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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

So I tried Bloons TD6 on apple arcade, a game which has very heavy monetization strategies, thinking ok, maybe the apple arcade version is finally playable without spending money - and no, they literally just removed the in-game store but haven't adjusted the curves it takes you to earn anything so if you want to unlock anything prepare for a VERY long grind.

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The Apple Arcade and Netflix versions give you double the Monkey Money as the microtransaction version. I agree they should have changed more, but it's not true they didn't adjust it.

Wait, really? It's been a while since I tried it, maybe they've changed it(or maybe I'm just being stupid) - either way, I guess I'm wrong then!

Reviews for the PC version of Triple Town on GOG says the same thing. They removed the option to spend real money, that was part of the popular mobile version, but they did not replace it with anything else, so supposedly you have to grind forever to get anywhere.

Pity since are some mobile games that look like pretty good games. If only all the built-in gambling was removed and the game re-balanced (and drm-free) I would be happy to buy them, for my phone or desktop. But that is almost never an option.

Situations like this are very illustrative of the fact that, despite industry claims to the contrary, this kind of monetization is not "optional". It taints the whole game experience. Just like ad breaks imposed a specific format on television shows before streaming (e.g. plot cliffhangers that anticipated ad breaks), microtransactions fundamentally alter the design of most games that include them - whether you buy any of the microtransactions or not.

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