I'm sorry, but i find it very hypocritical of you to accept a sponsor of a mobile game filled with micro-transactions within a video about predatory mobile game marketing. I thought the sponsor segment was satire too.
It was all pretty fun and great when it was new, now we see these everywhere and how morally questionable they have become. Also let's not forget that these systems came included with Trade/Crafting to get better items.
@@ultimaxkom8728 ehhh, TF2 was the first to do loot boxes, but Overwatch is what made em' explode. Same with the battle pass; Dota started it, but Fortnite popularized it.
@@Garfieldcfc While it's true that Dota is the first to create Battle Pass, _as far as I know,_ TF2 is _not_ the first to do lootboxes. In fact, the first and early video games lootboxes appeared between 2004 to 2007, while TF2 added lootboxes in _2010._
I think it's comical how he is exposing the unethical ways mobile games make money and then there is the Raid Shadow Legends sponsorship, a game that does very similar stuff to what he's exposing in the video
@@EZOnTheEyes He is going through and liking every comment that mentions how he's doing this to spite Raid. Obviously he can't take the money and say "haha this game is shit", this is about as close as he can get.
"Hard" makes it sound like it's skill based, and as the guy in the video mentions, making it skill based is a mistake. 1. Make a game extremely boring and slow. 2. Sell a product that makes the game less boring and slow. 3. Profit.
Hard may not be the correct word, I prefer to say it like this: 1. Make a game with problems 2. Sell the solution to those problems 3. Collect the profit Credit to Josh Strife Hayes for the terms.
@@Fakerulez707 genshin impact is a weird exception ,because I never seen a successful game that doesn't have pvp or either competing content as genshin, but the whales are still spending ton of money on characters while most of the game in nutshell is either sprital abyss (which does gives near to nothing gems ) or storyline . propably the secret is the way that mihoyo represent their characters or propably some psychologie tricks that make whales never be satisfied from the amount of characters they have .
HE TURNED THE RAID SHADOW LEDGENDS SPONSOR INTO ACTUAL CONTENT This is genius. He managed to get the sponsorship money while driving people AWAY from the game
I can't even, it makes this whole video absolutely hilarious. I watched through the entire ad section because having it in the context of this video is just too funny.
Ain't no way the Raid marketing team actually looked at this video and was like "yep, let's put our predatory game in a video calling out our predatory practices indirectly".
"I'm going to shine a light on these predatory schemes and the companies behind them... This video is sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends" I woke up my family laughing at this.
I mean i think its fitting if you gonna do a video about slagging off free to play games you might as well try and take some money of the biggest offender XD not like they dont have the cash to spare anyway
I LOVED the subtle detail of you explicitly saying, in the sponsor, all the things you then describe in the video. The challenge, the multiple currencies, the "don't miss out on it", the limited time offer, everything in the sponsor is in the video. I was actually mad at you for getting a RSL sponsor for this video, thinking it was the mother of all hypocrisies, but MAN I should've know better and actually watched the sponsor XDDD
Man, this reminds me so much of PixelGun3D, back in the days of being 9 year of grade 3 iPad kid. this was one of my favorite games ever. It's controls were so smooth, very easy to play with friends and a vibrant competitive aspect that I've never seen replicated. I became addicted to the game, going for a "doctor" themed character, using only support and healing weapons for other players. I played all of the time with my friends, we made a clan that I owned, and I had so much fun using my support loadout on them. My main gun was the Good doctor, an unpopular gun with very slow but infinitely piercing bullets, which gave a poison-like bleeding effect that killed enemies over time, and healed allies if you shot them. it was called one of the worst guns ever, and as a 9 year old kid, I just used it for my doctor aesthetic I went for and it's healing abilities. however, once I got used to it, I was unstoppable with it, mowing down enemies left and right. I started to get really good at the game. I was especially skilled at landing headshots, which dealt double damage, having a ludicrous 85% headshot percentage for kills. I still remember playing a 3v3 first to 4 wins match with my friends, where it was 3-3 and I won it by landing a triple headshot kill on my first shot. we all thought it was the coolest thing ever and didn't stop talking about it for days. I quickly advanced up it's league system, to the very top: Adamant league. Then, I hit the pay to win leagues. The guns that these guys were using were just blatantly stupid. most of them ranged between $50-$700, and a few even hit the 1k mark, and were just overpowered. I still remember one named the Engineering Exoskeleton, which costed a grand total of $430 dollars, which shot wallbreak lasers that killed in 3 seconds, gave you poison, had 0 reload time and lifesteal. These players were impossible to compete with. Something else I noticed was that as new updates came out, the good doctor and my other support weapons leveled down? I thought I was just being salty at first, but then noticed every update or two my guns would decrease in power and firing speed. It became apparent when I went through 3 magazines with my good doctor, the gun that could one-shot with headshots, without the guy even losing his armor? I tried finding other guns, and upgrading it with everything I could, but nothing worked. they were useless. This is all fine stuff, but now that I was such a high league, my friends were getting cued up with these guys, and my support loadout could do nothing against them. you could imagine my 9 year old sadness; I just wanted to play my favorite game with my mates, make this how they used to be, have fun talking to them about our past and future matches. I felt the pressure to make things be like they used to be. Then, on my birthday, I received a $40 app store gift card. This wasn't enough to buy any gun straight up; however, there was a one time roulette event for a support weapon that could compete with them. Homing shot, fast fire rate, healing, I had the opportunity to fix thing and have the same old times we had before! And so I spent it all, and didn't win it. it broke my little heart that I had wasted my birthday gift on something so useless, and I would never be able to make those good times come back. as a grade 3 kid, it hurt. If you want to buy a mobile game, pay the premium price for a better game. It'll mean so much more in the long run. Thank you for making this video!
