have gotten.
I know a time before when gamers laughed about to spend money for ingame items and forced always online games as a joke .
You bought a full game and got full content and gameplay from the start ... till the Horse armor DLC-Madness happened .
.... man ... im old ....
@@Snyperwolf91 Not enough of us realized what horse armour really meant for the industry.
@@Snyperwolf91 Paid content was introduced way earlier. You have the original Sims which sold expansions before being a complete pack. The Sims 2 as well. Then you have Devil May Cry 3 on PS2 that had a special edition. Same thing happened with Silent Hill 2, introducing the Director's Cut. A couple of original Xbox games had DLC even though it was "free".
They were already experimenting with this, Bethesda took it a step further by using an ingame item instead of an actual expansion.
Most mocked and shunned those trying to warn ya. A vast majority did. WIth shit excuses like its their money they can spend it on what they want. i miss the 90s and early 00s before mainstream dipshits ruined it.
That's complete bullshit, people figured out that mobile was good for whaling very quickly.
I read that thumbnail and said "Yes, and the sky is blue."
Yup
We'll make it green if we have too
Yes, this floor appears to be made of floor.
😹😹
... ACTUALLY!....
Jk lol.
My daily dose of concentrated discontent for an aspect of modern gaming..
37games is a Chinese company too. *surprised pikachu*
Checks out
@@aogote most major corps suck, no matter what country they’re from.
*surprised pukachi (a Chinese pikachu knock off)*
Look up Genshin impact. Another growing popular chinese game as well.
Checks out yeah, fck these people
Good god, can we just go back to the good ol' days of the early 70s to 90s when you paid full price of the game and you get the whole product...
This is why the retro community is a thing and is growing.
I know this for myself as a retro gamer. I'm sick of gacha, broken, unfinished games. GaaS and mobile games destroyed this industry.
and thats why i have hacked my consoles so i can play full fledge games
@@johndoe8442 Well, this is quite common knowledge in the far east
Only the delusional personas, who actually believe that infinite growth is possible, leave the ship. Until they're still on board, vile practices like these will be a thing.
I have never heard something more stupid and I don't think you were alive during the 70ies or eighties.
There was tons and tons of garbage games and no internet to find out what was good.
Great rule of thumb is to not spend money on non-physical items.
So no buying games on steam or buying a Netflix subscription or Paying my electric bill, this is one slippery slope.
@@ICELAG3 Buy physical copies of games whenever possible. Netflix and the electric bill are services and you pay for that service. A new skin for a character in a game is not a service or a physical item with inherent value. Dont be stupid.
What about the majority of indie games? Most indie developers can’t afford to get a physical release (yes I know SOME of them do, but the majority of them don’t).
@@josephkeen7224 those games actually have soul
@@yourself1210 the thing is the comment made by humanity not found was referring to digital goods in general.
The fact that they even have the galls to send a message like this shows how screwed up the regulations around video games are.
It’s the fact that they’re not a US based company so legal action can’t be taken
One word: CHINA
The shitty thing about mobile gaming is they are influencing the regular gaming industry and it makes me just not want to play. It seems like I’m finding it harder and hard to find a game that’s sole purpose isn’t to take more money.
Look for indie games. They’re where all the soul went. Not most AAA publisher games.
@@benjaminpeterson455 - No AAA publisher or developer is any good. All have fallen from grace. Look at the last, best hope, CDPR and how they screwed up CP2077.
@@ahmataevo Nintendo still makes quality titles. Not defending what they have been doing as of late, (The Big House, 3-D All stars) but at least you still get your money’s worth with them.
How do we know the "bug" wasn't part of the scam? Maybe they put a so-called exploit into the game on purpose and then held the accounts hostage. Like an experiment on how far they can push this kind of thing.
Exactly
Instead of paying to get their accounts back, they should invest that money in the lawsuit for this extortion.
@@johndoe8442 Hm... should start taxing their American partners over here more to discourage that kind of a business.
@@johndoe8442 Unfortunately, it's a nation of serial spenders.
@@Gakusangi yeah but corporate America is just as greedy as corporate china, we just have laws and regulations. In the end American companies will turn a blind eye if they can continue business in china since the Chinese are huge spenders in gaming industry.
@@VainSick and as I said, if they want Chinese dollars they can pay higher fees here for it XD
If you can't get the company just sue the app store itself
"Let's go whaling?" Yeah, if you're attending that seminar you are not a game developer anymore. You're a dealer.
