Designing for monetization: A taxonomy of dark patterns in top-grossing GaaS video games
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51698/tripodos.2026.59.05Keywords:
Game-as-a-Service (GaaS), dark patterns, monetization strategies, persuasive communication, digital literacyAbstract
This article examines the highest-grossing free-to-play video games of 2024 to identify the use of dark design patterns as core monetization strategies. Drawing on a taxonomy organized around temporal, monetary, and social dimensions, the study analyses nine representative GaaS titles on mobile and console platforms. The findings reveal a denser and more aggressive deployment of these practices in mobile games, where mechanics such as daily rewards, opaque virtual currencies, loot boxes, and socially driven incentives converge. Several of these tactics closely mirror gambling dynamics, raising ethical concerns over compulsive spending, particularly among younger audiences. This research underscores the need for enhanced digital literacy, stronger regulatory frameworks, and further research into user self-regulation mechanisms within increasingly monetized play environments.
______________________
Este artículo examina los videojuegos free-to-play con más ingresos del 2024 para identificar el uso de patrones de diseño oscuros centrados en estrategias de monetización. Basándose en una taxonomía organizada en torno a dimensiones temporales, monetarias y sociales, el estudio analiza nueve títulos GaaS representativos en plataformas móviles y de consola. Los resultados apuntan a un despliegue más denso y agresivo de estas prácticas en los juegos para móviles, donde convergen mecánicas como las recompensas diarias, las monedas virtuales opacas, las cajas de botín y los incentivos sociales. Varias de estas tácticas reflejan fielmente la dinámica del juego, lo que suscita preocupaciones éticas sobre el gasto compulsivo, especialmente entre el público más joven. Esta investigación subraya la necesidad de reforzar la alfabetización digital, consolidar marcos regulatorios más sólidos y profundizar en la investigación sobre los mecanismos de autorregulación de los usuarios en entornos de juego cada vez más monetizados.
Downloads
References
ACM (2025, February). Words matter: Alternatives for charged terminology in the computing profession. Association for Computing Machinery. https://www.acm.org/diversity-inclusion/words-matter
Ahmad, Norita, B.; Rahman Barakji, Salahudin Abdul; Abou Shahada, Tarak Mohamed, and Anabtawi, Zeid Ayman (2017). How to launch a successful video game: A framework. Entertainment Computing, 23, 1-11.
Arjona Martín, José Borja and Muñoz del Pozo, Vicenta María (2020). La consolidación del modelo game as a service en la industria del videojuego. Micropagos, cajas botín y su problemática legal. Revista Inclusiones, 7, 229-244.
Bernaldo-de-Quirós, Mónica; Sánchez-Iglesias, Iván; González-Álvarez, María; Labrador, Francisco J.; Estupiñá, Francisco J.; Fernández-Arias, Ignacio, and Labrador, Marta (2021). Factors associated with the problematic use of video games in adolescents and young people. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 20, 2706-2717. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-021-00543-w
Brignull, Harry; Leiser, Mark; Santos, Cristina, and Doshi, Kosha (2023, April). Deceptive patterns – user interfaces designed to trick you. Deceptive Patterns. https://www.deceptive.design/
Clement, Jessica (2025, June). Highest grossing mobile games worldwide in 2024. Statista.