I feel bad for you dude and can totally relate. This isn't what gaming was meant to be. Gaming was always supposed to be about fairness, competition, and most importantly having fun and playing with friends, but now it's all about money. Truly a shame.
@@DeadAccount53885Not at all, in fact most people dont use aoe weapons anymore. There is a new meta called 3 cat spam, basically you can switch between 3 different weapons and spam them very quickly. It is still p2w as always.
man it must be hard for u, seriously nowadays i can't find any mobile games that feels entertaining , most of the games are trash and marketed targeting kids and they just suck, there is no unique concept and effort made, just micro transaction . back then in the good old days every game felt unique and entertaining , i just feel disappointed to open playstore because its filled with trash kids game which are inappropriate and ads spammer.
This might honestly be your best video yet. 90% of the modern mobile game market is absolute garbage and it feels like there's no way to fix it. I remember the classic iPod Touch era where no one had to deal with any of this. Good times 😔
this is why i love handhelds still like the ds. perfect good quality experiences and with an r4 you can have hundreds of them.i agree though the mobile game market needs to be hit with a massive lawsuit to even consider change
I once fell into these mobile games' traps when I was about 15. I wasn't earning money back then and spent around 1000$, all of which were my parents' money. But as I grew up I started to realize that the strategies that big companies use to make their players spend money are really f**ked. Thank you so much for making this video, and hopefully youtube algorithm will feature this video to everyone that people will start to realize how bad mobile games are.
@@roberine7241that's because companies see mobile games revenue and want to reproduce the same in pc. If anything stupid kids and whales are equally to blame as these companies are
wow its the guy with a video that has 23m views imma like the comment yay i now contribute to the comment algorithm giving an advantage to verified users
An interesting thing has happened recently, Rovio the company known for making the Angry Birds games removed a ton of their classic games from the Play Store which made a lot of people mad, even though all the games they took down had these predatory practices and would make them lose a lot of money. After this happened nothing happened for a while till one day they finally re-released the original Angry Birds, but this time it was different, they re-released Angry Birds at the price of $0.99. This might seem bad at first, but this re-release removed all micro transactions and delivered a classic Angry Birds experience. Now from a financial standpoint point, I can't understand why they would do this, sure there's a lot of theories you could make, but bottom line was, they could of kept the microtransaction filled Angry Birds they were using until now and be raking in tons of cash, but they didn't. In fact they fully removed it and replaced it with something that will only ever make them 99 cents once. This is quite mind blowing as the simplest explanation seems that, they saw the monster they created and realized this was the image of Angry Birds generations were growing up with now, this microtransaction filled monstrosity. So they did what was the best thing they thought to do, they remastered the original, clean of microtransactions to deliver the experience so many generations previously came to love. Now, maybe one day they'll bring back the free version with all the microtransactions, but I don't think so, I think this new mindset Rovio gained is here to stay, and it all started when they removed all those games, those games were beloved, but not by the state they turned into. All those games are still gone, officially not able to be played, but seeing what they did with the original Angry Birds, I don't have a doubt in my mind that them removing all those beloved games was the best thing Rovio has ever done, because I believe all of them will be back one day in their original beloved glory.
Data Wing is one of the few examples of an actual "free" game. There are no microtransactions, and the gameplay is really fun for what it's supposed to be
I just played data wing again a few days ago. Always re-visit it like once a year. Super nice game in every aspect. Not only are there no ads or microtransactions, but you literally cannot even go out of your way to donate to the dev :D
Any game made by the developer Yiotro. Every single one is an amazing piece of work. The graphical style is pristene and the gameplay loops are fun and engaging while being so simple. Most of his games are free, but for the ones that aren't there is always a demo version of the game with a medium sized level collection that gives you a taste of what the actual game is like. And if you like it, you spend $2.50 on the full version. It always comes with an extensive level list, daily levels, and an editor. The only ads are when he releases a new game, and you get exactly one popup when you open the game after the release and then never again for the game. Perfect. Love them. Ty.
A video about predatory mobile games, sponsored by a predatory mobile game. You absolute madman. What masterful use of pure irony to get the point across. What a legend.
Guys, he clearly was just stealing money from Raid with the sponsorship. Chances are Raid has asked him about a sponsor before, but he only accepted on this video so people wont download it but he gets money anyway.
