this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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There are many many examples of predatory uses of in game currencies, but here are some big reasons devs use them besides being scummy.
Transparency is good, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
But this is how gift codes work, no? You're not giving money away directly. Just give a voucher for a real currency if you want to gift users.
Can you give me an example of one you've seen?
The original poster was saying paid currency shouldn't exist, so I think in that scenario, you could only have vouchers for a whole in-game item. So for example if an item costed $5, then yes you could give away codes to redeem that item.
There's also an operational overhead to doing it that way compared to in-game currency though, because setting up products in google play/iOS can be kind of a pain compared to adding them to your own systems. Generally the dev wants as much to be under their control as possible because they have more flexibility that way compared to making products in the app stores.
Also worth noting that iOS will block your app if you provide ways to get products (meaning things that cost real money) through ways other than the app store. So that means the dev wouldn't be able to ever give you something in the game itself if that thing can also be bought. They could only give coupon codes (these are manually generated) for products to use in the app store interface.
I'd be interested to hear an example of one you've seen because it might be a way to approach it that I'm not thinking about.
What baby? In game purchases? That's not a baby, that's a big shit somebody took in your tub. If transparency is too hard to implement, publishers should feel free to get rid of them altogether.
They can give items for free instead. Without currency they cant give you 90% of what you need and force you to overpay for extra.
A variable for a value is trivial. It already works perfectly fine in the store!
Sure sales on mobile... (sounds like Apple and Google would get some needed pressure to improve this area) but thats another problem, none of these purchases should be expensive enough to even warrant needing a sale in the first place.
The real reason they want in game currency is not any of these, it's for the deception factor, avoiding refunds, upselling etc
Also in some games players can trade the currency
Store credit is not necessarily simple. There are tons of laws about that kind of thing that differ country to country and in the US state to state. For example in my state, gift certificates can't expire, so once you give one away as the dev you have to track that on your books forever, even if no one ever uses it. In your free example it's even worse, because the company has to write that money off as real money, because it can never expire. It's basically the same as giving away real money from a bookkeeping perspective (at least in my state). Someone with more bookkeeping knowledge can probably give a better answer but that's my limited understanding of that as a sole proprietor who does my own books.
I would also question if store credit is actually any less predatory than a premium currency. If the premium currency is transparent and easy to understand it's basically the same thing, no? Hypothetically, if I'm a scummy developer, I could sell $5 in store credit, and then make all the items on the store cost $8. That's the same result for the player as bad monetization schemes with premium currency. I know in your example you're saying give it away, but somewhere in there the developer is going to need to make money. They can't give credit away for in-game currency and hope to stay afloat as a business for long without some deeply predatory stuff going on like in roblox.
At the end of the day I think everything you're saying is probably feasible in some form for a AAA dev, but not for small devs. Personally I'm also thinking about small devs without an army of compliance specialists and lawyers. I'd like indies to also be able to make money, not just the conglomerates.
For example, saying a system could be worked out to localize an in-game economy is a hand wave. Every game works differently under the hood and in how it paces things, and this would be a huge undertaking to implement and maintain (probably a nonstarter for a small team). It involves more than simple conversion.
Does someone from a weak currency country get different rewards by playing the game than someone from a strong currency? How does that work if that reward is a whole item, not a bit of currency? Do we really want capitalistic shenanigans to extend into the gameplay directly? Personally I prefer that stuff to be cordoned off in the in-game shop.
That's my take on all that. I'm not a lawyer and I don't work for a AAA dev, so take this stuff with a grain of salt. My experience comes from having to tackle all these issues as a tiny indie dev.
Even 2 isn't difficult. If they can set a price on the currency itself then they can set it on each item trivially.
Store credit lets them manipulate you. They can say the minimum top up is $5. Then put the cheapest items at $3. Want two $3 items? You have to deposit at least $10! It goes on and on.
No. Just make it so you add items to a cart and purchase their exact value with real money, no in between, no scummy tactics.
(But if it was up to me, I would ban MTX altogether)