Bribing Your Way to Victory: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Don't feel like doing a quest to get the reward? Don't care about taking the time to unlock the game's super ultra secrets? Or perhaps you just suck at it?

Some online games do such a thing as a response to [[Real Money Trade]], on the logic that players would do it anyway. The sister trope is the [[Allegedly Free Game]], which advertises itself as "free to play" but requires purchases to unlock content, up to and including higher levels and/or the actual ending. To clarify, the difference between these tropes is that [[Real Money Trade]] is forbidden by the game's developers, while an [[Allegedly Free Game]] ''cannot'' be played in its entirety without paying money, and Bribing Your Way To Victory allows you to buy better stuff but doesn't lock you out of content.

 

 

See also [[Revenue Enhancing Devices]]. In-game money doesn't count; it has to be real money.

 

 

** Possibly the most outrageous example ever? [http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/cookie/ A cookie.]

** One card lets you go up one level by, in the card description, bribing the GM with pizza.

* Seen as the downfall of many a [[Collectible Card Game]]. It's not bad enough when players, (stereo)typically spoiled little kids who can scream "BUY ME THAT ULTRA-SUPER-DELUXE MEGARARE!" at their parents, can buy the rare and powerful cards or even entire pre-built "munchkin" decks from shops and collectors, but then the actual makers of the game have to get in on the act with "Buy this cheap tin box 'storage bin' and get a deluxe chromium omegarare card free! Only thirty bucks!"

*** Furthermore, there are 'Limited format' tournaments, where the price of entry (around $20) includes several packs of cards, which the tournament participants must then make decks out of (in some versions, the player is limited to whichever packs were given him at random; in others, the players pass the packs around the table and pick a single card). At the end, cards are kept (though rares are sometimes put aside to be handed out, with higher ranking participants going first). Because cards are chosen non-randomly, this is actually a cheaper method of obtaining the cards you want.

** Ever since UDE was dropped as a distributor in the West, Konami has continued the practice, but toned down the blatant practice slightly. Their rarities get shuffled, but at most a card doesn't go higher than Ultra Rare (compared to UDE's 'powerful card=highest rarity possible' tactic. The more useful cards get bumped down a bit, like Blackwing - Sirocco of the Dawn, a cornerstone piece in a Blackwing Deck, one very powerful deckstype, is a Common in US, compared to the Japanese Super Rare.

* The ''Illuminati: New World Order'' SubGenius set has a card with a special ability that is activated by sending one dollar to the SubGenius Foundation. The card suggests that the other players require the user to actually mail the dollar.

* You can play ''[[Alteil]]'' for free forever, getting all cards, even. Just don't expect to expand your deck as quickly as those who are willing to dish out dough. Oh, and there are also some cool customization stuff you can get with cash, but it is entirely optional.

 

* The [[LARP|live-action role-playing game]] ''NERO'' plays this very straight - you can straight out buy experience points with real-world money.

** There was a company which hired temporary workers by paying them in NERO experience points instead of dollars. They had to stop when someone pointed out that they were paying them the equivalent of 67c per hour, which is far below the legal minimum wage. And yet, some of the players preferred this to getting real money!

* The parodic roleplaying game ''Violence: the Role-Playing Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed'' allows a player to improve his character's stats by paying the [[Game Master]], or by sending money to the game's author.

 

 

== Video Games ==

** At least until the addition of the Global Trade Station in Gen. IV. You can trade for any Pokemon you've seen before. Gen. V also added GTS Negotiations, where you can negotiate with others for ''any'' Pokemon.

** Madden's college counterpart, NCAA 10, is slightly less insane about it. You can pay for dynasty accelerators, such as recruiting reports (they give you a leg up in recruiting new players) and a 'Toughest Places to Play' boost (it bumps your stadium higher on the list of toughest stadiums to play in, which rattles visiting teams). Quite a lot of people, this troper included (who plays on All-American, the second-highest difficulty) don't bother with the accelerators because they're unnecessary. I don't recall if it was ever patched, but there was a lot of controversy over players using the accelerators in Online Dynasty, which gave them an advantage over the other OD players.