The sad part is that it's hard to know why mobile games are bad before having played them long enough. Before I played my first mobile game, I thought I was really offered top quality games from the Play Store, until I realized many of them involved many types of currencies or time-based mechanics. I think my first experience with these types of games was Clash of Clans, where the more I played, the more waiting around I needed to do. This was bad for how reliant on time it was, especially to be competitive. It takes non-paying users a lot of time to rebuild an army to compete with users who pay. It made me understand why I kept seeing Nintendo's seal of quality on the many games I grew up with as a kid. Quality control should always be taken seriously.
I loved clash of clans but eventually it sucked because I had to wait 7 fucking days just to upgrade 1/7 of my gold farms which I have to wait a few hours to collect so I can upgrade 1/100 of my walls every other day. Constant offers to gem up or buy suck. Fuckin hated that game when I stopped playing because I don't want to wait another 8 days for 1/6 of my archer towers to level up once when I just spent 5 days waiting for gold to upgrade it.
Thats why I preferred Clash Royale and despite the pay-to-win mechanics the game started to shower players with reward mechanics later into its lifetime (around 2019ish). I never invested a single cent into the game and still compete without trouble
I personally feel like the App Store is like a giant landfill, if you’re brave enough to dive into the trash, you’re eventually going to find some gold (Genshin/Honkai Impact, Cookie Run Ovenbreak/Kingdom are some that come to mind)
@@Mangoshine may be full of gold, but most of the time when I click on a free app it instantly tells me to pay to use the app. It’s filled with lies and scams. I’m not sure finding the gold is worth sifting though that much trash.
One game I would absolutely recommend is The Battle Cats. At first glance it seems like a typical gacha game that gets you hooked on using the in game currency to get super rare units, but it's done in a way that's extremely f2p friendly (all the best units in the game are either very common gacha units, or units you don't get from the gacha at all) with virtually no multiplayer interaction (stripping the game of its social pressure so you never have to worry about progressing the same way others do) and a rather unique core gameplay loop to boot. The early game is probably the most tedious part but once you get through the first few story mode chapters and the wider game opens up, you're in for a great time. (Also, if you *really* despise gacha mechanics you can just "cheat" and find your seed, tracking exactly what units you will get from rolling which gacha and when)
don"t support gacha it is inherently a gambling system, predatory monetization is inevitable with that genre existing. it needs to be killed off entirely
I gotta say, the balls of raid shadow legends to sponsor a video about the scummy practices of mobile games is actually pretty cool. I have some more respect for them if they're willing to do that
I can't help to think the people who are angry at him taking the sponsorship didn't watch the whole video, there's literally no possible way that someone who understood minimally what he said would even consider downloading it, it's genius
i just find it funny cuz like 2 seconds ago he is like mobile games are unethical then he says this vedio is sponsored by raid idk how they let this happen but i find it funny
It's still a little hypocritical, I mean they offer good $$ if you do it but I don't think this was the best type of video to sponsor raid on...I mean it's just too ironic to ignore
@@memeulesrift6008 lets be real why would you care this a great yotuber providing quality videos that are well edited and very very informative let the man earn his money
@@memeulesrift6008 raid, a money-grabbing mobile game, paid mental checkpoint to make a video exposing money-grabbing mobile games. it's actually genius, he takes money from the sponsor and exposes them at the same time
Growing up my parents hated spending money, especially on video games. Because of that f2p games were great since I didn't have to convince my parents to spend money in order to play them. Not being able to spend much money in those games definitely made me feel bad and probably made me more likely to spend money on them as an adult. For anyone who's parenting a young gamer make sure to buy them high quality games that treat them like a human being instead of treating them like content for the whales.
Man I miss the old days of apps being actually good. I'm tellin ya, everything went downhill after 2016. Probably one of my favorites has to be the old hill climb racing, and Drive Ahead; some of the best games I remember playing on my old Ipad.
Geometry Dash has to be one of the best games with this. You can get full access to everything for $5 (its a single dev working on the game) and no more payments.
I would recommend a cute free mobile game called "Bomb Club", which is a puzzle game about exploding bombs in a safest way. Nice story, many cool jokes, good graphics, not super easy puzzles, a lot of different mechanics. Only things you can spend money on are 4 tiny themed dlc's, each with their own mechanic, and not being connected to games main plot. Zero ads. None. I genuinely think that it's one of those games that is so good, that it shouldn't actually be free. Done 100%, no regrets.
15:02 Building on the point of "you too can get lucky", messages of friends getting rare items skews your perception of the odds, even if the odds are published for you to see. Your friend might have opened 1000 crates just to get 1 rare item, but you only see the 1 success, and through survivorship bias, you'd be tricked into thinking rare items are a lot more common than they actually are. In fact, many (mobile) games go further than announcing to your friends and announce to the entire server that someone just got lucky. A real-world parallel would be people overestimating the frequency of airplane accidents because they are covered in the news, despite flights being statistically safer than driving.
casino's use this trick to, when someone finaly hits the jackpot on some scam machine the casino employese will come with balloons and flowers like that person just won the lotery. Other players around might begin playing to
Having studied psychology in games and bussiness for years this has always been something i have wanted more people to know about, but the problem is that the emotional connection can be so strong that a lot of people _willingly_ give into the manipulation.
