One of the cardinal rules of gaming is that if a product is paid for, it should have no in-app purchases (IAPs) that give the user extra in-game currency.

In today’s market, however, this rule has been broken.

Gaming companies are getting smarter about how they bring about the reward system in games. Nowadays, currency in games is harder than ever to obtain, and items that can be bought with that in game currency have dramatically increased in price.

Since the good stuff is too expensive for most players to afford, the companies will offer in-app purchases that allow users to buy the in-game currency with actual money. Prices on those range anywhere from one to one hundred dollars.

It’s a cruel strategy, but a sickeningly smart one at that. Kudos to the developers for coming up with ways to milk the money from devoted gamers.

The colder games will sometimes have a secondary, or “premium” currency that is all but impossible to come by. While this secondary currency doesn’t normally buy items, it can be used instead of the primary one.

Other uses for this secondary currency may include purchasing perks for an event, instantly delivering items that have been purchased (when players purchase items from in-game stores, they will sometimes need to be “delivered”, a process that can take up to eight hours), and refilling energy/stamina meters, which limit a user’s playing time dramatically.

To make in-app purchases not seem as bad as they are, some games are free to download. The price is only for show, though. Companies usually end up making far more money off of free games with in-app purchases than the ones that are paid for up front.

Note that in my book, at least, in-app purchases and downloadable content (DLC) are different subjects. DLC adds new content into the game that wasn’t already there before, much like updates do on other games.

No matter how much some people dislike them, it’s clear that in-app purchases won’t be leaving any time soon.