• Astronauticaldb@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Not to mention that they also incentivise players to spend real-world money by having their website have a secret club for whales (I think you need to spend either $1K or $5K in order to have the button appear) to spend even more money then they did to even gain access originally.

    Edit: clarity and conciseness: added “originally” to the end of the last sentence.

    • Allero@lemmy.today
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      2 months ago

      Yes, if you spend over $1k on the game you gain access to beta-testing etc.

      And the most scary part? Plenty of people do spend this much money - I know many Carrack owners, for example, and this ship costed, when I remember it, $1200. Yes, very real $1200 for an in-game ship, and there’s plenty of buyers.

      Heck, I know a person in Ukraine - not a high-income country by any standards, GDP per capita sitting at ~$5000, vs ~$85000 in the US - who spent about $6000 on the game by hiding huge portion of his income from his family for years. And this is not an exceptional case.