> What they should really do is force apps to disclose the maximum amount a player can spend, front-and-center in the app store. And then also display other statistics - like the ARPU and ARPPU (average revenue per user, and average revenue per paying user). And then allow us to filter apps based on that criteria.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
I recently quit Hearthstone once I realized that the game was slowly sucking me into paying more. It's a great game. But they obfuscate the true cost of playing.
In that digital card game, players want specific cards to build a specific deck. But the manner in which you acquire specific cards is expensive, and the expense is heavily obfuscated. I doubt that most players understand the real cost of playing.
To get a card, you need to buy a card pack. Card packs have 5 random cards (with a rather complex algorithm behind what cards are in a pack). These cards can be duplicates, which you could transform into "dust" (a kind of currency) to buy the card you actually want. The true cost of buying a specific card that you might want depends on a bunch of factors, such as how many duplicates you already have.
In Hearthstone and other "free to play" games, the true cost of playing is nebulous. The game acquires players partly by advertising that playing is free. However, in reality they are likely among the most expensive games you could play.
The cost of acquiring a complete set of all cards in a Hearthstone expansion is around $400 [1]. Which is insane. In order to play competitively, you probably need half that -- which is still around $200.
If the costs were clearly and honestly labeled, players wouldn't play. So they aren't.
I hope the industry self-regulates, like they did with the ESRB and censorship. I hate the direction the industry has taken here.
1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/04/14/it-costs-...