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Completely agree. I'll often take a look at the "top in-app purchases" as well. "$9.99", ok, but if I see a "$129.99" for a "big crate of gems"...

I just got to question how the developers felt that it was morally acceptable to create a toxic enough app experience that drives users to use in app purchases through deceptive tactics during the first few minutes of play to go and drop +$100 on virtual gems.

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The $129.99 is not meant to be purchased. It's mostly a psychological artifact to make other in-app products seem more affordable.

I don't know, that's really not that much depending on the quality and quantity of product you receive.

Do you have actual stats on how many people purchase this sort of thing, or are you just guessing?

The number of people that do is quite small as a percentage of users who do it, but quite significant as a percentage of revenue for the company selling those packages. Free-to-play is just like the alcohol and gambling industries, a large fraction of revenue comes from a small fraction of players.

Not necessarily. Apps like this tend to make a huge portion of their revenue from "whales" who spend crazy amounts of money: http://www.adweek.com/digital/infographic-whales-account-for...

I'm sure the anchoring effect helps too, of course.

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