I see it as as much of a problem as cheap toys from Toys r' us. The kids love them for about 30 minutes, then they break and that's it (the toys that is). But does it really matter? Just because something is digital, does it really make it worth less to the children?

It's less about the value to children and more about exploiting that to extract money without any regard to the children's wellbeing. Crappy toys would be purged in a more ethical state of the world instead of being allowed to thrive and take over.

My brother got minecraft to play with my niece and there are two versions now, from what I can tell one that’s like what I was playing a decade ago but updated, and one that has microtransactions. The old one lets you download skins and mods for free. It seemed like a no brainer but he went with the microtransaction one, and now my niece keeps asking for cosmetics. There must be a reason to yoke yourself to the pay-for-skins version, but I’m really not sure.

I get the old man sentiment. But I remember being excited for a gift card to the arcade. Is it very different? Is it bad?

It's also no different than a RuneScape membership in the 2000s, or hell, Roblox Builder Club almost 20 years ago. Both of those brought me an immense amount of joy and connection to others that I would never otherwise had gotten to experience living in an isolating rural area.

Over half of us kids are really fucking dumb, so this tracks.

That's just every single thing ever sold and marketed to children. No company has ever given half a shit about children's wellbeing. With that said, what part about them buying a skin to show off to their friends hurts their wellbeing?

So….. when was it that all of the children in America were polled again?

With the power of math you don’t have to. I’m a data analyst by trade so I take offence to this question every time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination

Yeah… the _Entertainment Software Association_ polled kids. Doesn’t say what kids, or where. We have long since known that polling can easily give you the answers you want. Also, I’m not going to argue about this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratified_sampling

Neat! We still have no idea what kids were polled, and where they’re from. What we do know is that those that polled them has reason for a bias.

> YouGov and ESA conducted a 5-minute online survey in the U.S. from September 26-30, 2025 among 1,912 respondents ages 5-65 recruited from YouGov’s proprietary online panel. Data is weighted to be representative of the overall U.S. population in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, education and census region. Respondents ages 5 to 17 were asked to complete the survey under the supervision of a parent.

No different than buying a game if they get the same amount of playtime.

I think it's a little different. With new games comes novelty. Sticking with a single game and just buying cosmetics doesn't provide nearly as much novelty. I don't think this is a children only issue either. Its a trap adults fall into as well.