Study: freemium gamers say in-app purchases are worth it
In-app purchases (IAPs) have gotten a lot of bad press over the past year. It seems like it's every other week you'll see an article saying that some kid racked up US$20,000 in IAP's on his parents' account and now those parents want Apple to pay for it. But a new study has been released that shines some good light on the practice of freemium games that offer in-app purchases: gamers feel like they're a good deal.
The study was conducted by video game research company EEDAR. It found that out of 3,000 respondents, 75 percent of those that spent US$50 on IAPs and 67 percent that spent over $100 thought the price was fair and they were benefiting from the experience. As EEDAR's senior analyst Patrick Walker told PocketGamer:
"Critics of the free-to play-business model state that the model takes advantage of heavy spenders by leveraging impulsive buying behaviors rather than providing true gameplay value. However, when asked, the majority of heavy spenders endorse that they are satisfied with the purchases made in the mobile games on which they spend the most money. In addition, these heavy mobile spenders play on a broad variety of platforms, including consoles, and understand the value proposition supplied across different business models, and still choose to purchase microtransactions."
The games that users said they bought the most IAPs from were Candy Crush Saga, with 22 percent of respondents buying IAPs in, and Clash of Clans, which totaled 9 percent of IAPs purchased.
