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Game admins cheating in F2P/P2W games, to milk players (whales) for all they can.
mrmeloni
Member UncommonPosts: 236
I've heard about this happening in a certain major F2P/P2W game, which I shall not name. I think this has happened to me.
There are F2P/P2W web games, many of such are constantly advertised in various places such as Facebook, even on here. The game typically has hundreds of servers with new servers opening every 3-5 days. Many older servers are barren.
It works like this, when a new server launches, there are new server launch events specific for that server, typically a week long. Each day for 7 days there is a set of rewards for the top players in different aspects of character development.
The No. 1 reward is typically very valuable and sought after. No 2 and No 3 arn't bad either, below that it's not so great. You're highly unlikely to make the top 3, especially not the sought after 1st place rewards if you're not throwing money at the game.
In the game I was playing, some of the rewards are extremely powerful and some of these are new server rewards only. Meaning if you miss it, you cannot ever get it unless you start again on a new server.
So, I heard a rumour in the game that when someone is spending considerably and trying to achieve number 1, the player is flagged as a whale by the admins. The admins will create a character on the new server to compete with the 'whale'. The admin character will spend enough real money to take on the competitive player in order to make the 'whale' spend more money in order to keep their place as number 1 and get the best rewards. But the admin isn't really spending their own money on this.
The admin will spend as much money as is needed to keep up with or get just ahead of the whale, to make the whale need to spend more. Unlikely to have realised he is being conned, the whale will spend more money as needed to try to prevent the admin from taking the rewards.
I wasn't sure if to believe it, but then this exact thing happened to me. I even had an experience that all but proves this is really going on. Which I won't go into else I will be identified by them if they see this.
Anyway, this player who was trying to beat me for the top rewards came to the server a day or two late. He spent much more money than me, and as a consequence he took some of the top rewards that I was aiming for. He also took the reward for "most money spent" which gives huge bonuses. I realised what was going on and so did not try to outspend him. In fact I didn't spend any further money.
This admin character who was competing with me was a strange one. He didn't seem to really play the game very much. He just spent a lot of money and then quit once the new server event was over. Based on the rewards he received, I can see that he spent over $500 in 1 week. Then he stops playing after the 7th day.
It's very strange that he would spend $500 in a week and then stop playing. His character name was exactly generic, as generic as names get. I suppose if I had kept spending money he'd still be playing?
I haven't described what the big give away was that revealed to me that admins are really milking players with this con. It just confirms what I already suspect was happening.
It makes sense that these companies would be doing this. They are looking to maximise profit and these games are ripe for this sort of thing. They keep opening new servers every few days offering all these great rewards in new server events because that's the best way to tempt people to spend. Once spenders are identified, they will have their own guys compete against them to milk the spender for as much as they can.
Is it illegal? No. But it shouldn't be allowed. Is it morally wrong? Yeah it's rotten and players have no idea that they're being conned. They will have no doubt identified that doing this increases their profits.
Comments
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
If you're young and new to online gaming, I could understand not recognizing what is going on. But please, don't repeat the mistake. That only encourages companies to try to scam other people like how they got you, instead of putting their effort into making games that are actually good.
If i pay for a free game, it is usually to buy skins when i reach certain goals, like platinum rank in sc 2 or lvl 90+ in path of exile.
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
I play niche pay 2 win games. Quite a bunch of people spend 500$ a month.
If the game is so terrible there are only 1 whale on the server, you probably shouldn't play it.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."