@@feedelstick4670 And is quite difficult to make those systems work. The best way would be to just make illegal to buy in-game currency, to force a honest monetization because there's where the main trick is present. As hated as they might be, Whales have rights to spend money on things he enjoy and are the reason you might be playing a game to begin with, but the ways of trying to make non-whales ones is disgusting.
Some games I like a lot: DATA WING (top down racing game kinda, really fun to control) Destination Sol (You're a spaceship in an open world, your goal is... to make money i guess? There's no end goal yet) Mindustry (A tower defense resource management game, a lot like factorio.) Those last two can be played on pc as well, and are open source!
Phigros is a really good rhythm game for those who are on a budget, it has 0 in app purchases and all content can only be unlocked from in game progression (or in older April fool's updates, changing your system date). It also has some of the best charts I've ever played in any rhythm game.
just wanted to comment Phigros! A thing to note is that mobile rhythm games are pretty expensive (arcaea drained me) and the fact that phigros manages to be on the same level as high quality RGs is just amazing. Your profile picture also begs me to state that instead of purchasing every Cytus II and DEEMO DLCs you can actually pay for the Google Play pass on android or even collect it as a bonus with Play points (depending on your region).
@@ConeCats. Too late lol, I alr paid for all the Cytus 2 dlc (up to the release of Hans) 💀 Haven't bought any dlc since tho other than the honeykill and the devil will pray black market packs.
A bunch I recommend: Polytopia, Kingdom, Mindustry, Cultist Simulator, Crying Suns, Mini Metro, Don’t Starve, Plague Inc, and FTL. (Edit: looking back, I realize most of these aren’t actually free but I still recommend them nonetheless. It’s been awhile since I bought them so I forgot which ones I actually paid for) A lot of them are ports from computer games but they work phenomenally on mobile. I actually collect these offline games for whenever I’m on an airplane (mostly for my iPad) and they are all excellent experiences. Polytopia is also still multiplayer so you can play with friends on one device for free. Although online multiplayer requires you to buy more tribes with different starting research. There is also a computer version (a rare example of a mobile game ported to computer instead of the other way around) although there isn’t cross play yet.
I played a game before where if you hadn't spent any money, you're name would be grey and you couldn't chat. The players would all make fun of the grey players because they spent 20$ to get a aqua colored name. But they would get laughed at by the gold colored players who spent 45$ on the game... and so on. This video was very interesting and reminded me of this 'social fear' way of getting players to spend money.
Isn't the Fornite Battlepass the same , but it sometimes affect real relationships. I heard stories of kids that spend the battlepass bully those other kids that never spent or have 0 control on their cash.
Little did they know some grey name players could be youtubers using the /nick command. As you know, you only need 30K subs get RU-vid rank. It only takes a few weeks to do it
"Alright, you can have gambling in your game, but you must make the percentage information public" has got to be the most spineless legislation move ever. If people's brains worked like that, nobody would have a gambling problem.
One rule of thumb I've noticed is that the problem games tend to be unplayable without a network connection. If you're not connected and you try to start it, it'll complain about the lack of a connection and won't go any further unless you get it one. The decent ones don't care. They'll happily let you play all you like whether you're connected or not. At worst, you just won't be able to buy anything or watch any ads for supplements, but the actual gameplay won't be impacted.
@@imtheonewhoaskedlol an Internet connection shouldn't be required to play a game you have downloaded to your devices, unless you're playing an online game, or (maybe) a game with a leaderboard (depends on the type of game), or unless it's required for an anti cheat
The persistent internet connection is usually to prevent players from using modded versions of the game, e.g. unlimited gems/energy/currency. Not sure about iOS, but I remember modded apks used to be fairly common on Android and were easy to find. It's a lot harder to do that nowadays since Play Store is now full of mediocre games requiring an internet connection. Some older games that previously didn't need an internet connection (like Soul Knight) apparently need it now as well. And yes, it's also so that they can force ads down your throat.
The Room series is hands down the best puzzle game series I've played in my life It's a kind of escape room like series, and it has really good atmosphere The smart use of touch controls makes it feel like you're touching and solving real puzzles, adding to atmosphere, and the puzzles are all really creative and at a really good challenge level It has probably the best hint system I've seen, and without even considering that its a 2012 mobile game, it looks really good I highly recommend this series, go try out the demo and then get the first game for just $1
I feel like this was one of the reasons why Among Us got so popular - the purchases were (and still are) only for cosmetics, and gameplay mechanics are unaffected by whether or not a user has bought something
I mean, the entire social deduction genre (supposed to be) is like this. Other than cosmetics, what else is there to even sell? I guess town of Salem has the coven expansion but at this point not having that expansion is like playing a demo/free trial
Please please PLEASE check out this free game (yes there are microtransactions to make it easier but it is a single player story game and the money just helps the Devs out) it is called Alter Ego and it is one of the best GAMES I've ever played, not just a mobile game. It is an idle game with an actual gripping story about psychology. If dungeon games are more your thing then you should 100% check out Soul Knight
Downwell is also a really damn good mobile game, decently cheap but the amount of fun you get out of it is unreal. Also has the added benefit of being designed really well
@@Leonardobug well, I am unsure if app stores have built in algorithms, so maybe you could train yours to show you good games, otherwise; it only takes like 5 minutes to tell if a game will be filled with all of those trashy tactics.
