Monetization overload

⚠️ Article status notice: This article has been marked as incomplete

This article needs additional work to meet the wiki's Content Guidelines and be in line with our Mission Statement for comprehensive coverage of consumer protection issues.

This notice will be removed once sufficient documentation has been added to establish the systemic nature of these issues. Once you believe the article is ready to have its notice removed, visit the discord and post to the #appeals channel.

Learn more ▼

This Article Requires Additional Verification

---

This article has been flagged due to verification concerns. While the topic might have merit, the claims presented lack citations that live up to our standards, or rely on sources that are questionable or unverifiable by our standards. Articles must meet the Moderator Guidelines and Mission statement; factual accuracy and systemic relevance are required for inclusion here!

Why This Article Is In Question

---

Articles in this wiki are required to:

• Provide verifiable & credible evidence to substantiate claims.
• Avoid relying on anecdotal, unsourced, or suspicious citations that lack legitimacy.
• Make sure that all claims are backed by reliable documentation or reporting from reputable sources.

Examples of issues that trigger this notice:

• A topic that heavily relies on forum posts, personal blogs, or other unverifiable sources.
• Unsupported claims with no evidence or citations to back them up.
• Citations to disreputable sources, like non-expert blogs or sites known for spreading misinformation.

How You Can Improve This Article

---

To address verification concerns:

• Replace or supplement weak citations with credible, verifiable sources.
• Make sure that claims are backed by reputable reporting or independent documentation.
• Provide additional evidence to demonstrate systemic relevance and factual accuracy. For example:
  • Avoid: Claims based entirely on personal anecdotes or hearsay without supporting documentation.
  • Include: Corporate policies, internal communications, receipts, repair logs, verifiable video evidence, or credible investigative reports.

If you believe this notice has been placed in error, or once the article has been updated to address these concerns, please visit the #appeals channel on our Discord server: Join here.

Monetization overload, often also referred to as over-monetization, happens when a company puts too many features within their product behind a paywall, or focuses too much development on a product's monetization over the functionality of the product.

How it works

This is an umbrella term for various practices that companies may follow explicitly for the goal of profit. Examples include:

• Advertising Overload
• Planned Obsolescence/Self-Destructive Design
• Subscription Service/Software as a Service

Why it is a problem

Genericide

When a product, more specifically a live service game, focuses extremely on monetization, it retroactively dulls the experience of the product, even going so far as to devalue the product itself. This especially can damage the core purpose of the product, since an event entirely unrelated to it could effectively block consumers from the full functionality of their product.

Often when a game faces genericide through monetization, publishers are biased against development on core features and even bug fixes, instead opting for implementing more generic or otherwise unrelated products to sell on the in-game storefront. For example, the Call of Duty Squid Game promotion overtook the spotlight of development for the game, rather than the development of the game's anticheat, despite promises from Activision.

Monetization Bias

Often when a product is over-monetized, the development of said product often ends up being biased towards features that increases transactions from consumers or advertising promotions from other companies. This kind of bias also does not favor developing features and fixes that do not directly incur revenue for the publisher, including but not limited to patching bugs, tweaking balance, repairing product defects, and moderating communities.

Monetizing mundane features

Some product features that may have been normal and free to access for consumers could also be monetized in absurd ways. Free to play (F2P) titles could see experience progression be slowed down to encourage purchasing "experience boosts".

This can be further applied with mundane monetization, where products could have barely different variants being sold at the same time. This is especially seen with cosmetics for games, where even a simple reshade could be sold.

Advertising Overload

Main article: Advertising overload

In an effort to make money from consumers, companies may integrate advertisements into their products to generate revenue. This can become adverse if the company is hasty to integrate advertisements.

Examples

This section is incomplete. This notice can be deleted once all the placeholder text has been replaced.