[stewx]

I wonder what would happen if the app stores posted info on the app page like "the top 1% players of this game spent an average on $5,000 on it last year". Would that do anything to help people avoid getting into this form of quasi-gambling?

[juujian]

Except both apple and Google earn a cut on revenue so they don't have any interest in stopping the money flow.

[Aurornis]

> like "the top 1% players of this game spent an average on $5,000 on it last year"

The top 1% don’t spend nearly that much. The number of people spending eye-popping amounts is relatively small. You have to get deep into the long tail before it gets into the hundreds or thousands.

Posting these numbers might have the opposite effect: Players who spend a lot of money want to be at the top of leaderboards. If they saw what the 1% were spending they might convince themselves that not only is it okay to spend that much, but that they need to spend even more.

[tetraodonpuffer]

I think what would help is that any F2P game was mandated to never cost more than $x/year to be listed in the app store, and possibly have different tiers that a game could decide to be in ($10/$100/$1000) based on the maximum yearly spend. The game also should prominently display the total spend per year, and lifetime, every time it is launched.

Although I do not like F2P for all the dark patterns (which have infiltrated non-F2P as well unfortunately) if it was capped to a reasonable maximum amount a year, with no player to player trading at all, and no multiple accounts for the same store account, it might could be made to not be as predatory while still keeping it financially sustainable for the companies that produce the games.

[ASalazarMX]

So a statistic only for whales? Whale players have a tendency to spend no matter the game.

[abakker]

I love this idea. I think it would be useful for all app categories, not just games.