Guilt by association...really? There are people who attended that talk to relay the tactics to politicians who would later go on to attempt to ban said practices, but hey...guilty because PBBT
@@DxBlack you know what he means, he is referring to those who went to learn how to make money and not art.
@@DxBlack you aren’t stupid don’t act like you can’t decipher his meaning without getting worked up over some twisted narrative you spun into such a simple statement.
People that actually thought it was about whaling must have been pissed
We really need a real world Elliot (Mr.Robot) to vengefully hack these horrific corrupt gaming companies
Your time to shine then! 😆
Or maybe he could go after pornhub. You know, the company that has been caught hosting CP and revenge porn and rape videos then shrugging and saying “not our bad.” I think that’s a lot worse than this though.
@@JoshuaJacobs83. Even though your probably right, watabout-ism is not an argument for not doing something...
@@divisiona3974 You’re right.
@@JoshuaJacobs83 it’s not allowed on their site, and curating a catalog of user generated content that big requires time and money, not to mention users will continue to pop up uploading that garbage, that shit is even on UA-cam dude.
Damn I thought Blizzard was scummy for banning people accidentally using exploits because of poor programming or testing, but this takes the crown...
perfect example why I don't play Chinese games because international rules don't work in china by all the copyright law that one country breaks
Very good point. Applies more broadly as well
Though granted, modern Copyright law can go and F*** itself.
American games also do this.
I found a chinese app but mod apked to bypass grind, one scenario in the conquest mode is, hilariously plays as the chinese rebel breakawah state (taiwan) and retake the entirety of china back.
@@lbc02gaming99 Please provide an example.
There are good mobile Devs as well but this one is next level of scam. We should probably spread the word. Maybe ask other UA-camrs to make videos about this.
I rarely play Mobile games but when I do I only get ones that I can pay up front for and while not having to worry about paying a cent afterwords.
Until they update the game and now it's full of ads and they ask you to pay again to remove them
Interestingly not the first instance I've heard of where something like this occurs. I used to waste some time (luckily not money) on a mobile game called Dragonbane. I was shown some screenshots at the time where someone from my group of friends contacted support for not receiving items they had purchased. The response was something along the lines of "Double the money you have spent on those items with other purchases and we will give you everything; otherwise tough luck". That was kind of when I decided to never spend any money on mobile games under any circumstances. That was a long time ago. I've stayed true to that and fortunately so if that was possibly not an isolated incident.
Back when I was still playing I Got Game's Castle Clash this was a very rare incident. For such incidents IGG's Customer Support was actually pretty good at helping you out. Since I quit the game three or so years ago I do not know how IGG is operating their Customer Support side anymore.
I saw something similar with a flash MMO in 2010 called Heroes of Kung Fu, a very few people really did cheat but the supposedly american branch took orders from mainland china, and demanded tens of thousands of dollars to unban accounts, more than the actual cheaters, in addition to punishing the whole server.
You know I almost feel this was the intention. To catch a load of players and the extort them for money. Tin foil hat on. They felt that they would be able to get a payday from these low paying players as they have determined that these player will not be paying any desirable amount.
Yep, that's why I only play tetris and chess on my phone
Same.
This is why I never spend money of mobile game! F2P for LIFE!
I hate it when you get an ad supposedly showing you game-play, then the game is nothing like what you are shown.
"Pay up for the mistake I've made"
That's what what it literally means
Yeh,
Except I do not think this was a mistake, it smells of intent from the start.
A way to boost sales from players that did not spend sufficient in the eyes of the company.
Seems like they're going a little further on the whole "turning players into payers" thing
turning players into hostages....... hmmmm
Remember the days when you purchased a finished game on a disc and enjoyed it, end of story?
Good times.
there was a similar situation with World of Tanks early one in the development. You could use your emal to register to there newsletter or something(can't remember the details any more) and you would get a code for some premium currency(gold in this case). I thin the amount was what you could get for a dollar or so. But, you could enter unlimited amount of these codes by just generating random emails. I personally used these codes to get what came to something like 200+$ of ingame gold. Many players did the same until the issue was patched an hour or 2 latter. No one was banned, no one had there gold/tanks confiscated. They issued a statment saying that they fixed the issue allowing players to input multiple promo codes and that the promo codes are now 1 per account as intended and that was that.
