Skip to footer

Freemium apps: Enticing fees in 'free' online games quickly add up

Clash of Clans reportedly makes $1.2 million each day by giving away its app for free.

|
TED S. WARREN/AP
AMAZON’S FIRE PHONE

There’s a lot of money to be made in giving away mobile applications for free. Rather than charge customers 99 cents to download an app, many programmers have found greater fortunes in the so-called freemium model: Attract as wide an audience as possible by setting the admission price at $0, then, once people are in the door, offer to sell them improved features.

Among the 30 highest-grossing apps in the Apple online store, all but one are free to download. The single holdout is Minecraft – Pocket Edition, the mobile version of a blockbuster game on computers and consoles. The app pulls in about $75,000 per day, according to Think Gaming, a consulting firm in New York. 

Compare that with the current freemium king, Clash of Clans, which earns more than $1,200,000 every day through the sale of virtual gems that players can cash in for power-ups and speed boosts. Clash of Clans players spend on average $5.32 over the course of their time with the game, according to Think Gaming, significantly more than the traditional 99 cents.

But with options like being able to drop $99.99 on a single “chest of gems” in Clash of Clans, critics say these games and the app stores that support them have made it too easy for children to run up huge bills without their parents’ consent. 

“Just weeks after Amazon began billing for in-app charges, consumer complaints about unauthorized charges by children on Amazon’s mobile devices reached levels an Amazon Appstore manager described as ‘near house on fire,’ ” says a legal complaint filed by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Amazon in July.

Amazon says that it has already addressed these concerns, in part by requiring people to enter a password before every in-app purchase of $20 or more.

The FTC already went after Apple, leading to a $32 million refund and to a revamp of its payment system. After talks with European regulators, Google agreed to stop allowing games with in-app purchases to be advertised as “free.” 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Freemium apps: Enticing fees in 'free' online games quickly add up
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Pioneers/2014/0811/Freemium-apps-Enticing-fees-in-free-online-games-quickly-add-up
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe