Pokémon-GO is breaking all the records in downloads and revenue making. Normal people like you and me always wonder how these free apps and games in your smartphone’s App Store and Google Play make money for them. I mean they are not doing it just to make us happy! Then How Do Freemium Games Make Money?
There is a word in the electronic category, called “FREEMIUM”. It’s a category for those apps and games which are free to download and install but makes money through a phenomenon called “in-app purchases”. So for a user, it’s like going to eat pizza and getting base for free, but sir do you want toppings and cheese over it? Please pay to get that or deal with your base only. Freemium apps have started wiping the market of premium paid games. So it’s an obvious question how do they make money? Let’s talk about that now.
Pokémon-Go, Clash Of Clans, Clash Royale, and Candy Crush are various games, which have been made to the editor’s choice category and have 4+ star ratings by users worldwide. Now how they make money is a great thing to know. What they did change the whole gameplay for your smartphone.
You enjoy the game in the beginning and get addicted to it in just a few minutes. Then the real game of money kicks in! In the strategy category games, you start building various things in the game, and in the beginning time taken to create that thing is in seconds sometimes they give you free gold bars and a few extra credit points to build things in-game faster. Eventually, you move ahead and get level-ups in the game.
So the higher the level goes, the longer the waiting time grows. And it becomes a headache situation, getting stuck on the same level for a long time or waiting for work to get done irritates normal humans. So at this moment, Game Developers are attacking your mind instead of your pockets directly.
They won’t ask you to pay for it, they’ll show you shortcuts to minimize that time or escape that situation by using Gold Bars, Special Candies, Diamonds, and whatnot. But wait, they are just too low on quantity, you have to buy more from the PlayStore or Appstore.
So just by doing some gameplay changes, they will be able to get some cash out of their pocket. The process of paying money to Game Developers is as easy as cutting a piece of butter with a hot knife. Your card information and identity are already there in your mail account and phone memory, you just click Yes Proceed To Payment, and boom, other things will be taken care of by your cell phone itself. To confuse customers, developers have introduced multi-layered cash conversion.
So to buy coins in the game, which buy you things in-game, you use something different like GOLD BARS or GREEN NOTES, but to buy those GOLD BARS or GREEN NOTES, you have to spend real cash. So conversion is like $5 for 355 GREEN Notes and then you get 791 Gold Coins by converting 61 Green Notes to Coins, finally, can you guess how much $$ one gold coin costs? Me neither! So these conversions make people think less and go ahead with what they want.
Replacing real currency with virtual one gives them to take control over your mind. You might think you are not using the real currency for entertainment as the game was free and you are playing well, but hey, you just paid some real money through your card. Even paying with cards makes one feel less painful as in hard cash, you can feel the amount of money in your hands, like holding 10 notes of $100 will make you think that you are holding a lot of money, but paying through Cards will not let you understand how much it costs to your account.
So, technically Developers introduced inconvenience to your gameplay and you bought convenience from them. And to make sure that you get stuck or make sure that you pay money, they check and update games and gameplay regularly, like when you took the most time in a level, where you stop the game, where you try quit trying and get data of those features that a person might love to purchase to escape that task.
When they track your activities and find out why you are not paying and the reasons, they offer you discounts before you uninstall the game after getting upset.
There are not a lot of people who buy convenience from them but they don’t stop trying as that 3-4% population can make them rich. Looking at the practical side, they have to pay for their servers, they have staff for coding and things which have to be paid by them so if they make games free to download, they have to get money in other ways. Some Games and apps are far from fun but they are made for fans guys so they withstand the Paid market.
Before you buy something in-app purchase, always remember it is not you: it is a developer who made you click that “Confirm this purchase button”! So, to save your money, you can switch to the next game, meanwhile, time will flow and your lives or fuel bars will get full or your clan army will come alive.
That was how the Freemium applications make money on the stores from you and are thriving in the global markets. How many freemium applications are you using in your daily activity?
