Bit of a vent post. I tend to have a thing where (with very few exceptions) I avoid anything that has MTX in it because: 1) I know they tend to operate on exploiting impulsive spenders, 2) I know the design of a product nearly always necessitates being made worse to accommodate them, so that people have an incentivize to buy them, and 3) I know they can get in my head, personally, in spite of being overall frugal.

And I also got into a hobby of learning languages with the help of gamified language apps. Those with any familiarity with them can probably guess where this is going. I’ve had more than one time I liked an app and then it added MTX so, due to the above, I had to quit. And even when I can find more that don’t have them at the offset, it’s getting to the point where I don’t feel like I can trust any of them in the long-term. Or in some cases, the apps are just silly overpriced for what they offer.

I still have one that I use for helping to learn Chinese, TalkMe, but I don’t know if that will eventually go the same way as the others. It’s just very frustrating. Oh and this isn’t even getting into other kinds of changes that I’ve seen happen, like UI overhauls that make a unique app look like a Duolingo clone. Or revamps of achievements that mess with what you already had, trivializing the point of it being gamified to motivate you. And this is on paid products too, not free stuff where you’d expect the “you’re the product if it’s free” capitalist thing. These are subscription-based apps that it keeps happening to me and they all want to be Duolingo I guess. It just hits home how frustrated I get with capitalism in general and the nauseating behavior (that seems worse in the digital space) where companies can never sit still with a consistent profitable business model and have to “keep growing” to “be competitive”. But if they happen to ruin things for existing customers along the way, I guess that doesn’t matter as long as the God of Profits is fed.