* ''[[Bloodline Champions]]'' allows you to obtain all the characters by paying real money for them.

* In the free MUD ''Achaea,'' players can use "credits" to purchase skill bonuses and powerful magic items, or sell them for gold. Credits can be bought with game currency ("gold sovereigns") from people doing the latter, or (much more quickly and easily) with real money. Actually, the company that makes it, Iron Realms Entertainment, is a major fan of this trope, having it put into place on all their MUDs as well as the upcoming MMORPG ''Earth Eternal''.

** In fact, this is so powerful it's almost a game breaker - the different factions all have pretty standard rules on how high any particular guild skill can be while at any particular guild level, to stop people just buying complete mastery of every skill practically the moment they join a guild. You can also effectively convert credits into cold hard (in-game) cash, therefore making it quite easy to have a completely maxed out character with nothing but the best equipment for practically zero effort and little expenditure.

*** It goes without saying that the Nighthawk GT and the Carson Extreme did indeed turn out to be the best cars, and of course they aren't in the same pack. The third car that was competitive with both, the last car in the regular game (a police interceptor edition of a F1 car) was, of course, nerfed too.

* Various box sets of ''[[City of Heroes]], [[City of Villains]],'' or both had special bonus powers available to their purchasers; these are available separately from the game software itself for a small fee. Probably related are the Veteran's Rewards, extra goodies which are received for every three months of subscription to the game; at least two of these are permanent versions of special powers that can only be acquired temporarily through normal play. None of it, however, actually gives a play advantage that can't be acquired (eventually) through normal play.

* In the NCSoft MMORPG ''Dungeon Runners'', the game itself is free to play. However, if you want item storage, stackable recovery items (potions), or indeed to be able to ''use'' any item above the green (2nd tier) quality level - then you have to pay for a subscription. There's also talk about some items being buyable with real money. Two of their rewer releases, Exteel and Aion, have similar things in the works.

** However, quite a few players still pay real money, but no where near as much as the above example.

** Because Eve Online's time cards (PLEXes) are 'real' items within the game, it's possible to lose them, or have them stolen, if you're not careful. Thus was the horror of a player who lost $1,295 worth of them - ''to a pirate who [http://kotaku.com/5609620/six-years-worth-of-game-time-destroyed-in-pirate-raid blew them up.]'' [[For the Evulz]], indeed.

** Also, the equipment you can get at the end of the "add-on scenarios," which each cost $10 and provide "content" (mostly involving lazy fetch quests) you can beat in a matter of hours, can be augmented with a wide variety of customized stats, including some variations you physically cannot get any other way. The first gear released this way was blatantly overpowered (in some cases eclipsing gear it takes some players over a ''year'' to get), but it got increasingly toned down in the next two. Sadly, the add-on scenarios didn't get any more fun as a result of this.

* ''[[Forum Warz]]'' has various "Illegal Game Enhancements" that give you a ton of forum visits, a lot of cash, or an insta-kill ability. However, this completely disables all the multiplayer functions unless you pay for another enhancement to remove it.

* Games published by the Simutronics Corporation, its flagship game being the MUD ''[[Gem Stone]] IV,'' offer a "premium" membership for an extra $10 on top of the $15 a month membership fee. This membership offers access to a few otherwise off-limits areas, the ability to create several extra characters on the same account rather than just one, early access to in-game events, and the ability to type more than one line ahead (no, really). That last one, to the company's credit, isn't really an issue anymore, as the game normally registers commands so fast that you can't tell the difference.

** They also offer a so-called "platinum" service which offers all that, plus the ability to play on a different server away from all the riff-raff for an extra $40 or so a month.

