That is a great point, and I have been fascinated by these, especially the penny auction sites. DealDash is clever and has a mechanic where if you bid it keeps

That is a great point, and I have been fascinated by these, especially the penny auction sites. DealDash is clever and has a mechanic where if you bid it keeps the auction alive for 10 more seconds (which must keep user engagement sky-high). Someone does actually win something, but everyone else loses both time and money - which is the difference between this and, say, eBay. The difference, I think, in online casino gaming is that the vast majority of players do not actually spend money at all. Only a small amount of players do, and of those only a fraction are the hardcore people mentioned in this article. Thus it's hard to show it's causing harm in court, because the companies will simply say "it's a free app, microtransactions are not mandatory", and ignore the people who are taking our second mortgages on their houses. It's a scenario where a small fraction of the consumer base spends so much money that they subsidize the free players.