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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

> I wish every damn micro transaction app gets removed one day.

What’s the alternative? I’m in love with the micro transactions model because the alternative is experience destroyed by ads or high upfront fees.

On the games I play I rarely buy anything, don’t see ads but their business is healthy and the games are fantastic and regularly updated with new content.

I casually play Asphalt 9, SimCity BuildIt and PUBG, probably have hundreds if not thousands of hours on each and spent probably less than $20 till now. If that’s not a great deal, I don’t know what is.

I also bought games like Monument Valley or Limbo and similar. While the experience is also top notch, the upfront payment feels steep and the developers don’t update the games so the play time is considerably less.

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> I rarely buy anything, don’t see ads but their business is healthy

Where do you think the money comes from, then? Ultimately, your `fantastic' experience comes at the cost of innumerable singular sites of suffering from the children and addicts _who do_ buy them.

Good for them. There are controls for kids and if some people subsidize the rest, I don’t have a problem with that.

Some people taking the tab for the rest isn’t new. Some people have more money than sense, that’s alright.

These games are high quality entertainment, if some people want to spend money on them, that’s not a bad thing.

There are teams of people whose entire job is to make the IAP as addictive as possible. It's not fair to say that someone should just "be less addicted" to buying them.

Regulating the kids by banning them completely is like a nuclear bomb in a mineshaft.

It should he easier to stop children spending money on them but equally I don't mind adults spending their money on new things. A new Fortnite skin or dance etc. does have a cost to produce (I am not in favour of PTW-style microtransactions though)

the alternative is experience destroyed by ads or high upfront fees

My experience is exactly the opposite. IAPs encourage developers to make the default experience sufficiently broken (e.g. requiring absurd amounts of grinding) so that you'll pay to fix it.

I know the argument but it’s not my experience with these games. Especially with PUBG, the purchases are only cosmetic if you don’t count the private playing mode that I’m not into anyway.

Because these games are multiplayer, you peer with people that are also not high spenders(mostly).

In Asphalt 9, for example It’s not realistic fir me to unlock some cars by free playing but I would not say that the experience is broken, Years later I still enjoy a few races every day because they introduce new items and gaming modes almost monthly.

I can say quite confidently that micro transactions ruined sim city build it. They slathered the game with a massive amount of grind, it really only has a minor thematic similarity to the rest of the franchise.

I played the game for a year straight, just once spent something like $5 because I wanted an item that was about to expire an I was out of resources. Never felt like I had to pay to “win”. I never played the rest of the franchise though, enjoyed this one until I felt like I am spending too much time on a game and quit.

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