* So you're a ''[[Guild Wars]]'' player and you want more character slots to experiment with? Buy them from the in-game store. Want to PvP without spending fruitless hours playing the PvE game to unlock various skills, weapons, and armour? Buy PvP unlock packs from the in-game store. It may not have been the first game on the market to do this, but it sure as hell made it a lot easier to do so.

** Also, in Guild Wars, preordering the game or any of the expansions would give the player a special weapon. This weapon usually would be useful well into the middle of the game, and even afterward, could make a good backup. Seeing as how which bonus you'd get depended on where you preordered, this meant most players, if they had any, had one item. There wasn't anything stopping someone from going and getting a second preorder at another store, however, and thus massing more items. The preorder items could also be recalled at any time if they were trashed. The only downside was that they couldn't be traded, as they were customized.

* ''[[Gunbound]]'' allowed its members to purchase exclusive weapons to be used in battles. Every last one of which was a blatant ''[[Game Breaker]]''. Mixed in with the fact that there was no way for the mod to stop them from being used, this is accepted as the reason for Gunbound's death.

** You also have to level up your familiar to make them worth using, which takes time and any item that's dropped by the familiar is dropped so often it's easy for people with lower budgets to buy the items from the mall. So purchasable familiars that unlock content are really there for making money and showing off.

** Players making an honest attempt at a competitive [[Speed Run]] will sometimes donate $20 or $30 to gain a few copies of an item that dramatically improves [[Randomly Drops|item drops]], though at this point there are enough better items out there which occupy the same slot that this strategy is generally considered obsolete.

** You can also sell it at the Mall for several million meat, as well as trade it for custom avatars and titles.

** Prior to "Pioneers of Iria", free players were limited to a single character. With "Iria", they can have a total of 3 characters, one of each race (provided they create a Human character first, and obtain the other two through a simple in-game process). Additional characters are available via buying additional character-slot "cards". While this does not necessarily provide an advantage to game play as such; having additional characters, commonly known as "mules", available for storage is highly beneficial. Especially when working on crafting and other item-intensive "life skills".

** Pets, only available as a premium purchase, are also a extremely useful. Not only do they provide multiple combat support functions, but all pets have some level of storage capacity. Many have other special features such as providing transportation (mounts); easier access to crafting items, which can be difficult or time-consuming to obtain via free sources; and aquisition of random, potentially valuable, items. There are even multiple combat techniques which rely entirely on the use of pets.

** However, the special gear is somewhat on the same level as gear available from other vendors when it is possible to purchase it, in addition to the pricing being almost comparable to the prestige class-exclusive equipment(which could range from moderately expensive to almost two whole acts worth of gold).

* ''[[Project Torque]]'', a free Massive Multiplayer Online Racing Game, revolves around racing with fantasy cars - unless the player purchases (or wins via community events) a certain number of AP (special in-game currency, the normal currency being RP, or "Reward Points"), which allows him to purchase exclusive extras like longer lasting nitros, double XP or double Reward Points alongside with ''real life cars''. The kicker? Items that can actually help a player during a race and car upgrades ''can be purchased anyway without using AP'', and the real life cars are not better in anyway than their "free" counterparts - in some case ''being worse'', forcing the player to spend more hours grinding in order to get extra upgrades to match their "free" opponent.

** And it just got even worse. They nerfed the TP gains for non-subscribers to is 1-11 TP per game. Meanwhile, premium subscribers get 1,000 TP a month. The official message explaining this said it was for "balance" purposes. The only balancing going on there is in their checkbooks.

** And now the US version, ''Tetris Friends'', has a similar deal. The "Tuning Style" (i.e. non-cosmetic) upgrades can be bought with Tokens (earned from playing, like TP) or Rubies (bought with cash, or through TrialPay). For an idea of the amount of grind needed, fully upgrading everything requires 210,000 Tokens, when it's rare to see 100 Tokens awarded for a single game. Or you can pay for about 7 bucks worth of Rubies.

** However, if you tried this your score would be divided by the number of credits, so this didn't actually let you do better in the game as far as score was concerned, and could even hurt.