Sky: Children of Light is my favorite mobile game - a memorable experience indeed, with a fun flying mechanic, simple aesthetic, calm music, and unique social interactions via emotes, in-game instruments, and literally dragging friends around (or being dragged) by holding hands~
I love this game. The devs actually take feedback so the experience becomes more genuine and enjoyable. The IAP is there but you really dont have to buy it. With help from other players, just ask, they can make you access it or have it for a limited amount of time
It’s great. The IAPs are only cosmetic benefits, and everything in the game is designed to encourage socialization and making memories with other players.
One game I really aprecciate for kinda keeping out these predatory tactics is brawl stars. It used to be very p2w but over time it became one of the most f2p friendly games I've seen. They removed lootboxes, gave players a bunch of free offers and even a whole currency dedicated to being able to get skins for free. I really aprecciate what their doing and hope they don't change (unlike the company's other game **ahem** clash royale *ahem*)
@@misiosz1983who would spend thousands of dollars to get every single brawler, I’ve seen people who played for a year without spending money get almost every brawler
I'm not a Cookie Run player, but when I listened to the Cookie Wars songs because it sounds catchy, I learned from the comments that the game was shut down years ago. What I found from the other sources was that the game didn't have enough monetizing things to keep the game running, too much skill-based gameplay and freebies, and the game had the ending (the game had too much emphasising on story mode). This is one of the best/worst examples of failing F2P games and this was a part of the best game franchises
Yeah, cause you then look at games like Cookie Run Kingdom where you essentially NEED to spend money to get to the top ranks and end of the story if you dont want to take two years to get there. I loved the game when I started out cause the game itself was brand new, but they just kept adding higher and higher tiers of characters. Powercreep is a menace
i would recommend Mindustry: you are a drone that gets dropped on a planet to use the resources to make bases, but someone has already done that and will try to stop you by attacking in waves. its basically tower defense but with factorio's mechanics. grim quest: you are a mercenary thats trying to survive in a world where an empire has fallen due to a tear in space that is spreading corruption onto the land. its a good game that i enjoy playing in my free time. story is pretty good and they even got a prequel to a time before the tear. the only microtransaction is to remove an ad at the bottom of the screen (it doesn't effect gameplay at all). also has a lovely discord server
Play it while you can, after update 7.0 drops the game will be premium. Not sure if the same will happen to the pc version but either way I’m going to buy it.
The meta joke of this add is just perfect! The sad part is ever if the developer doesn’t add payed cosmetics, some players just go to eBay and buy them from hackers. Elden ring is the latest example for that happening
@@miso-ge1gz well yeah obviously, but I still think that’s a lot worse! Developments cost a lot and the extra money though those cosmetics can do a lot in the bottom line, but if hackers are the provider the dev sees nothing from it but has all the headaches. Theirs really no good point to it, devs have to find a method to stop it mostly and the customer has to deal with the rest of being banned or being scammed (sometimes both). Hackers are the only one who profit from it, banning isn’t really a concern for them either, they just make another account…
I finished that game in 2 days and was kinda sad when it was over, it was an incredible experience on mobile. No ads or predatory mechanics, and good gameplay suited for a touch screen. It's sad that games like these that aren't live service won't stay popular on Play Store for long. WE are the reason games are becoming worse. I hope the Data Wing developers are doing well, maybe I should redownload the game and see if there's any way I can support them.
If anyone is reading this, please try ReVenture. It's a small indie platformer that revolves around you reliving the same story with small changes throughout and discovering possible endings. The free version has a heart system with a 3 heart cap and lives every 2 hours with the exception that you can watch ads to get a play, but the full version (like 4 bucks I think) is just the game w/o having to wait for plays to refill. No microtransactions, no whaling, and genuinely good storyline and obvious love put into a project.
I feel like the only reason Valve doesn't have particularly toxic aspects like these in most of their games (despite inventing a couple...) is because they don't need the money when Steam already makes them so much money
Lmao, valve games that are free to play are also free to win. Does it really matter what marketing tactics they use, since the games remain fair and balanced?
Pixel Dungeon and most of its mods are a fantastic example of a good mobile game that is, by the way, open source! And one of the biggest mods for it, Shattered PD, is coming to steam with its next update.
I'm actually yearning for a grindy slow burn type of game. And I want gatcha/lootboxes. I just want no real money to be part of it and instead everything to be earned in the game. I want all of the good gambling feels, without the bad gambling feels, if that makes sense. Also daily rewards should just not exist, or stack up when you don't log in and be a fat payout when you do come back, instead of manipulating you to log in when you don't feel like it. I'd be willing to pay full price upfront for a game like that, or even a subscription as long as it's decoupled from what happens in the game.
"grindy slow burn type of game" "gatcha/lootboxes" "no real money to be part of it, and instead everything to be earned in the game." "good gambling feels, without the bad gambling feels" Hmm... Guardian Tales? Daily rewards exist in that game, but... it does fit the first four things you want. However, I'll never NOT feel like logging into Guardian Tales. The game's that good.
