I spent over $31k on Whiteout Survival
22 comments
·August 27, 2025drclegg
I truly hate the F2P mobile gaming industry. Clone a quality (and reasonably priced) PC game, add dark patterns and microtransactions, then make money hand over fist by taking advantage of people like this.
FOMO marketing, gambling mechanics, and unrepresentative ads really need to get self-regulated by the app stores, otherwise it's going to become necessary to legislate this.
bayindirh
I think Apple Arcade is a good compromise for high quality gaming access.
In game purchases are banned. Games can't track you as heavily, so they are lighter on your device. They are some genuinely good games, and you pay with your wallet and play time.
fuzzy_biscuit
I played this game briefly and jumped before I got hooked. It's a game of progressively longer timers, resource crunches and anything to make you feel stuck so you will spend. What's more, it's not fun, imho.
It still shocks me how we all look for time sinks when we have so much we could be doing. I'm no better.
bob1029
That game developer has quite the catalog:
nlitened
Such people are called “whales” in mobile gaming industry, they pay all the game developers’ salaries, they are the reason for many private jets.
progx
Unbelievable, but such guys exist in nearly every game.
SilverBirch
Not just such a guy exists. The business model of these games almost totally rely on these people to be profitable. When you spend any time thinking about this at all it's totally unethical. It would be trivial for them to put a simple spend cap in. Sorry, no matter how into this game you are you can't spend more than $1,000 in a year, or $100 in a day. That would make them tonnes of money and prevent most people making life changing mistakes. But they don't do that because their entire business plan relies on getting hundreds of thousands out of these players.
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swader999
Clickbait. I thought he was getting ready for The Day After Tomorrow.
koakuma-chan
What is special about Whiteout Survival?
mustyoshi
It's not a bad game, I played for about a year in a relatively well run clan. Never spent any money on it though.
close04
It's the typical extremely biased mobile game (Frostpunk clone in this case), where the imbalance can only be fixed by spending a lot of money.
It's counterintuitive but the article almost reads like a promotion piece. The game is so good it can get you to spend that much money. But most gamers wouldn't fall for this would they? Maybe some of them try. If a few people hear of the game and play it because of the shocking title and curiosity that's a win.
koakuma-chan
But is it actually that good? If it is, it may be worth it. I assume it's one of those games where you need to upgrade buildings, and it takes longer and longer? In that case I am disappointed.
monero-xmr
So many criticize gambling when the same patterns pop up in so many other places. I would argue gambling is far more ethical considering the odds are posted and the systems are regulated, with the ability to self exclude.
F2P games and loot boxes are just unregulated black-box gambling. And beyond that, the people who implement dark patterns in so many things, would certainly increase their morality if they switched to building slot machines. Terrible
gorbachev
pay to win is cancer.
I wonder what would happen if the app stores posted info on the app page like "the top 1% players of this game spent an average on $5,000 on it last year". Would that do anything to help people avoid getting into this form of quasi-gambling?