EA’s app and supposedly ‘free to play’ mobile game drew incredible amounts of animosity when released, as this stinging Eurogamer review shows. Why? A huge amount of the game was locked behind a pay wall and, whilst it was possible to progress without resorting to micro-transactions to do so would take an enormous amount of time. Dungeon Keeper has two kinds of currency which can be used to obtain upgrades etc. This currency can be bought with ‘gems’ which in turn can be bought for real money in the cash shop. This is not unusual for a game with micro-transactions of this nature but what made Dungeon Keeper’s system particularly galling is that the currency takes an inordinate amount of time to accumulate making progressing without spending real money tedious and near impossible.
Even as you play your minions mockingly remind you of the cash shop
This has led to the UK ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) to rule that the games adverts contained not reference to the in-app purchases that were, let’s be honest, necessary to progress in the game. They ‘considered that for players to achieve the gameplay experience that was reasonable for them to anticipate, it was likely that they would need to spend money on the premium currency.’ and that ‘ The ad should therefore have made clear what consumers could expect from the free elements and that in-app purchases would have a significant impact on gameplay.’ This meant that EA were breaching the rules of the ASA on misleading advertising and must change their ads accordingly Essentially this has acted as a ruling that the game is not truly free to play, something that I’m sure anyone who downloaded the game would be incredibly aware of. EA have been instructed to ‘ensure that future ads made clear the limitations of free gameplay and role of in-app purchasing with regard to speeding up gameplay’.
This is undoubtedly a win for the consumer and it will certainly make companies think again before attempting to butcher a much loved PC classic with sneaky pay to win mobile ‘remakes’.