Dahlan, Refal Pradama and Susanty, Meredita (2022). Finding dark patterns in casual mobile games using heuristic evaluation. PETIR, 15(2), 185-195. https://doi.org/10.33322/petir.v15i2.1151
Davidovici-Nora, Myriam (2014). Paid and free digital business models innovations in the video game industry. Digiworld Economic Journal, 94(2), 83-102
Dillon, Roberto and Cohen, Ori (2014). The evolution of business models in the video game industry. Proceedings of the International Conference on Managing the Asian Century: ICMAC 2013 (pp. 101-108). Springer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-61-0_12
Dubois, Louis-Etienne and Weststar, Johanna (2022). Games-as-a-service: Conflicted identities on the new front-line of video game development. New Media and Society, 24(10), 2332-2353. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444821995815
Game Developers Conference (2025). State of the game industry 2025. https://reg.gdconf.com/state-of-game-industry-2025
Goodstein, Scott (2021). When the cat’s away: Techlash, loot boxes, and regulating “dark patterns” in the video game industry’s monetization strategies. University of Colorado Law Review, 92(1), 285-336. https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/lawreview/vol92/iss1/6/
Hamari, Juho; Hanner, Nicolai, and Koivisto, Jonna (2020). “Why pay premium in freemium services?” A study on perceived value, continued use and purchase intentions. International Journal of Information Management, 51, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2019.102040
Hidalgo Cerezo, Alberto (2019). Loot boxes: Juegos de azar encubiertos al alcance de menores. Revista Jurídica de Castilla y León, 47, 25-58. https://www.jcyl.es/web/jcyl/AdministracionPublica/es/Plantilla100Detalle/1131978346397/_/1284841593285/Redaccion
Hussain, Ali; Abid, Muhammad Farrukh; Shamim, Amjad; Ting, Ding Hooi, and Toha, M. Abu (2023). Videogames-as-a-service: How does in-game value co-creation enhance premium gaming co-creation experience for players? Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 70, 1-15.
Ivanov, Martin; Wittenzellner, Helmut, and Wardaszko, Marcin (2021). Video game monetization mechanisms in triple A (AAA) video games. In Marcin Wardaszko, Sebastiaan A. Meijer, Heide K. Lukosch, Hidehiko Kanegae, Willy Christian Kriz, Mariola Grzybowska-Brzezinska (Eds.), Simulation gaming through times and disciplines: 50th International Simulation and Gaming Association Conference (pp. 389-404). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72132-9_33
Kaleva, Jari-Pekka (2022, August). A EGDF white paper: Games as a driving force of the 21st century. European Game Developers Federation (EGDF). https://www.egdf.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/EGDF-tech-white-paper.pdf
Klimas, Patrycja (2017). Current revenue (monetisation) models of video game developers. Journal of Management and Financial Sciences, 10(28), 119-136.
Kowert, Rachel (2020). Dark participation in games. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 598947. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.598947
Krassen, Cindy and Aupers, Stef (2021). Pressure to play: Social pressure in online multiplayer games. The Information Society, 38(1), 13-24. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2021.1987364
Labrador, Marta; Sánchez-Iglesias, Iván; Bernaldo-de-Quirós, Mónica; Estupiñá, Francisco. J.; Fernández-Arias, Ignacio; Vallejo-Achón, Marina, and Labrador, Francisco J. (2023). Video game playing and Internet gaming disorder: A profile of young adolescents. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(24), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20247155
Landoni, Paolo; Dell’era, Claudio; Frattini, Federico; Petruzzelli, Antonio Messeni; Verganti, Roberto, and Manelli, Luca (2020). Business model innovation in cultural and creative industries: Insights from three leading mobile gaming firms. Technovation, 92, 1-11.
