I know for a fact that there's at least one company (that I can't name) that offers what I would call "Addiction as a Service".
Their system allows to create n-dimensional currency systems (coins, diamonds, etc), currency conversion rules, collectible management, in-game stores with their schedules, crafting/merging logic, probability distributions (including "dark distributions" like OP's link) and even prices (for profitability hints/warnings). Basically everything a fleecing game needs. They even offer templates inspired in famous games to get you started and tune as you go.
They charge quite a bit, but the "foundational app" upfront cost is much lower: it's limited to UI and a relatively thin business logic that targets their API endpoint (mostly mapping API ids to in-game assets and use or server-side logic).
> I know for a fact that there's at least one company (that I can't name) that offers what I would call "Addiction as a Service".
Ouch. Of course they do.
I don't even know why reading this surprised me at first. With the explosion of mobile games following pretty much the same addiction mechanics but with different skins, it was only a matter of time for someone to package mechanics and offer them in form of a backend service.
Their system allows to create n-dimensional currency systems (coins, diamonds, etc), currency conversion rules, collectible management, in-game stores with their schedules, crafting/merging logic, probability distributions (including "dark distributions" like OP's link) and even prices (for profitability hints/warnings). Basically everything a fleecing game needs. They even offer templates inspired in famous games to get you started and tune as you go.
They charge quite a bit, but the "foundational app" upfront cost is much lower: it's limited to UI and a relatively thin business logic that targets their API endpoint (mostly mapping API ids to in-game assets and use or server-side logic).