After paying a little more attention to the advertisements for “play to win free money” games that I've been getting, I realized what's wrong with them. And I'd say that, for every figurative brain cell you have, they seem even worse.

The burning fault lies in the economics, the business model, of it all. An advertisement for one such game listed a daily earning cap of $300. While I can’t make estimates on how substantial $300 is compared to the company’s treasury, it seems big enough that, given enough players, it could bankrupt the company in no time. The problem is exacerbated by the advertising, which they also have to pay for. And since advertising (in theory) attracts customers, this would produce exponential strain on the company wallet.

The point that I’m getting at here is, where’s the counterbalance to all the cash that they’re prodigiously spooning out to their customers and advertisers? Given that they’re open to all the new players they can get, the money must be coming, indirectly, from the users. A rule of thumb that I’ve heard is that, if you aren’t directly paying for a product, you are the product . . .

POSTSCRIPT: And then my faith in humanity was further decreased by this footnote. This defeats the whole purpose of an advertisement! Why are you showing fake footage under the name of a real product?! You’re effectively admitting that your product is so lame that you can’t advertise the real thing!