In Clicker Heroes 1, we never tried to abuse players with our real-money shop,” Fragsworth says, “and for the most part we designed it without the shop in mind so that you never have to purchase rubies to progress. That alone is not a bad thing, until it gets abused. Despite very few of our players having complained, it felt wrong when we started doing it and it still feels wrong now.” People can make their own decisions, right? But it just doesn’t sit well with me. Everyone in the industry seems to rationalize it by shifting the blame, assuming way too much cognizance on the part of their victims. And that’s what a large part of free-to-play gaming is all about. In a long blog post, Fragsworth (one of the developer’s behind the game), states, “We really don’t like making money off players who are in denial of their addiction.
A lot of that comes down to ethical reasons and how Playsaurus doesn’t want to feed into the addictive nature that video games can possess. For the upcoming sequel, developer Playsaurus is dropping the free-to-play model in favor of a one time purchase. Anyone hoping that Clicker Heroes 2 would come out for free might be surprised to read this.
