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Welcome to Spinksville!: The Morality of Free to Play
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I was referring, of course, to this article : http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell/ 7 hours ago |
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Facebook monetization based mostly on scams? Older article, but still scary: http://tinyurl.com/ydxasjt 11 hours ago |
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RT @millsy: Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell http://bit.ly/44YMDe 31 hours ago |
The Morality of Free to Play
Welcome to Spinksville! —
... Michael Arrington has an essay on TechCrunch called Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell. And he’s asking who actually pays for the massively popular social games that are taking over Facebook. You might think that games like Farmville are free to play with options for players to spend real money on buying extra assets in game if they want. And then the micropayments fund the game. You’d be right, but that’s not the whole story. ...
Getting tired of Facebook games
Tobold's MMORPG Blog —
... If I continue that for a while, I'll be able to afford a tractor, which presumably will save me some clicking. But the fuel for the tractor can apparently only be bought with "Farm Cash", which you can only get with real money, or by signing up for "free" FarmCash from advertisers. Surprise, surprise, mbp warns me that many of these "free" offers are scams, with users involuntarily signing up for some subscription they didn't want, and ending up paying more for the "free" Farm Cash than if they had just bought it. ...
Scamville
Zen of Design —
An excellent read:
Last weekend I wrote about how the big social gaming companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue on Facebook and MySpace through games like Farmville and Mobsters. Major media can’t stop applauding the companies long enough to understand what’s really going on with these games. The real story isn’t the business success of these startups. It’s the completely unethical way that they are going about achieving that success.
The articles at the bottom are almost as good:
I finally came ...
The Scamville Debate - Arrington Vs. Social Games
Worlds In Motion —
... Social gamers are being scammed. So says Michael Arrington of TechCrunch last weekend, who wrote that the big three developers—Zynga, Playfish and Playdom—use "completely unethical" methods of making money off players who think they’re getting free in-game currency for filling out an I.Q. survey or signing up for a free CD from Video Professor. ...
Indie Games Panel in NYC Tonight (and Scamville)
Play This Thing —
... Also, there's been a bit of a todo in recent days over the Scamville post on TechCrunch, which delves into the fraudulent nature of many of the "offers" used by social network games to monetize idiots. Amusing and worth reading. ...
WoW Pandas are Nothing Compared to This
Journeys with Jaye —
... Compare that with what’s going on over in Facebook land, where blogging crusader Michael Arrington ripped the bandaid off of the seedy side of RMTs. Facebook games like Farmville are built around a different philosophy: hook the player in, and squeeze them for every cent you can, any way you can. What Arrington exposed is how companies entice players into signing up for deceptively worded offers to receive virtual currency for their game. He pointed out that companies who did not resort to scams were falling further and further behind, and he raised the question of ...
Lessons From Facebook Scams
Player Versus Developer —
... Last week, Tech Crunch managed to call some attention to these sorts of scams being run on free-to-play item-store games on Facebook. Players thought they were taking some survey in exchange for item shop currency on Farmville or Mafia Wars, and wound up with massive cell phone bills. Everyone responsible is very sorry that they got caught, which means that we're nigh certain to hear about something similar in a few months. ...
Scamville Juxtaposition
The Ancient Gaming Noob —
... ) points out that while TechCrunch was going after Zynga’s scam ad driven virtual goods business all last week, over at the New York Times they were working on a piece that ran on Saturday about ...
Offerpal Sets New Ad Standards As Facebook Bans Offer Providers
Worlds In Motion —
... The issue came to a head several weeks ago when TechCrunch's Michael Arrington confronted Offerpal and wrote a series of scathing articles about the social gaming industry's "lead gen scams". Offerpal co-founder and former CEO Anu Shukla ...
