Many gamers are burning tons of money to buy free in-game items

The paradox shows that free games are extremely “blood-sucking” games.

Microtransactions (or microtransactions – MTX) have become an essential part of video games, especially as free-to-play titles (no subscription fees, game purchases) are growing exponentially. dizzy. Sure, a part of gamers will feel uncomfortable with MTX, but the developers won’t get rid of this form for a while. Why? Because MTX is their huge money making machine.

In 2020, the MTX market is estimated to be worth around $33.4 billion and is forecast to grow by 3.6% in 2021.

One important thing you need to understand about the microtransaction economy is that most of its revenue comes from the whales. The term “whale” is used to refer to gamers who spend a lot of money on MTX. When a game publisher introduces MTX trading into the game, they don’t expect to generate huge revenue from 10,000 players, but each person only spends a small amount of money.

Instead, they want to focus on attracting a small number of players who are willing to shell out a few thousand dollars or euros. With that orientation, today, we can easily find gamers who have spent a really huge amount of money on in-game transactions. Let’s take a look at some prominent faces below.

In 2018, the Wall Street Journal published a story about a 31-year-old man named Daigo who spent $70,000 on Sony’s Fate/Grand Order game. Daigo has no regrets about the money spent because he thinks the game has intrigued him and he loves it.

But how did this gamer spend such a huge amount? This guy has done through many different types of transactions. For example, he spent 500 USD to buy a character, but the character was too weak and did not satisfy Daigo. So he spent another 2000 USD to level up that character.

Increasing the speed of leveling up characters in the game is not too rare when gamers often spend a little money to make up for not having a lot of time or energy in the game, but 2000 USD is really a monster. unusually high number.

While Daigo doesn’t regret the money he spent, a 19-year-old boy named Kensgold thinks otherwise. Sharing on Reddit, Kensgold said he has spent $ 13,500 on in-game transactions over the past 3 years, since he was 16 years old. The young man also said most of the money goes to free-to-play games, including Age of Warring Empire, Clash of Clans and a few others.

Kensgold wrote an open letter to EA around the time that Star Wars Battlefront II was being talked about a lot thanks to the “loot box” (random item box). The young man admitted that he was addicted to “loot boxes”, so he would not play the game Battlefront II.

Stephen Barnes, 59, a home appliance store owner, spent more than $2 million on a mobile game called Modern War.

When players spend a lot of money on the game, they become serious about the things they can buy and this happened exactly with Stephen Barnes. He organized a boycott of 144 guilds and 6,000 players after the game’s publisher, Gree, changed the value of items that players purchased through MTX. In some cases, they even delete items that players have spent a lot of money to buy.

Bettysue Higgins, 54, from Maine, embezzled $166,000 while working at the Maine Defense Bar Association. This woman wrote fake checks to cash out and spend…whatever she liked. She spent about $6,000 on Mafia Wars and a few other free games.

In 2016, the EU enacted a new law called the General Data Protection Regulation. We will not go into detail what it is, but in simple terms, this act is intended to protect user privacy and give customers the right to view all their data stored by companies. store. And this is the right that a 32-year-old guy named Michael from England has exercised. Michael asked EA to provide all the information they had about him, and only then did he realize he had spent up to $10,000 on the FIFA game in the past 2 years.

How did this guy spend so much money without even knowing it? Michael said he spent money to be able to play more from 30 minutes to 6 hours a day almost throughout the week. And when EA runs promotions like Black Friday, TOTY, FUT Birthday… he can spend thousands of FIFA coins (priced at about 6.79 USD/100K) without thinking. Michael was worried when he learned how much money he had spent on FIFA, but he also thought his income was good enough that his love for FIFA did not weigh on his financial ability. However, he also said that he feels sympathy for players who are addicted to MTX trading while their income is still low.

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