Deep Rock Galactic? That game has no microtransactions beyond a few cosmetic DLCs. Some things are unlocked from events randomly encountered during gameplay, others you get for doing special weekly missions and some are simply bought with mission payouts or unlocked after reaching a certain progression milestone. The random rewards are hard-coded to not give duplicates. There's also the battle pass added a few months ago with daily quests that can stack up to three at a time and be completed simultaneously. Although there's no real-money involved in the battle pass in any way and devs have mentioned multiple times that all rewards will be moved into game's other systems to remain obtainable once new season arrives.
Stardew valley, developed entirely by one amazing person. No IAP’s, no ads, amazing game with endless amounts of adorable and well thought out content. Truly a game from the heart
Here's another way you can do this to singleplayer-only games: Force them to run in airplane/offline mode. Works wonders for removing any temptation to purchase an ad-free option.
If you are running android at all, there are applications like Lucky Patcher that can actually remove components of apps that allow ads and that to run. Obviously if you are on apple this might be the only solution, that being airplane mode. But Lucky Patcher has definitely been a fun way to get back at apps that use ads for that kind of thing.
Soul Knight is amazing. It has, from what I've seen, little to none of these tactics. The game is fun enough that you'll get enough coins over time anyway, and the base set of characters is more than enough for most. Yes, there are characters and abilities that you have to pay to get, but I would view that more as "This is the developers best game and they want SOME profit." Not to mention advertisements are completely optional in that game. Besides, all of the characters have the same amount of strength anyway, so you don't need any if you aren't interested in their playstyles.
I thought the same until I played Enter The Gungeon. Soul Knight is just a rip off of that. Do your self a favour and play ETG instead , you won’t regret it.
Insightful content, great pacing, and a sharp sense of humor. Nice video! As for recommendations, I've been preaching people to play indie pc games ported to mobile as they've usually kept the soul of the original game while letting you play on the go. For a pure mobile game, I will always endorse "Monument Valley." It's like a mini Outer Wilds but with space instead of time. It's buy to play but it's genuinely great.
@@PedroHCF37 If you want an example of a mobile port PC game that the video has not shown: FTL. It's a 10/10 indie game and it remains a 10/10 in mobile. The best part of it is it's a roguelike. This way it can be endlessly replayable like the game examples in the video, but with *no additional costs.* If the base game and expansion isn't enough, there are a lot of mods out there as well if you're willing to dig into your phone's folders. Some other ports are XCom 1 & 2 and Darkest Dungeon. Non-linear games giving you theoretically endless replayability.
@@PedroHCF37 I wrote a comment with roughly 5 different recommendations. They are all paid games tho... But I can help you get them for free if you are on Android
@@PedroHCF37 a great free game that is on both pc and mobile is Super Auto Pets. Some people just refuse to play it because of how it looks but if u can look past that it's really fun. U get 10 gold to buy different animals and foods difrent animals have different abilities and have different stats then u go against an enemy on the same turn as u. U want to try to win 10 times with a team without losing all your hearts. So u need to get good stats and good abilities or just one of the 2 if your lucky. It's fun but sometimes frustrating when u lose alot.
Okay, I'm confused. How the hell did you get sponsored by a mobile game while dunking on mobile games? Edit: Jump Jerboa is a really nice game. It's very small and only runs ads for monetization, but it's a really sweet platformer.
As someone with over 600 hours of Brawl Stars, I can't recommend it enough for those who don't want to pay. Even though there are in-app purchases, you'd have to make lots, and I mean thousands of dollars worth of purchases to have somewhat of an advantage over F2P players
@@LARADEKA get the Bullet Hell Monday Black version, its so good and it didn't have microtransaction since that one is paid game(also this game is actually the sequel to the Finale)
@@omnikun575 yeah, BHM black is definitely worth buying. Not only you have I lot of fun with it, but also leaderboard is relatively small and it's easy to get high positions(I was able to get into top 3 in like 5 levels, despite scores being far from perfect)
Good video! One major point that these developers use that was only touched on briefly is addiction. Abusing the dopamine system to get people hooked to the game. Having these surprises releases a rush of dopamine for a very small action. The overall term used for this is "Dark Patterns" and not only used by mobile games, but also pretty much all social media like Facebook and RU-vid too.
yeah even with some PC games. Destiny 2 went a bit down that path. they made the base game free, but you have -skins you can pay for -a seasonpass that even gives you a unique new gun and if you pay you get it earlier in the pass -basically all still remaining story and a lot of exotic armours and guns (rarest type of loot) are locked behind DLCs. the fact I have over 500 hours in that game and hate it say a lot probably.
No way he got sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends while making a video about mobile games. Edit: The amount of money that was offered must have been insaaane
since I realized it, I always found it funny that if there's one company that has caused multiple negative butterfly effects for the whole industry, it's not one of the more hated companies like activision or EA, but valve. y'know, the company everyone praises for their innovating games and being one of the "good ones".
