Dark patterns on video games
Do you remember saving up for a game, taking it home and playing it to the end? You paid once and that was it. The whole game was yours, the same one everybody else got, and you came back to it because it was fun, not because a timer told you to.
What dark patterns are
A dark pattern is a design choice that tricks you into doing something you did not intend: paying more, playing longer or sharing more than you wanted. The term comes from user experience design, and it covers a whole family of tricks, from misleading buttons to artificial scarcity.
In games they usually arrive hand in hand with free-to-play and in-game purchases. The most common ones even have names of their own:
- Loot boxes: you pay for a random reward, like pulling the lever of a slot machine.
- Microtransactions: small payments for items, boosts or extra lives.
- Battle passes: a subscription-like track of rewards that expires and pushes you to keep playing before the season ends.
- Energy timers and daily streaks: the game stops you on purpose and then rewards you for coming back every day.
- Fake urgency and FOMO: "only today", "last chance", counters that quietly reset.
How we see them
Think of a game you liked that started well and then pushed you to pay. A competitive match where the other player wins not because they play better but because they bought the better weapon. A level that is just hard enough to sell you a booster. A discount that is always about to expire. Each one is a small nudge, and together they turn playing into spending.
Why we do not use them
Because they take us away from the games we grew up with. Those games were complete: you bought them once, they were yours, and everyone started from the same place. You went back to them because they were entertaining, because the loop itself was fun, not because a hidden mechanic had been engineered to keep you hooked.
Microtransactions and paid upgrades broke that fairness. A game that sells an advantage stops being a game and becomes a shop with a leaderboard. We would rather make a game you return to on purpose, the way you used to, than one you return to because a counter will punish you if you do not.
That is why our games are open source, play offline and have no loot boxes, no microtransactions and no daily streaks. Not as a checklist, but because we want to keep making the kind of game that made us want to make games.