* The 'real time tactics simulation' game ''[[Navy Field]]'' can be played for free. However paying for a 'gold' account gives you double experience points from battles and you can buy special (aka game breaking) ships and weapons using real money. Ironically this doesn't always help as certain groups of free players will specifically target premium ships.

* ''[[Battle Stations]]'' allows the player to buy rare items, which usually require a lot of luck-based exploring or questing to acquire. There are, however, three items for sale which cannot be found via exploration. These items can be traded on the ingame auction, though, so a wealthy character could try and get them there instead.

** Also in the cash shop are Action Point packages, allowing the player to gain more Ap than the regular Ap regeneration provides.

** For that matter almost since Gaia started there have been monthly donations which yielded, for a while, incredibly rare items such as the Halo, of which only a few dozen exist. Eventually people wised up and started mass donations, bringing the rarity and price of newer items very low.

*** This did not work for the fish, however, since they "died" after a certain amount of time. As a result, most fish were very expensive on the Market Place. After a few years, Gaia gave in to user request and made several fish in Phin Phang available for gold, at low prices, to boot. (though some fish are still cash-only in the store, and must be bought on the MP if one wishes to buy it with gold)

** After they started the Cash Shop (La Victoire), 90% of the new items were released in said store, with the regular stores (where you used gold to buy stuff) hardly being updated anymore and the only way to get a decent item is to spend ungodly amounts of gold on the user-run marketplace (if you dont want to pay cash for it). They also only keep certain items on the Cash Shop for a certain amount time, at which point, the only way to get it is to buy it on the marketplace. See that shiny new sword you think would look great? Well its <s>$50.99 at La Victoire but</s> 1.9 quintillion gold on the marketplace, good luck.

** On the other hand, since the Cash Shop came out they've done at least one update to the gold shops every month.

* Playfish games also have separate coins (generated in-game) and cash (real money) counters. One of their games, ''[[Pet Society]]'', is now an [[Allegedly Free Game]].

** Another Playfish game, Restaurant City, had its players up in arms over a set of limited edition recipes. Players could unlock a karaoke bar and upgrades for it by mastering these recipes within a certain number of days before they became [[Lost Forever]]. However, they came in a certain order, and you weren't allowed to start leveling up a recipe until you had mastered the ones that came before it. To make things worse, several of them required large quantities of some of the rarest ingredients in the game. It was incredibly difficult to obtain these ingredients without buying them with Playfish Cash, something that the players have been very bitter about.

** Dialed up with the release of 4.0, where they added a huge array of dark-matter items including resource boosters, flat research and build time reducers, the ability to sell ships and defenses back to the game for up to 75% of their base resource cost, and the ability to pay large amounts of dark matter to instantly halve the time of research and production queues; paying this twice instantly completes it, which is a big deal to high-ranking players as research times can become months long. Someone willing to sink massive amounts of cash into the game can now get +40% to the production of every mine they own and instantly complete research projects and build queues. This led to a fairly infamous incident where one player in Universe 35 gained almost ''30 million research points'' the day after 4.0 was published by recycling one of his fleets and pouring the resources into research, which he completed with dark matter. To put that in perspective, the previous #1 researcher only had 16.6 million points in research, and a rank 200 of 5000 account averages about 30 million points ''total''.

** Partially subverted, since it's possible to get the dark-matter items of version 4.0 (''not'' officers or commander) paying with in-game resources. However, this has the limits of just one per day and the item you get is randomly selected (paying dark matter, however, allows you to try up to two new rolls). Also, dark matter as well as a merchant can be obtained sending ships in expedition missions. However, you get small quantities of the former, and both appear at random (and that's not very usual).

*** How bad can it get with ''FarmVille''? [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/08/farmville-debt-kid-racks-_n_529947.html Read and weep.]