Data Wing is a great game with a kickass soundtrack, an awesome aesthetic, and fun controls. So what's the catch? Literally no catch, no in app purchases, very little ads, and no in game currency to buy stuff. Install it already if you haven't, it's also got a pretty good story too
Part of the problem with mobile games is because there's literally no way to earn money on mobile games otherwise, unless you become a 1 in a million game. At least with pc games there is a culture of buying games, but for mobile games customers primarily play free game. That said, stuff like apple arcade is a step in the right direction, but I don't know how successful it's been.
actually there's plenty of mobile games that cost money and are successful. like Minecraft, Bloons TD 6, and um.. shit u right also I just realized that both of those games have added more ways to spend money since their release.
@@Favmir That is one of the problem with mobile games too. It isn't considered as a worthwile thing. 5$ is the competitive price for mobile game. 10$ is stretching out. more than that? too expensive.
"Exponential Idle" is fantastic, only idle game I've played to completion. Don't be intimidated by the numbers, it's very beginner friendly. "Really Bad Chess" has a super fun concept, I've enjoyed the little I've played of it. "Duet" goes crazy. Played it years ago and remember it being tough bit satisfying
Jesus you just awoke me with the "you are the product" sentence. I just realized all that time I spent on warframe, destiny, guild wars... Im just an NPC for the whale to kill. I know I have no chance winning against them, yet I still try, variable rewards. And the whale knows that If he pays, he wins, aka skinner box. It is just so fucked up. Thank you for enlightening me.
Rusty lake games really deserve some love. They make some amazing puzzle games that are worth playing and their games are completely free (except their cube escape: paradox chapter 2) but it deserves it's price. It's fun and confusing sometimes and also gets creepy from time to time but it does not disappoint at all
My personal recommendation is the trio of Riot’s games, those being Wild Rift, TFT, and Legends of Runeterra. They’re free, skill-based, have regular updates that actually add content to the game, and don’t play ads. There are of course cosmetics that you can buy, but tbh you’ll be too focused on the actual gameplay to notice most of the time. I know PC League gets a bad rep, but the mobile games are genuinely good.
I have found myself only going towards actual full titles that have been ported to mobile. Stardew obviously, Dead Cells, Slay the Spire, Grand Theft Auto Vice City and San Andreas. There are also examples of older developers that are updating and porting previous generation titles such as Carmageddon and Max Payne being some that come to mind. I also prefer to pay upfront for mobile titles because I would way rather just pay a flat fee to support the developers than have to deal with any of this psychological warfare shit.
Though jarring to watch the Raid ad (I was expecting a punchline or something throughout but quickly realised it wasn’t coming), I’ve heard how much Raid pays and if there was any video to accept this sponsorship on it has to be the one in which he totally breaks down the unethical practices that games like Raid make use of. People calling it hypocritical are wrong imo, more like accepting big sponsorship money (good) from a bad company and then immediately after the ad finishes, shitting on games like that of Rais. This video doesn’t promote Raid, and he gets the money which he very much deserves for his excellent videos. Edit: a letter
He coughed and said "uh, sorry for that" just afterwards. And sometimes in the ad itself it sounded as if he mentioned flaws, like "how addictive that game is" and "you'll need special monsters because those buffs wouldn't work with those debuffs" and "and you get this, and this, and *one* exp boost, and *one* something else" etc. But it's all super subtle, might even be too subtle, but I guess he couldn't outright say anything suggesting negative if he wanted money (and he mentioned last time that he "actively loses money" when doing those videos, so as long as there are no victims (and I hope there wouldn't, if they watched the video in full), I'm fine with that).
Reminds me of Tom Nicholas's NordVPN ad within his video that called out Veritasium's autonomous car-sponsored vid, when you also think of Tom Scott's criticism on VPN ads on YT
"Any kind exposure is still an exposure". Is that the correct quote, lol? My english is bad so I'm trying to find the correct quote on the interenet. While doing that I found something better... “There’s only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” While I agree for anything you've said, I still thing that the best way is not talking about it at all.
I'm not saying he doesn't deserve money, but I do think you're wrong to not recognize the act is within the realm of hypocrisy. He's taking money from a company that profits off of the very people this video seems to be concerned about utilizing the very methods this video is decrying. His action doesn't magically become fine just because he isn't explicitly supporting RAID. Or, more accurately, it doesn't magically APPEAR fine. Because I believe it wasn't actually done with the intent of being hypocritical. However, and this is a big however, this IS the kind of video that is the most moral to make a RAID sponsorship out of. I just think it could have been done better. Say, by going through every point in the RAID script in order and talking about how it's predatory without explicitly mentioning RAID, showing other examples of that practice. Maybe even a coy throwaway joke in a few sections that's very similar to what was said in the ad read. Something where the connections are obvious, but not explicit. The main issue with this would be finding the right balance for RAID to be willing to accept the video, but there's a chance they only watch the ad read part anyway. And as I've never done a sponsorship deal before, I have no idea how it works. Ultimately, it's an appearance issue. And it's a complicated topic, too. I don't think anyone who's talked about this has been completely wrong or completely right.
One of the best mobile games I’ve played is Crashlands. It’s also available on steam. You crash on an alien planet and have to do missions in an open and (To my knowledge) infinite world. It’s probably my favorite mobile game and also one of the better crafting games I know of out there. No ads, no micro transactions, just the game.
