#microtransaction

[cavenewstimestoday]

Surge in microtransaction spending leaves young Japanese gamers struggling

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. Recap: A new survey spotlights the financial behaviors of young Japanese adults, revealing a significant and growing connection between gaming and personal spending. Conducted in February 2025, the annual online survey polled 1,000 individuals aged 20 to 29, exploring how this demographic navigates…

[kenway]

[sweets-maoo]

Some practice (?) art of these idiots. They could be friends me thinks, only bc of money ofc. Idk how to feel about my art style, lowkey been hating my art for a while lol.

[rozeshi]

i like him too much

[notjusthespongenextdoor]

this is my warframe propaganda. if this doesn't do it i don't know what else to say.

old man yaoi pin from this store

[third-king-of-salmonids]

A PATHETIC SIZE FOR A KING >:(

[ghostofapineapple]

help pls

tumblr has assimilated me into the hivemind

i'm part of the gay spaghetti

i'm a droplet in the rainbow soup

i didn't last a full week

[patchoulism]

[dogs2thesequel]

I hope missing link getting cancelled is a wakeup call for kingdom hearts to stop fucking around with story-driven mobile games. like I adore UX, but it started as a very simple project that grew in scope over a decade and only had like 2 people working on it by the end. and dark road was barely a game.

it's clear missing link wanted to be a full fledged mmo and it's also clear they have neither the team nor the technology to make that work on mobile. either make console spinoffs like you clearly want to or make shittier more predatory cash grab mobile games like Square clearly wants you to.

[aethershroud]

I think I just got intense whiplash from the Switch 2 Direct. The Direct itself was awesome. The console has some neat features, and the games look so damn good, man. They look amazing! And honestly, even the UK prices aren't terrible! In fact, they're pretty reasonable considering the other options.

But then I saw the prices for the games themselves. And I was hit with a freight train back to the crushing reality that is Nintendo as a business. If there's one thing Nintendo hates more than fan games, it's game preservation and player ownership. And these prices are very indicative of that.

This sort of price gouging should be illegal. Holy shit.

[madame-helen]

[honeysghost]

i'll never be able to move on from how soft sam was with darlin' in "your vampire mate makes you a promise" 😮‍💨 samuel the man that you are...

[worlds-largest-juice-container]

they are going to tiktokify the disco elysium mobile game bro get harry and kim OUT OF THERE

[genericpuff]

Webtoon Canvas is pay-to-win now, I guess.

DISCLAIMER: All of the series I show here is for the sake of comparing statistics and criticizing Webtoons' Super Likes system. I have nothing personal against these series or their creators and I do not want anyone to get the impression that I am encouraging any sort of action against these creators. The following rant is merely my own observations and opinions concerning Webtoons itself as a platform.

I found out today that Webtoon has implemented a Super Likes ranking board.

This does exactly what it sounds like - it ranks Canvas series based on how many Super Likes they have. Whether or not this ranking board is on a weekly rotation (like the Originals rankings) or just overall, I don't know, but something immediately felt off with this system and it took very little time at all to realize what was really going on here.

When you actually click on the series listed here, it'll tell you how many Super Likes they've accrued overall. The first thing that made me raise an eyebrow was the fact that the Super Likes listed in the ranking boards isn't the same as what's listed in the comics' landing pages, but I chalked that up to a simple delay on WT's end as I can assume the ranking board doesn't refresh at pace with whatever Super Likes are coming in.

But the real red flag was this:

Limitless : Untold is a series with 1,657 followers and seems to get an average of 35-45 likes per episode.

But it somehow has 1,715 Super Likes?

Anyone who's run a Patreon, Ko-Fi, Ad Revenue, or any other sort of revenue-based system with their content will probably realize how that doesn't add up. The reality is that regardless of how many readers / followers you have, only a small fraction of them will actually spend money on your work or to support you. Not every person reading an Originals series is FastPassing. Not every person reading a webcomic is supporting the creator on Patreon. This ratio is even apparent outside of income-based statistics - for example, not every person who follows will read new updates each week and hit the like button (which is why you can have a comic with 1700 followers that only gets a few hundred views and a handful of likes per update). This ratio can be influenced by all sorts of different things, but one thing that doesn't typically happen is for the ratio to flip itself in this fashion.

To put it bluntly: how can a comic with a high of 45 likes in the past 3 months possibly accrue 1,715 Super Likes since it was launched just last week? You've probably already come to the conclusion on your own, but for those who haven't: there's very strong evidence to suggest that creators are buying their own Super Likes to get on this ranking board.