** Likewise the highly enjoyable ''[[Mousehunt]]'' offers special cheese called Super Brie+ in return for donations. SB+ can be used as a special mouse attractant or be smashed into its component Magic Essence to craft special items/more items per attempt. Some of the better traps require SB+ for their construction. SB+ can be sold and bought on the markeplace for fluctuating amounts of in-game currency depending on supply and demand, and can also be won from the game, albeit very rarely.

** Zynga's ''Words with Friends'', a Scrabble knockoff, allows you to pay one dollar (or monetary equivalent) for the computer to automatically generate the highest-scoring play. Note that this is not as big of a [[Game Breaker]] as it may seem, as high-scoring plays are likely to open up high-scoring plays for opponents too. It is still a ridiculous and controversial advantage though.

* The Asian-themed martial arts game 9Dragons follows a "mostly free" model. The game can be played for free and items earned off the world, but paying money can grant you access to paid-for buffs from special vendors, as well as give you very powerful items and boosts to experience.

** Paying is also the only way to get rid of the seizure-inducing, security risk-laden, inappropriate Flash banner ads on top of the game screen. A lot of people quit over that one.

* All of the ''[[Disgaea]]'' games have an in-universe variant and [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshade]] it. You can bribe members of the dark assembly with items in your bag to rule in your favor making bill passing easier. Of course if that doesn't work you can just force them through battle.

* ''[[Busou Shinki]]: Battle Rondo'' is already a competitive online game based around a toy line, so naturally, the more figures from the line you have, the better your selection of characters and equipment is. '''However''', Konami decided to be even more greedy about it and use an online cash shop to deal in extremely powerful weapons and equipment ''that cannot be obtained in any other way''. Combine this with the average ([[No Export for You|Japanese]]) player's [[Elite Tweak]] mentality, and it means only someone who knows EXACTLY what they're doing can use figure-only stuff to win.

* ''[[League of Legends]]'' is a notable aversion. It's free to play in and of itself, but at first, you'll only have access to ten possible characters out of the [[Loads and Loads of Characters|90+ available]] (rotating weekly). You can buy more with points earned by playing games. You ''can'' also pay money to unlock more, yes, and real money is also the only way to get skins for said characters. However, items that actually affect your in-game, particularly "runes" that increase your stats, can ''only'' be purchased using the aforesaid points, so there's no way for a player to buy power.

** Even skins can be purchased without paying any money, as Riot Points can be earned, albeit in small amounts, for going extended periods of time without being reported.

* ''[[Bejeweled]] Blitz'' started out with a free one-minute version on Facebook, where you competed against your friends to get the most points. Fine. Then, it added the ability to purchase various power-ups with in-game currency... in practice, the only way to get a relatively decent score is with these power-ups, but everyone gained in-game coins at pretty much the same rate. Fine. Then, they changed the game to let you purchase coins with Facebook credits. There we go.

* Indie MMO ''[http://www.wurmonline.com Wurm Online]'' tries valiantly to avert this, being built almost entirely around [[Item Crafting]] and economics. You start off with all the kit you need to begin the process of acquiring weapons, armour, proper tools and even your own house... The incredibly long process of skill grinding in order to make stuff that you can use or turn a profit on, or else working on someone's massive construction project for wages. (Yes, this game faithfully simulates ''grueling manual labour''.) If you haven't got the patience for this then you may be playing the wrong game, but there's an option to convert real-world money to game currency. On the other hand, the free-trial area lets you level up quite a long way and build up as much cash as you like before taking the plunge into the game proper.

* ''Lord of Ultima'' plays this as straight as can be. Free to play, but one can purchase "diamonds" that in turn allow for the purchase of artifacts that give resources, build-time increases, etc. The game limits how frequently you can use them, though.

** Tower Madness is far from the only one in the iPhone App store, and in some ways is a mild case. Others urge you to get more apps from a list, few of which are free, to get game currency. Then there a number that move well into [[Allegedly Free Game]] territory.

* The Mighty Eagle in ''[[Angry Birds]]''. Send in the eagle to kill every pig instantly! Fortunately, there is a one hour cool down to moderate use.

