So, I saw Codebullet’s video about this game, and I headed over here to check it out, but something has me confused and concerned: what is the planned monetization scheme for this game? As far as I can tell, there doesn’t seem to be any way for the developers to extract money from the userbase, and given that they’re apparently running competitions that will give away thousands of dollars, it seems likely that they believe that they’ll be able to make at least that much money. The fact that there’s no word on how they plan on accomplishing that is sort of suspicious: as they saying goes, “If you’re not paying for a product on the Internet, you’re the product being sold.”
Are they simply waiting for the game to receive further development before they start charging a purchase price for it? Are they going to implement pay-to-win mechanisms that give paying players the ability to unlock stronger units that free-to-play players, or cosmetic skins for their units that the players can buy? If they are going to do either of these two options, are they planning on having them directly purchased, or placed in lootboxes?
Are they planning on running advertisements on the web pages that the games are played on? Are they planning on harvesting the code that the players produced and sell it to third parties? Are they planning on selling the user’s personal information to third parties (something that I believe that the GDPR makes illegal without explicitly informing the users first)? Are they planning on making money by acting as a job recruitment company, and taking commissions from companies who they place users with?