@@kiyu3229 I can tell it's your first day on Earth. I understand that you must come from a race of aliens that only does things if necessary, so obviously your other comment was made simply to practice casual online interaction with an actual human, otherwise you'd be a hypocrite for making a comment that no one asked for, then being rude to me by criticizing me for making a comment that no one asked for. Your impression of a braindead, overly-aggressive youtube commenter is pretty good, but you have to get into the character more. Either they don't mind if people leave comments no one asked for, or they do. I wish you luck blending in with humans in the future.
I've been playing a lot of Infinitode 2 and it's great. It's a tower defense game where every level lasts until you lose and you have to earn all kinds of resources to do research to enhance your towers and beat your previous scores. If you take a cursory look at it you would think this would be a prime opportunity for the developer to sneak in anti consumer BS but I've been extremely impressed by how they have seemingly went out of their way to avoid it. Yes, the game sells currency, but you can earn all you need at a fair rate. Yes, they sell a permanent 2x money booster but the game is free and a one time purchase of like 5 euros is more than fair for what you get. Yes, they have ads after you finish a level but the game NEVER forces you to watch one, you can choose to watch it for +25% more loot or just press continue. It's never bugged me to watch an ad or buy things. So yeah, prime example imo of monetising a free game effectively while also remaining ethical. Looks like the developer cares, and that makes me happy to support them.
Growtopia is one of the game which I had so much fun with back in the day, and it taught me a lot too. It's a 2D sandbox game where you can build literally anything you want, as long as you spend a few weeks working to earn things in order for you to use them. Unfortunately, there are many scammers and hackers (more so nowadays). But, this game showed how currency works, prices going from high to low, and vice versa. It also showed that you can't trust that many people, and the game really does set up you for the future, even if it wasn't intentional. If by any small chance that the creators of Growtopia somehow found and read this comment, thank you for making such a memorable, and fun game. :)
I played the game since 2013 till 2021 ever since it got sold to ubisoft it went down hill, scammers ,bots and hackers took over and turned even more toxic over time. Suprised I saw growtopia mentioned here
I wonder how this concept applied to rhythm music games. Personally i feel like i kinda supporting both the community and and the music artist. As we buy the music and chart from the game we also help the company to keep making new songs from the music artist and the music artist can keep making money while create songs then the music library for rhythm games will grow. It kinda feels like a loop that affecting the whole rhythm games community
hate to break it to you, rhythm games are far from exempt from this. 'supporting the artists' can be a really weak claim because often artists are paid by-commission, so you're really not doing much for them just by buying their packs because they aren't earning any more than they got from the commission. and they absolutely aren't excused from being attention magnets, since they attract a more hardcore audience than your typical mobile game they will inevitably pull a lot of whales who buy everything. it's comforting to think that you're creating a symbiotic relationship with the artists and rhythm game company, but under the surface they're really just run like every other mobile game
RSL: so, we want you to put this ad on the next video MC: are you sure? its gonna be a video about addictions and scams on mobil and f2p games, and how they only car- RSL: sure buddy, talk whatever you want, we just want exposure MC: ... ok then
Tiny Defense (and its sequel) is a game with almost no micro-transactions. The only ones are for buying bolts, which are easy enough to get anyway (they drop from enemies and you can produce them with your units). Aside from that it’s a very unique PvZ-like, adding platformer elements.
I couldn't find it unfortunately but Super Auto Pets is pretty good, it has 2 purchasable (is that a word?) packs but they are optional and don't interfere in the gameplay at all There's also 'the wild darkness' I'm not sure how to classify it but it's not a bad game if you just want to kill some time
@@littlelady9801 Super Auto Pets is so hard for me. Like i couldn't wrap my head around how making team worked so i uninstalled it. Still no idea on how it works
Soul knight is an awesome game. Mimimal in-game purchases with a pretty low cap on how much anyone would reasonably spend and a fully complete non-p2w experience.
ah soul knight players are here! i progressed very far in that game with max level knight and assasin, with loads of resources if i want to unlock any other character to the max
Ingenious writing throughout the whole video. Absolutely diabolical at times. Although I gotta confess I'm sad you didn't mention the audio-visual dopamine-feedback loop part. Cause satisfaction can come from the illusion of progress, or overcoming obstacles that seem challanging (look at any Idle game), however, if one can't rely on those things, there is always the "free dopamine" technique. "Satisfying" is the word, when a game uses tiny audio-visual elements such as multiple dropped colorful items upon defeated enemies, physically showing the amount of money earned or "bought", shaking the screen and rumbling the phone, gathering things by tapping them, or even looking at the big picutre, using over-saturated color pallettes and a "smooth" artstyle which pleases one's mind when observed. (And also cause it's cheaper than photorealism) It's a recurring thing that also can be found in a lot of PC games too, but I find it more common on mobile. The addictive dopamine feedback loop can get one engaged when they shut off their brains and just want that sweet sweet satisfaction juice from barely performing a single action.
It says a lot about these tactics when the gambling industry has been looking into implementing them into their own systems and processes. This topic also feels like almost everyone watching has seen or been a victim of said tactics. So, what I'm saying is: don't go to Las Vegas if you play Genshin; you already have it on your phone