* ''Luna Online'' follows this trope. The game world is pretty big, making walking ''painfully'' slow, but hey! You can buy a time-limited warp scroll at the cash shop! Grinding going a little slowly? Just buy an experience multiplier scroll! Granted, it's completely possible to reach the max level without buying any gPotatoes (the currency you buy with real cash). In fact, a character in June 2010 was featured on the game's website for having done just that (although they did trade in-game gold for the gPs and special items).

* ''[[Dragon Age]]'' has the Feastday gifts and pranks, paid DLC that lets you bypass the entire approval system by setting them as high or low as you like.

** It's less then three dollars, so it might be an aversion.

** But wait, there's more! The "Aegis Pack" adds an awesome suit of armor and a sniper rifle that is horribly bugged and makes your squadmates almost invincible! Again, for the low low price of 160 Microsoft/Bioware Points!

** The included unlock code on new copies of the game is to discourage used game sales, which in some cases can be considered worse than piracy, due to only the retailer selling the used copy gets the profit instead of the game developers themselves.

* The "Hunt For The Decepticons" sub-series of ''[[Transformers]]'' toys is accompanied by a series of online flash games. Technically, you only need three codes (one code in each toy) to unlock the battle with Megatron. However, you can use as many as seven codes to unlock harder minigames to give bonuses during the final battle with Megatron.

* Miss Bimbo is a 'sandbox' game, where buying 'Bimbo Dollars' will only get you more money to get cute clothes and spend on furniture, pet stuff, and various other items that you don't need.

** Poupeegirl is the same thing, but real money gets you 'jewels' where you can ONLY buy cute clothes are sold in the special shops (some 'celebrity' shops with Japanese fashion icons).

* VDex Project is another Pokemon site that relies on donations. For a relatively small fee, you can buy donation items and Pokemon. The Pokemon are usually based on the game's NPCs, while the items tend to be either cosmetic or offer small gameplay enhancements. Nearly everything can be sold to other players, and unlike many examples it doesn't cost ''too'' much in-game money to buy one of these things from someone else.

* ''[[Echo Bazaar]]'' allows you to buy Fate with real money. Fate is obtainable in game on very rare occasions, and can be used for mundane functions like restoring your opportunities deck to unlocking new and complex story inlets.

* ''[[Grand Chase]]'' has all characters you don't have at the beginning of the game, surprisingly, possible to obtain without paying, but it can be anything from very tedious to just plain difficult. Buying them allows you to unlock them by just giving up one gem. Job upgrades work like this as well, except it simply asks you to do the same thing, but for a fraction of what you're originally supposed to get (For example, for your 2nd job, you need to get a whopping 300 fragments and 10 hard to obtain Gaikoz seals. Buying it means you only have to get 10 and 1, respectively). Specific weapons, accessories, pets, and skills, on the other hand, have to be purchased.

* ''[[Dawn of War]] II: Retribution'' has a DLC pack for each race with equipment to turn your main character into a [[Disc One Nuke]], all for the low, low cost of 1$/1€/1£ per pack. Similar packs exist for the multiplayer Last Stand mode, but fortunately none of these modes are against the computer.

* ''Alien Adoption Agency'' used to be completely free; the only way to get ahead was being smarter than others. Over time, it became "free to play, but pointless if you want to be the best", as now it's possible to start an account, spend some cash, and have a top-flight account w/o even learning how to play. And the more you spend, the more the one-man owner/coder lets you get away with. Yep, spend enough and it's not only pay2win, you can cheat2win too.

* ''[http://www.travian.com Travian]'' is this ''[[Up to Eleven]]''.

* The Ikko-Ikki expansion pack DLC for ''Shogun 2: [[Total War]]'' gives you a free monk hero unit and access to powerful warrior nuns and monk cavalry units right off the bat in multiplayer. They tend to be vastly superior to the light cavalry and ashigaru you have access to at that point, although their in-game purchase price (the monk hero costs as much to add to your army as 4 units of ashigaru bowmen alone) reflect this.

