Having worked for a company that invented some early versions of these practices in the early 2010s when the whole freemium approach started it's apparent that

Having worked for a company that invented some early versions of these practices in the early 2010s when the whole freemium approach started it's apparent that it's not changed and just gotten more insidious. I'm surprised it didn't cover the ethics of deliberately asking for larger scope permissions in apps in order to find out more information about the user. Typically the app or API requests permission for a spurious feature that adds negligible benefit (e.g location to give in game weather) but then uses that to segment the demographic (e.g. shops you're in, neighbourhood wealth bracketing etc etc). This is all useful stuff to sell on, tailor game odds, offers and prices etc - assuming the privacy policy was just click through-ed. This technique gets even more devious when it's a purely advertising API, e.g. ask a third party to integrate the API into their free and useful mapping app but collect the data in the background and provide to other apps via the same API. Of course this was the days before do not track legislation, but now instead you sign away some of these rights in terms of service and privacy policies, and it's still done, just pseudonymously. The one thing I recommend to prevent this kind of abuse is to lie about your age, mark yourself as above the minimum required to play a game (or else it will decline to install) but below the age of consent for purchases (e.g. pretend you are a child). This provides 2 legal protections (e.g. using Coppa legislation in the US): 1 - they cannot advertise to you, have to advertise less or have a smaller pool of possible adverts they can show you (country law specific). 2 - they cannot track you without consent (many apps won't allow install without this however) Usually you will see no other game mechanic changes because the game is designed for all ages, only the marketing/sales is legally bound.