Top mobile games are forcing out loyal players because of aggressive monetisation that makes them too expensive to play, says Midjiwan CEO Christian Lövstedt.

Speaking at Devcom, Lövstedt hosted a session entitled ‘How Aggressive Monetisation is Ruining Mobile Gaming, and How We Can Fix it’. Labelling some mobile game monetisation practices as ‘the curse of the consumables’, he laid out the basic monetisation tactics used in titles today, which includes:

• Virtual currency
• Extra lives
• Power-ups
• Time-savers
• Loot boxes

Lövstedt criticised the lack of transparency on the actual cost of items and purchases for players, stating it could become complicated for users – by design – to figure out how much they are spending in real money. This is due to having to purchase virtual currency, and the various deals on offer blurring the true price.

Lövstedt said the said part of this meant that games he enjoys, like Clash of Clans and Golf Clash, can eventually become unaffordable due to exponential game costs. For example, timers in Clash of Clans could mean you have to wait for 13 days to upgrade a building, unless you spend some money.

“They are forcing out really loyal players because it just becomes too expensive,” he said. Lövstedt added that once they start spending, players can gradually spend more and more, and then potentially end up spending thousands of dollars or churning.

“One could question if some of these really great games are actually on the borderline of basically being casino games,” he said.

One of the consequences of this, Lövstedt claimed, was that the mobile games industry as a whole gets a reputation of trying to squeeze money out of players. That, he said, meant at conferences like Gamescom, people focusing on platforms like console and PC might look down on mobile companies as “not serious” developers.

Multi-platform monetisation

Midjiwan’s flagship game is The Battle of Polytopia, which is available on the App Store and Google Play, Nintendo Switch, Steam and even in Tesla cars. Each version monetises different, which you can see in the slide below:

On mobile, The Battle of Polytopia can be downloaded for free, with four available factions out of 16 in total available at no cost, to be played as much as players like. The other factions cost money, while users can also buy extra skins for the tribes.

Midjiwan’s monetisation philosophy is to provide “real free-to-play” by providing the full gaming experience for free. It should be noted many of the world’s top F2P games can be played for free without spending.

Midjiwan’s philosophy allows for only non-consumables in its games, while it focuses on ‘minnows’ instead of ‘whales’, meaning targeting a large number of low-spending players. It also aims to offer transparent pricing – with no in-game currency, DLC and expansions that are good value for money, and ‘joyful monetisation’, which Lövstedt explained means a purchase should create happy, not guilty feelings.

Questioned on lifetime value, Lövstedt admitted the cost of its philosophy and capping in-game spending – based on the amount of content available to purchase – means the LTV of players is a lot lower than other top free-to-play games.

Revenue sneak peek

The Battle of Polytopia has been live for eight and a half years, generating more than 20 million organic downloads on iOS and Android, which is the title’s main platform. It has 600,000 to 700,000 monthly active users.

The chart below shows spending levels in the game overtime – the initial large spike in 2019 is from the introduction of multiplayer into the game, while the second spike in 2021 followed an update introducing the Cymanti tribe. No new special tribes have been added since then.

Lövstedt said the team doesn’t have a fixed roadmap for features, but typically makes a big update to the game every quarter. The studio tests and iterates on new ideas regularly, but ultimately “kills” 90% of everything it tests.

You can keep up on all the stories coming out of Devcom and Gamescom 2024 right here.