This is a silly argument. 1. Game developers aren't shooting themselves in the foot. They're catering to customers. IAP works because customers want to get a g

This is a silly argument. 1. Game developers aren't shooting themselves in the foot. They're catering to customers. IAP works because customers want to get a game for free, and the people who really love a game are willing to spend thousands (sometimes even tens or hundreds thereof) on it. 2. The old-school game model was struggling anyway. Console game sales haven't been doing well for a long time. 3. You can't rent an app, and you mostly don't play it on someone else's device. Both of these were ways of testing out a new franchise on consoles that no longer exist. It makes sense that something filled the void. 4. The platforms now (mobile devices) have a vested interest in you playing as many games as possible, moreso than you paying for them. Apple/Samsung etc. make their money by your buying a new $650+ phone every two years, and if you get a bunch of apps you love on one, you're more likely to get another from the same OEM later. Why try to sell you a few $10 games off of which they make $3 (minus carrier fees) when they can give you a ton of free games and hope you love a few enough of them to plunk down another $650 a year from now? Until content is no longer gated by app stores that have incentives very different from those of game devs, this business model is a natural fit. Don't get me wrong, I don't love it either, and I make the damn things for a living. I don't think all IAP-monetized games suck. But I do think that plenty of them do, and the misaligned incentives make it hard to make a game that is both profitable and genuinely fun that way. I just don't think the fault lies with game developers.