* ''[[Sryth]]'' has Adventurer Tokens (ATs for short). There’s a very limited number of ATs in the game and some of those need to be spent on certain must-have items such as a Quickstone, a grand residence, access to the Battlegrounds, and Varkyn's Ring of Motley Wonder (each of those expenses is absolutely necessary). That leaves you with a limited supply of ATs and they are the only currency accepted at Tallys' Trading Post. But you can get more by donating. In fact, this is the only way to get the best of Tallys' stuff. Some players are known to have donated over a 1000 US dollars (estimates based on the AT cost of their gear). But even without the best stuff your character can be like a god early in the game, for example if you buy all the Dragongem armor pieces: The cost is 1324 ATs and the bonuses are +45 MR and +109 SP (and that’s without taking into account the weapon and shield equipped). For comparison, your character can start with (at most) 32 MR and at most 36 SP. Fortunately you don’t '''need''' to donate – the negative side of not buying any of Tallys’ items is that your character will likely never have stats as high as those of the people who donated large amounts. In other words:

** Some fights will be challenging, so you’ll need to think a bit, mostly about which items to use and in what order

* ''[[Cosmic Break]]'' must be one of the worst offenders in history with ultra rare limited edition robots you must roll for in a lotto style random generator that costs $5 per roll. There are videos on Nico Nico Douga and Youtube of players spending in excess of $1000 for a single robot. It's so awful that even if you pay cash money for robots in the standard shop not one of them can compete with the literal game breakers such as Ivis, Toybox Girl, Aquila Girl, or Vanguard Fencer. Add to that the parts on garapon robots are all 3 slotted, 2 slotted on most shop (non random) robots and 1 slot on the free robots and that slot protectors (there is a 50% chance or more any upgrade will fail) are $3 each and you quickly realize that a non cash paying player has no chance whatsoever to compete.

** Oh, did I mention the game is 95% PVP?

** Using an AUD does, however, prevent you from gaining ''any'' XP you might earn from completing the hack and discovering any XP and credit bonuses within the hacked system. Not a big deal for the really low level stuff, but you can miss out on a ''lot'' of XP and a tidy sum of extra income if you rely on them too much. The 10,000 credits are a bigger deal, since you can buy two Praxis Kits (5,000 each!) from the clinic and unlock extra implants right away.

** AUDs are also relatively rare (in comparison to vast numbers of locks) and harder the security may be easily bypassed by collected viruses. Two Praxis kits give some edge but, truth be told, are by no means a gamebreaker. Furthermore, the game is single-player only and Augmented Edition comes with an additional side mission, so it isn't a simple 'power pack'.

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' added this with the ability to buy a tradable in game pet for $10 which typically goes for 5000G - 7000G depending on your server. The highest level gear you can buy from other players typically costs between 5000G - 25000G, and the very rare in game pet goes for around 12000G. For the rich, you can get the ability to transform into a dragon for around 30000G (most of that is money spent on NPC bought items). Turning into a dragon is mostly for show as it has the same effect as riding a dragon, flying carper, helicopter, or various large birds, except you can carry someone on your back. Blizzard states they did this to reduce illicit real money trading.

** The blizzard store has [[Defied Trope|defied this]] in regards to paying real money to win. Their unshakeable stance is that they'll never make the players pay for something that will increase the quality of the gameplay drastically.

* Played with in the iOS port of ''[[Don Pachi|DoDonPachi Blissful Death]]''. Version 1.0.2 added "Custom Edit" options to make the game easier, such as starting with more lives, and most of these can only be unlocked by buying them with real money. But playing with any of these options turned on disqualifies you for the high score rankings. So about the only thing they're good for is letting unskilled players experience the [[True Final Boss]].

 

 

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Power At a Price]]

[[Category:Show Business]]

[[Category:Collectible Card Game]]

[[Category:Video Game Items and Inventory]]