“Hey my account got banned, can I get some reconsideration?”
“Well it looks like your account got banned because somebody reported it. How about you slip me $100 and I’ll consider this business to be square?”
🎩
🐍 no step on snek! 🇺🇸🇭🇰
"Looks like it got banned because we reported it."*
i love this guy! fucking amazing coverage and insight always. your work is appreciated.
This is why it's important not to give your money to Chinese based companies. There is no legal action, not to mention, app stores will not touch them because they don't want to lose out on the Chinese market.
Well when they're at start breaking the law you can start getting the companies here in trouble as well if nothing else
Jesus, you'd think getting banned from one of those games would be a blessing in disguise haha
It should be, man.
But please, the language.
Spicy stuff. Mobile gaming is really a wreck and there seems to be no oversight. Hopefully EA doesn't get any ideas.
Gamers: "Takes advantage of a game feature"
Dev: wtf they're all cheating ban them all
There's a boycot for Hero Wars mobile right now you should do a video on that 😉
Hero Wars has some cool new ads, but are they made by the company that made Hero Wars? Or did they steal those new animated adverts?
putting words in the comments to boost interaction with this video
Agreeing with anime dude's sentiment and doing the same.
Putting replies to the comments to do the same. :)
I usually hate when people ask this, but if you like this video then it'll help spread it because UA-cam's algorithm loves that sh*t. Commenting also helps.
I'm not shocked about this. Apple and Google make so much from these games they're not to do anything.
I'd just quit if they tried to extort me like that I find that after something like this, staying would show bad character.
Well, people are weak these days.
Sunk cost fallacy is one hell of a drug...
I did quit I was one of there victims, Now I only Join new Servers in games to warn new players who Recently down loaded wild frontier, to not trust the developers and why ..
That reminds me of something that happened to my friend in Warframe, actually. They were doing a trade (In-game item for premium currency, which is completely allowed) but the person who gave them the premium currency had bought it from a reseller (Third-party selling currency), so my friend's account lost all the premium currency and went into the negatives. He was forced to pay the amount of currency needed to get him out of the negatives ($217 USD) to have access to the account, for something he didn't even do. wild times.
ive been saying these things for ten years, i tell everyone to stay away from games like these
Yes, tell us something we don't know.
The mobile gaming industry has always been a wasteland of scams and shameless cash-grabs. That comes as no surprise.
Video begins: hah, what else is new...
Video get to the point where UEG shows extortion messages: wtf seriously??!?!?!?
Well that is simple greed. Instead of owning their fuck ups they charge even more
Hey Upper, great video this is so great because I feel like this is using your position to actually expose something corrupt as all hell. please spread this around to other content creators! The thing that scares me is that with loot boxes on the way out (hopefully) I can see this practice maybe gaining steam amongst smaller developers, if this can be nipped now and this company handled the spread can stop here and now, keep up the good work love your passion for consumer rights and this industry
These videos are top shelf. Just found them. I hope they bring you much success.
Sooooo, “pay me or stay banned”?
When did video games became LITERALLY a Extortion Racket!?
Also, legit respect to that WAILER. He basically slapped the truth to this company!
Within the same year I quit playing IGG's Castle Clash an increasing number of UA-cam videos showing the true opinions and beliefs these same developers including IGG thought of their customer base really influenced me to quit Castle Clash and to stop looking for a Castle Clash replacement mobile game. It was intensely soul crushing to me to find out that I am not a living breathing human being to these people, but just a stack of money to them. The only thing that has been making me glad about any of this crap is the entire video game industry has been slowly collapsing for years now. I will be ecstatic when the entire video game industry totally collapses.
The whole mobile "gaming" market is a massive scam to begin with. These devs just raised the scumbag bar a notch higher.
I see you technomancer. Thanks for the purples farm spot at "the dunes"
5:02 now that’s a pay to win guy that I can get behind.
Literally no more than 5hrs after having watched this i get a mobile ad for "37Games; Puzzle and Conquer"... the irony and audacity can't be understated.
How do normal companies deal with these kinds of bugs?
Simple, publicly point out that an exploit of the bug is bannable (usually by, among other things, using forum, twitter, ingame message and/or TOS updates) and then start banning. They will eventually fix the issue (if it is fixable) and proceed with their lives.
