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Starbucks accused of manipulating app payments for $900 million profit
(www.androidauthority.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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Technology
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I have resolved to never again buy "points" of any kind, whether on an app or a game or a themepark or anything else. Either let me spend real money or I am going to assume it is a scam.
You don't like buying 5% more points than you need for any purchase?
It's only really a problem when you can't buy the exact amount of points you need to make a purchase (which granted is most of the time). There's legitimate reasons for using a "points" middle-man, though - for example, in a game where you can earn premium currency while playing, but also buy it; if you were making purchases directly, rather than buying the points you need, you wouldn't be able to buy something using both earned and purchased currency; it'd be all or nothing.
This is definitely a very small minority, though, and 99 times out of 100, I agree with you, it's a scam.
Except even then, they could just list both the real money cost and the in-game points cost. There’s no need for the points to be tied to the real money at all.
What if I want to buy something that costs 1000 points, which equates to $10, and I have 300 points in-game? I want to use those 300 points, but I want to cover the rest with $7 of real money. If they only list two costs - $10 or 1000 points - I can't do that, but if they let me buy 700 points for $7, I can do it.
They could just list both the full price and the price - the ammount of points you have in dollars.
I disagree about it being legitimate for games with hard currency. Games do it purely for psychological reasons. They could easily let you earn and spend hard currency in game and spend real money directly. But it's more profitable to have you buy points.