Virtual slot machines are not fun games, and Apple and Google could ban them with a stroke of a pen. They certainly should. Apple, Meta and Google could also pr

Virtual slot machines are not fun games, and Apple and Google could ban them with a stroke of a pen. They certainly should. Apple, Meta and Google could also prevent developers from advertising them, again with the stroke of a pen. You don't have a right to make them, and they are doing little for the gaming and app ecosystems by having them around. Slot machine victims and politics are poorly aligned. Something like 1/11 of the top grossing apps on the App Store are virtual slot machines. Nonetheless the number of active users total across all virtual slot machines globally may number as low as the hundreds of thousands. This is from my experience as a game developer and publisher. What to do in this scenario: extremely high revenue but few users? As other commenters have said, Apple's deep seeded indifference to gaming has created this beast. Apple Arcade, while generally publishing good games, is a financial and ecosystem failure: there are no breakout hits, and everyone who publishes into Apple Arcade had finished their game before showing it to Apple or had previously successful games, so they didn't help anything come to be that would have come to be already. There are dozens of commenters here complaining about their kids buying IAP. Personally, I find the assignment of blame for something that pisses you off kind of a moot point. You wouldn't give a fuck if there weren't real money involved, indeed there are maybe even a billion people on this planet playing some kind of free game and having fun. The worst that they are doing is wasting time. But Apple could give you a refund - it is, after all, imaginary, there's no scarcity - but they don't. It's their store. Steam gives refunds. So how about write some angry e-mails to Tim Cook, or run for office. As a game developer, I would love for virtual slot machines to go away. The law can do that, if not Apple. But nobody can force Apple to take real risks with Apple Arcade, or force users to pay for my game. There is the problem.