this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2025
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I was going through my Wal-Mart+ subscription plan that I got for free and I saw their offers. One of which was EMeals, that was a 60-day trial. I thought that this was like Blue Apron or other meal delivery services so I thought I'd take a crack at it and hope that it would get me on a path to eat better.

Turns out, it's just a meal planner. And it's absurd to me why and how would anyone pay for something when there are countless and countless recipes and meal planners readily available for free. Who'd the fuck would want to pay for a planner? That's like paying for a calendar app.

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[โ€“] Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 31 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Online subscription models, gacha and AAAA price tag games.

Not everyone wants to be a cybercriminal, god knows I'm one of them, but almost every person already has a backlog of games, an old classic that they want to experience again or community favourite that has gotten a lot of mods. Those are all free. And even if you want to spend money on something, why would you spend it on this year's hyped up game when last year's is still just as playable and at a discount?

That being said, I did buy Balatro full price, so I ought to know the answer.

[โ€“] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

My problem is that I wait 20 years to late to play games and they cost more second hand than they originally did. GameCube fan problem

Oh man. In-game currency and gacha stuff can get fucked.

I'm not a big gamer but I like having something on my phone to pass the time.

Happy to pay to install or for expansions or to remove advertising or whatever but paying for finite in-game stuff is just shit.

[โ€“] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

The Youtube channel "answer in progress" made a video about gacha and I still don't get it. I hate collecting junk, even more when I can't choose which junk I get.

[โ€“] Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Oh, you mean that video, about blind boxes and gachapon.

Seen that one as well, really absurd to see that channel promote "healing your inner child", by buying into something that feels like an amalgam of lootboxes, that ruined online games, and Funko-pops, which cannibalised physical game stores. I read through the comments many times to maybe understand, but it seems few people actually care about the gambling addicts there as well.

[โ€“] Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

I've never played any of those games myself, but here's what I have gathered from a video essay:

You just begin to play it somehow, you get introduced to the Gacha mechanics, and then it's one of 2 ways: Either you spend a lot of money in the game because they are literally designed like Casinos to fuel your gambling addiction, like clouding your judgement how much a round of gambling is actually worth with many in game currencies.

Or you spend time in the game to grind premium resources, and your brain rewards you for it with the thought "at least I'm not spending money", not realizing that the ~~house~~ developer also wins if you do that. An example i giving rewards for players who write strategy guides, something they otherwise would have to pay real money to a developer for.

We really have to hate more on those regulators who failed to protect gambling addicts from candy crush on crack.