Financially. I personally know one person who pissed away their rent money on a F2P and got evicted. I also know of several other stories of people (not who I know personally) where they spend a lot of money they don't have, to the point of ruin. (Not being able to financially recover is a very high bar - you can financially recover from a bankruptcy for instance.)
I mean, sometimes they are kids (or the developmentally challenged)[1] but adults [2] too. There are more sad stories. One I recall was a developer who invited their superwhales to a launch of the new beta expansion in person. (All expenses paid) They sent one a plane ticket, but the the player never showed because they couldn't afford to get to the airport. I wish I could find that story online.
>I very clearly and explicitly said "money they didn't have" in my first post and was talking about financial costs.
fair - I missed that context when reading the immediate response replying to.
Thanks for sharing your anecdata - the industry is definitely in need of regulation something I've long believed. The ubiquity and ease of access is probably the most dangerous bit. It's astounding that mobile games were able to copy/hire all the knowledge acquired in building slot machines to create an industry that doesn't even have to pay out..!
I think ease of access is unrated as a contributing factor. But even scarier than that is the ubiquity. The ability to get a fix whenever you want (after all, it's easy to open the game and spend money!) makes resisting it a 24/7 chore.
I mean, sometimes they are kids (or the developmentally challenged)[1] but adults [2] too. There are more sad stories. One I recall was a developer who invited their superwhales to a launch of the new beta expansion in person. (All expenses paid) They sent one a plane ticket, but the the player never showed because they couldn't afford to get to the airport. I wish I could find that story online.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48925623
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/03/01/why-its-s...
> losing your time, while sad, is not within the scope of this discussion
I very clearly and explicitly said "money they didn't have" in my first post and was talking about financial costs.