[username90]

No, most people don't have access to casinos. Likely they would spend it on other luxury goods like bar visits, clothes they don't need or more games. Its just a way for games to extract more money from the market without providing any more value than before.

The thing with games is that the box price is extremely under what consumers value them, so selling consumers small bits of the game as micro transactions is the way games extract their actual market value. It doesn't deliver more value than before, but the current monetization better represents the value it delivers to consumers.

[hedora]

That’s a good theory, but everyone I know that’s worked with game microtransaction data says the majority of money comes from a few “whales”.

Some whales clearly suffer mental health issues (just from looking at the timing and amount of the transactions). The remainder are almost exclusively money laundering of some sort (usually converting stolen credit cards to game assets that can be sold for real money).

[imtringued]

Some whales spend $1000 every weekend at the club/bar. They simply have that much money and dont care how they spend it.