Game developers need to make money. Usually, they give out the game for free (so people can try it without paying) then if the user wants more extra content they charge money for it. That concept is supposed to be good, but now most developers have completely lost it. They've completely lost the whole concept of a game, which is for the player to have fun. To have fun, not to wait for ages or get trashed unless they fork over their real money.
Quite a lot of games are branded as "strategy" games where you're supposed to plan and direct to achieve a certain goal. Not send a bunch of troops in to amble about aimlessly. But the strategy isn't what we're discussing right now.
Generally so-called "strategy" games involve the player building a base and recruiting troops to raid other players' bases. Sounds fun, right? Wrong.
Quite a lot of the time, when you want to build a building in one of these games, you tap the button and a timer springs up saying "2 days". You have to wait TWO DAYS before the building is built. When you next want to upgrade it to improve its functionality, it will take FOUR DAYS. Level 3? EIGHT DAYS. Level 4? SIXTEEN DAYS. What with all these exponential increases of time, there's not much of a game here. In fact, no game at all.
If you don't want to wait a whole month to upgrade your building you can skip the time with gems. You start with something like 100 gems and you only earn 3 or 4 gems a week. To skip the sixteen-day wait you have to pay 16,000 gems which would cost you about £400 of real money just to upgrade ONE building. One building? Four hundred pounds? Four hundred pounds? You get what I mean by how the developers have completely lost it.
And the worst thing about it is that people are actually paying for this. They are actually forking out thousands of pounds of real money on a "free" phone game. Developers are making millions every single day just from this scam of a business model. People are giving these games 5 star ratings when all there is to it is wait or pay real money. They actually give this kind of trash FIVE STARS?
Most free-to-play + in-app purchase ratings look like this. Nearly 63,000 5 star ratings and a negligible amount of lower ratings. I must say, people have got serious problems if they give that kind of thing five stars. 63,000? That's where we are at.
But there's a way to do IAP right without forcing people to pay up or wreck their game.
1. Put a donate button in so people can donate if they want
2. Sell costumes as IAP
For 1, if someone makes a really good game (like Pixel Dungeon) they can put in a button that allows people to donate if they want to. If they make a really good game, they will get donations and everyone will love their games, without forcing people to cough up their hard earned money to pay for non-existent virtual items in a "free" game.
For 2, take Temple Run 2 and Crossy Road. They sell costumes for real money, but at a reasonable price, like 50p or something like that.
(There was a game called Nords: Heroes of the North marketed as a FREE strategy game, but it has an IAP for £429. FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE POUNDS FOR A FREE GAME? Please forgive my use of all caps but that's what it is.)
It doesn't give you unfair advantages if you buy costumes, so they should do that. Not wreck the entire concept of a game to make money.