General

Sneaking / Hiding

Concealing or delaying information that is material to the decision — hidden costs, hidden odds, obscured currency value.

Patterns in this family (9)

Silently using a player's behavioural data to tune offers, prices, odds, difficulty, or matchmaking to maximise that individual's spending.

Ads are styled as gameplay or rewards so the player cannot tell promotion from play.

The probability of outcomes in a paid randomised reward is withheld, buried, or hard to verify.

The advertised content or experience differs materially from what is actually delivered.

The true cost of a purchase is revealed late, or never.

System messages are styled to look like communication from a peer.

Real money is converted into in-game currency at non-round ratios that break the player's price intuition.

Elapsed time and session length are concealed so players lose track of how long they have played.

What a purchase actually yields is misrepresented through framing or false comparison.