Lesser, Hendrik and Woodliffe, Hester (2024, June). 2022 European video games industry insight report. European Game Developers Federation (EGDF). https://www.egdf.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2022-European-video-games-industry-insight-report.pdf
Lewis, Chris (2014). Irresistible Apps: Motivational design patterns for apps, games, and web-based communities. Apress: Berkeley. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4302-6422-4
Maisenhölder, Patrick (2018). Why should I play to win if I can pay to win. Economic inequality and its influence on the experience of non-digital games. Well Played, 7(1), 60-83. http://repository.cmu.edu/etcpress/80
Mathur, Arunesh; Acar, Gunes; Friedman, Michael J.; Lucherini, Eli; Mayer, Jonathan; Chetty, Marshini, and Narayanan, Arvind (2019). Dark patterns at scale: Findings from a crawl of 11K shopping websites. In Airi Lampinen; Darren Gergle and David A. Shamma (Dirs.), Proceedings of the ACM on human-computer interaction. Association for Computing Machinery (pp. 1-32). https://doi.org/10.1145/3359183
Ministerio de Derechos Sociales, Consumo y Agenda 2030 (2025, October 15). Consumo lanza una campaña para advertir de los peligros de las ‘cajas botín’ en los videojuegos [Press release]. Gobierno de España. https://www.dsca.gob.es/es/comunicacion/notas-prensa/consumo-lanza-campana-advertir-peligros-cajas-botin-videojuegos
Ministerio de Derechos Sociales, Consumo y Agenda 2030 (2024, June). El Ministerio de Consumo prohíbe el acceso de menores a las cajas botín en videojuegos para evitar conductas adictivas. Dirección de Seguridad de Consumo y de la Agenda.
Niknejad, Sam; Mildner, Thomas; Zargham, Nima; Putze, Sussane, and Malaka, Rainer (2024). Level up or game over: Exploring how dark patterns shape mobile games. In Andrii Matviienko; Jasmin Niess and Thomas Kosch. Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, pp. 148-156). https://doi.org/10.1145/3701571.3701604
Pamboris, Alexis and Bruno, Mary (2024, July). 2024 Global games market report. Newzoo. https://newzoo.com/resources/trend-reports/newzoos-global-games-market-report-2024-free-version
Rosier, Emmanuel; Porter, Ben; Georgiou, Spyros; Wagner, Michael; Long, Tyler; Zhang, Siyi; Hunt, Brett; Mitu, Horatiu; Hoven, Lynn van den, and Buijsman, Michiel (2025, April). The PC and console gaming report. Newzoo. https://newzoo.com/resources/trend-reports/the-pc-console-gaming-report-2025
Simon, Lester Isaac (2024, October). What were the top PC and console games by cumulative revenue in Q3 2024? Newzoo.
Spicer, Stuart Gordon; Nicklin, Laura Louise; Uther, Maria; Lloyd, Joanne; Lloyd, Helen, and Close, James (2021). Loot boxes, problem gambling and problem video gaming: A systematic review and meta-synthesis. New Media and Society, 24(4), 1001-1022.
Schüll, Natasha Dow (2012). Addiction by design. Machine gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton University Press.
Suler, John (2004). The online disinhibition effect. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 7(3), 321-326. https://doi.org/10.1089/1094931041291295
Tversky, Amos and Kahneman, Daniel (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases: Biases in judgments reveal some heuristics of thinking under uncertainty. Science, 185(4157), 1124-1131. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.185.4157.1124
Veiga, Emerson; Silva, Nabson; Gadelha, Bruno; Oliveira, Hrácio, and Conte, Tayana (2025). Dark patterns in games: An empirical study of their harmfulness. In Joaquim Filipe; Michal Smialk; Alexander Brodsky and Slimane Hammoudi (Eds.). Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (pp. 470-481). https://doi.org/10.5220/0013365800003929
Zagal, José P.; Björk, Staffan, and Lewis, Chris (2013). Dark patterns in the design of games. Georgios N. Yannakakis and Espen Aarseth (Eds.). International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games (pp. 1-8). https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1043332/FULLTEXT01.pdf
Zendle, David and Cairns, Paul (2018) Video game loot boxes are linked to problem gambling: Results of a large-scale survey. PLoS ONE, 13(11), 1-12.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Tripodos
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Once an article has been approved for publication in Tripodos, the exclusive right to publish the work becomes the property of Blanquerna School of Communication and International Relations of Ramon Llull University. These rights can be granted to a third party with the agreement of the author(s).
Until the articles have been approved for publication, Blanquerna School of Communication and International Relations of Ramon Llull University has no rights over them.
The submission of articles is understood to represent explicit consent to these conditions of publication.