Nothing about demanding money to reactivate the account though. This is the first time I've seen this kind of extortion... and yes it is most probably illegal in several jurisdictions.
And then some people ask why the mobile market is so badly seen in the eyes of so many gamers...
That new intro looks pretty good! Keep up the Lord's work UE
Thanks for the upload Upper Enhelon😜❤️
What game is he getting background footage from?
Also, I'm so glad to see other people finally taking a stand against greedy game devs. Even if it's a mobile game, it's a big problem, because it can spread to the AAA games. It already has started doing that, take a look at loot boxes, or I'm sorry EA, I meant "surprise mechanics."
This company really is so so scammy.
Lots of money they owed me and have taken my time/ad revenue from.
Glad people are waking up to it, and hopefully we organize and fight it.
I'm thinking of making a review site, I'm curious if there are any other ideas.
My wife has spent $9k in the last 8 months... it's actually an active argument going-on. This is 100% true.
over a grand a month? oooooooooooof
Holy cow! Gambling anonymous?
Dude. 😕 genuinely needs psychiatric intervention. Immediately. That's awful, I'm so sorry for you.
@@jsfyxzuf117 We make plenty... but that amount is stupid. We could build her 2 ridiculous gaming riggs at scalper prices for that.
@Slush hear hear, on all points. 🍻
It doesnt matter if you make a million a week, that kind of impulse spending is a clear sign of a genuine psych issue that needs immediate attention. It's addiction.
It's really no different from people who get hooked on painkillers: yes they may have pain which needs to be treated, but shooting up opiates 24/7 just isnt healthy.
Yes you may be able to afford it.... now... but what about when you cant? And you still dont have impulse control or a handle on your addiction?
There are so many stories and so many studies of people who fell into that *exact* trap. It's tragic. And it needs to be treated and helped.
Hell that's why I'm not shaming the wife: I was a smoker for a decade and went cold turkey. I know how bad addiction can feel. But I also know first hand that with training and help, self-discilpline can win over any cravings. It's just a matter of willpower.
And a little kindness couldnt hurt either.
The stranglehold they have on youtube ads is ridiculous. I havent played a mobile game since, like... the original release of angry birds. Bout 12 years and 7 phones ago. But such ads are about 80% of my youtube ads. It's infuriating. No matter how many times I downvote or change ad settings, it's basically all I get. 🤦♂️
The dumbest part, to me at least, is once in a blue moon I actually get an ad for something I actually want to buy! 🙀 and then I go and buy it! Because it's something I either need or would simply enjoy. But do more similar ads show up? No. And the originals go away. 🙄
With all the datamining, how are you so bad at it?!
that gameplay tho lvl 22 wt1 are gaming journalists really that unskilled wtf
Sorry but a gaming journalist would be doing level 1 stuff then complaining about how hard the game is.
Considering how shady their business is running, I wouldn't be surprised if those 'terminated accounts' are actually being sold to other players for money as well.
Good video. Other conplaints prior to this was using extreme nerfs on payed content that came out only months prior. Switching of payed game resources for a new content resource. But the replacement resource players received didn't even give 50 percent of the stats they had prior and had payed for. Also taking 2 months of complaining to get a payed item back that was lost through a bug. Refusing to merge servers that have like 20 active players left. It was endless with this game. Worst ever.
It’s nice to hear you talk about this with discount Warframe in the background.
Companies that blackmail or extort consumers should be shut down instantly. The amount of leverage that many companies hold against consumers is insane and there’s no way an average citizen can fight against corporate extortion.
Ah yes the floor is made of floor
As long as people are stupid enough to keep playing mobile games, these practices will get more predatory. Supply and demand.
UEG, what do you think would happen to mobile games and loot boxes if there weren't any whales or kraken spending so much money? That might be an interesting what if video. Anyways, keep up the great work!
The only part that surprises me about this is that EA wasn't the first one caught doing this.
Also pay walls, you reach a certain level and you cannot advance further without paying real money. This is used on many "free to play" games...
Check out another example of how slimy and greedy mobile game companies are: game Mighty Party - false advertising, pay to play, pay to keep playing and keep paying monthly on top of sustaining your payed for VIP level to have a chance of obtaining best heroes in the game (essentially a loot box with some best heroes is locked behind a high VIP level)
There are tons of horror stories coming out from players that were double charged and if they request a refund then 37 bans them until they pay money.
I can safely say that UA-cam is BURYING your videos and Im subscribed to you.
