The ads I see in fremium gaming that claim you can “earn real money just by playing!” aren’t these just scams or are they real?

Question

I play this interior design game on my phone and I constantly get ads for other games that claim you can “win real money just by playing!” or “win real amazon giftcards by playing games!”. I always just assume these are scams, but I’m curious: does anyone have any experiences with these “realmoney” games? Are they real or is it just another way for hackers to steal your info?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Yeah they’re *essentially* scams, but not in a hackers stealing your info sense. They’re basically glorified ad platforms. Companies pay these platforms to tell you that they’ll pay you to play their game. As far as the game company is concerned, it’s paying money to acquire players, just instead of an paying it to an ad agency that tries to make the game look like it’s worth playing, it pays it to an ad agency that says it’ll pay you if you play it.

So if our ad platform is Company A and our boring game is company B, and you are Consumer C, then B gives money to A, and A tells C that they’ll give C money if C plays B’s game. As far as B is concerned, it has gained a player, a player who might just like the game enough or be enough of a gambling addict to spend money on it. Meanwhile, C believes that they are being paid to play this game, when in reality company A has a bunch of obscuring factors that prevent C ever taking their earned money – things like “you actually get entered into a lottery system where you can win the money” or “You can only take your money out once you’ve racked up £10 from playing 20 hours of stupid games”. So in essence, C has given money to B and B has given money to A, all based on the lie that A will give money to C (although imagine that C and B are the average consumer and company, not the individual – most Cs won’t spend anything, but the occasional one will and that’s enough). These methods can also be used by companies to get what is essentially a beta test audience for a game that otherwise wouldn’t be good enough to get beta testers.

In short, it’s a platform for advertising specifically to people stupid enough (or desperate enough) to think that 10p for essentially doing 30 minutes of work is a good deal.