That's assuming the worst of this, though - after all, maybe some of these creators just have super supportive friends who are tossing them a ton of Super Likes? It costs $1 for 5 of them, in this example the amount of Super Likes comes out to approximately $343 (assuming my math is right lmao) which isn't massive amounts of money but it's, again, still really impressive for a comic with only 40 likes on average.

Bu Limitless : Untold isn't the only one in the rankings board that's like this. In fact, the top three spots are occupied by webtoons with the same tilted ratio.

But then, suddenly, after those top three positions, the following webtoons Super Likes totals that make a LOT more sense and reflect the usual ratio more accurately:

The Little Trashmaid, one of the most popular Canvas webtoons of all time and the first one to hit the 1 million subscriber mark in the Canvas section has only accrued 355 Super Likes so far... and you seriously want me to believe a comic like Limitless : Untold with only 0.08% of its readership is somehow genuinely earning five times the amount of Super Likes?

I want to make it clear yet again that I have nothing against the series that have managed to break the system in their own favor. None of this is meant to "slam" them or judge their work or anything of the sort, I'm simply comparing the numbers here and coming to a very reasonable conclusion as someone who's well aware of how ratios like this tend to work in webcomics and content creation. It's just not feasible for the top three comics in the Super Likes ranking boards to organically earn that many Super Likes relative to the sizes of their audiences, especially when compared to the bigger comics that are only pulling in a fraction of that amount. The ratios of Super Likes : actual likes for those bigger comics actually looks reasonable and expected, the ratios for the smaller comics that are sitting at the top are not.

If anything, Webtoons has created a broken system and these creators are simply using that system to their advantage. And I'm not necessarily going to fault them for that because I can get wanting to do whatever it takes to get eyes on your work.

But it does raise the question of what kind of system Webtoons has cultivated here - a system where creators are resorting to Super Liking their own episodes to bump themselves up in the leaderboards.

And before anyone asks me how I can be so sure that these creators are Super Liking their own works - I literally opted into the Super Likes system myself and proceeded to Super Like one of my own episodes.

(this is like the one helpful thing with my work still being on WT even though I'm not updating there anymore, it lets me test shit like this LOL)

So yes, this is a thing that creators can do and it would certainly explain the massive discrepancy in the ratio of Super Likes : regular likes for these smaller series.

This is literally pay-to-win. And who do we have to blame for this? Webtoons, full stop. Not only for implementing a ranking board for an optional monetization service while still allowing creators to use that monetization system to support themselves as a way to climb up that ranking board, but for creating this gross psychological dependency on the platform as the "only way" to build an audience, to the point that people are now paying Webtoons out of their own pocket just to have their thumbnail visible in a ranking board and maybe get some extra views (and 49% of their money back if they hit that $100 threshold). And on top of all that, further putting on the pressure of competition and 'exclusivity' among many budding creators who are doing what they do for free and for fun. Why are creators now being forced to compete in a metric that's solely determined by how much expendable income their own audience has?

Sure, at least this means creators can get themselves into a ranking board by their own power unlike the other categories that are hand-picked by Webtoons and / or determined by daily stats, but at what cost? The literal financial hit of paying for advertising with extra steps, and the ethical dilemma of essentially paying for potential views with microtransactions. This is no better than paying bots on Instagram to follow your profile and inflate your worth to those who aren't following you. None of it is real, it will not legitimize your work to throw money at Webtoons just to have your thumbnail visible in a ranking board. These are microtransactions meant to benefit Webtoons, not you, the creator.

[minecraft]

People are so familiarized and held mentally and physically captive by the status quo that they cannot imagine things being inherently different and better and will defend corrupt systems based purely on a handful of "winners" they've "produced" rather than acclimate to the reality that things as they are operate on dehumanizing and oppressive principles.

[englishotomegames]

Idols of Starlight: Secret Love (スターライト アイドル : ひめ恋)

Release date (Android, iOS) English and Japanese: October 3rd, 2024

"Become a producer for Starlight Production's hottest idol boy group, ALL⊿tius!~ Build your connections with SIX unique love interests via an immersive visual-style story with full voice over, and real-time simulation features such as calling, texting, and a built-in social media app!

Top idol boy group, 『ALL⊿tius』, face a crisis when tensions with their producer finally reach a breaking point. In search of a new producer to create their next hit album, the group decides to hold a music production competition. That's when the group's leader—known for his sharp intuition—personally recruits you, claiming that 『ALL⊿tius』 is in great need of your talents. As you work closely with each member, your relationships deepen, revealing each member's hidden struggles and desires. Now, you must balance the demands of being their producer with the demands of your heart..."

This is freemium mobile game by Kuro Kitty! You can download it for Android here, or for iOS here.