What are terrible CEO holding the accounts at ransom, it's pretty much a given that people are going to play a game and try and work out what best works for them, The loophole in wild Frontier that they did not make therefore they should not be held at ransom at x amount because of the chief executive officers own faculty.
first time i encountered people spending real money for in game items was during early 2000s with the Ragnarok boom.
i didnt understand why anyone would pay real money for in game stuff back then,
still dont understand it now
like,,, why???
I played that particular game for like 10 mins, and checked what they are making us pay for the packs
and I say they are expensive as hell in the long run personally, as it has a lot of things in the game to be exploited
like dungeon keepers that EA made
Uh ty for covering this topic
I personally put a lot of blame on Apple. They created this whole "in-app purchase" system when they could have said no.
Allways surprised when i find actual games journalism
I can't understand/comprehend why people spend their money on these things because as long as the players continue to spend people will take advantage of them.
That’s just it. They don’t want their money invested to become meaningless, so they spend more. It’s the Sunk Cost Fallacy.
PSA: If you've spend any significant amount of money on an unethical mobile app, definitely contact customer service and appeal their initial automatic response. When you finally talk to a human at Google Play or App Store support, please give them all the screencaps showing the unethical and malicious nature of the developer. You can actually get all IAPs from one single title fully refunded if the developer broke ToS, was misleading, or any other poor practice. Someone recieved $300+ (all IAPs over years) fully refunded via this method (it was a gacha that used scam rates, maybe though that applies to all of them lol.)
oh no a game company wants to suspend my account if I don't pay them even more money! that's like totally criminal!
The same happened to me in the (PC) game Conqueror's Blades. They didn't put a cap on how many codes for the same pack you can use so, ofc, i used more. Next day....banned. Thankfully I was unbanned after they removed the bonus items i got( and did quite a piss poor job at that) but still, companies should be more careful, or if not, own up to their mistakes and not punish the players for their oversight.
Used to do IAP on mobile games but only on Premium Pass and Monthly daily premium currency logins, that's it. Now since I have almost all the items, equipments, etc. that I need I stop and return to F2P user. I'm more of a handheld and mobile users, this one is just one of those garbage game as expected from Chinese made developers.
Thanks for informing about this Chinese game developer, will avoid it since tried their games and doesn't really peaked my interest not one bit.
And water is wet.
I would have to think this was intentional by the company. No professional developer would make this mistake: Did you do this? Yes? Then you can't do it again. It's the easiest level of programming. Seriously, the company likely wanted this outcome.
This technique could be labeled 'the honey-pot'.
From Winnie the pooh ! xD
I've stood by my opinion from the get-go that mobile gaming does more damage than good for the gaming industry. It just continues to get worse.
Until these companies get either A) Bans for extended periods of time from the app/play store; or B) Permanent bans from those stores, they will NOT change their predatory and self-destructive ways.
Only thing worse than the mobile games themselves, are their ads, that directly LIES about the game, they might show some designs and models that're in the game, but especially "gameplay" in the ads are NOTHING like the actual game.
Normal mobile devs would issue a warning, and remove all the items you obtained via "hack" and patch the game...
"Bug using" is not a real thing, any "bug" is an "unintended feature" that the dev put in accidentally. It's company's problem that the bugs are there, not the players.
The fact that you could spend 200 bucks and not be considered a "whale" speaks volumes here
Lets not forget, Google houses all those scam apps, this one, the ones with fake ads, etc...
It's stuff like this why I despise the mobile gaming market. Its profitability isn't built on quality, it's either built on predatory, borderline illegal practices or legally exploiting people's addictions. Either way, it's a toxic, unsustainable business model.
Sad to see there is literally 0 news about this on google.
Most UA-camrs, especially gaming ones absolutely creaming their pants at the chance to shill mobile games.
Upper echelon "this is why mobile games are trash"
Hi UE, an advertise just played while I was watching this video. it was RAID SHI....SHADOW LEGENDS.
Are you aware of it???
Btw. great content, keep it up :-) you have my respect.
les play red shado leg enz star now fo fri
This is ransomware tactics... why doesnt "Chinese company" surprise me?
Well spoken, as always. However, I think consumers/gamers enable this kind of predatory behaviour. The more we buy, the more developers do this kind of unethical stuff. Unless people stop spending money on it, I would bet it will continue.