In-App Purchases (and why they’re so bad)
Sometimes, in the app store, you might see a little In-App Purchases icon below the GET button. That dreadful little icon just tells you to be aware that you’ll end up paying even more than you expected for the app pretty soon.
In general, modern games are just the pits. Everything, from the cost of them to how they tempt you to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars on “currency” and other unpleasant and distressing things. For example, Mobirate took all of the best features away from the original parking mania and slapped on modern-game stuff into Mania 2.
What’s even worse is the IN-GAME CURRENCY that modern game manufacturers put out. Usually, it’s coins, but it can be much more. A game might go “Hey, you need 1200 gems to unlock the Raider Wand!” or “Pay $0.99 for 50 gems.” and if you don’t want to pay for gems or something, then you’ll lose all your progress or something crazy like that.
The game industry has turned into a wreck. It used to be perfectly fine in the 80s and early 90s, with Pac-Man, where it was just play and win. And play again. And again. But starting in the mid 2000s, everything went mad.