Yeah man I know a lot of guys who drop money on shit like this. None of them are “whales”, but i know they’ve dropped hundreds if not thousands on this mtx bs. None of them own homes (which is kinda normal as we are in our 20’s), but only a few of them are even living on their own at all. Something is clearly going on psychologically there, if someone is willing to forego their own needs for cosmetics (that they will later replace with new cosmetics they bought!!)

I never really thought about it beyond the obvious loot box gambling addiction thing, but after I saw somebody talking about how daily quests in games like WoW do the exact same thing as daily login bonuses and keep you logging in every day to create a habit that’ll keep you logging in whether you still enjoy the game or not, and how battlepasses and rotating cosmetic stores are designed to prey upon FOMO and people with poor impulse control, I can’t stop seeing how the industry runs on exploiting vulnerable people at every turn.