Pattern library
This library includes 66 exploitative patterns, categorized according to the mechanism, player cost, and support in the research literature. You can search the full text or filter to narrow the set.
Loot boxes / gacha
Paid, randomised reward containers whose contents — and often whose odds — are unknown before purchase.
Personalised spend-optimisation
Silently using a player's behavioural data to tune offers, prices, odds, difficulty, or matchmaking to maximise that individual's spending.
Accidental-purchase / default-to-purchase UI
Purchase is the default or easily mis-tapped path, so spending happens without express, informed consent.
Can't pause or save
Designs that prevent safely stopping — no pause or save, or progress lost (or attacked) when you leave — so players can't quit on their own terms.
Disguised ads / content
Ads are styled as gameplay or rewards so the player cannot tell promotion from play.
Forced registration / data disclosure
Access to play, rewards, or social features is made conditional on creating an account, linking an identity, or sharing unnecessary personal or contact data.
Hidden / undisclosed odds
The probability of outcomes in a paid randomised reward is withheld, buried, or hard to verify.
Obstructed exit / cancellation (sludge)
Asymmetric friction makes quitting, refunding, or disabling far harder than starting.
Offer-wall / cross-promotion redirection
Dangling an in-game reward for going to another app or game and spending money or time there, confirmed by a third-party tracker.
Parasocial-character pressure
Beloved characters urge purchases or continued play, exploiting parasocial attachment.
Pay-to-keep / ransomed progress
The game threatens to take away progress, items, or assets the player already earned unless they pay or keep playing.
Pay-to-win
Purchasable power converts money into competitive advantage, undermining the implicit contract of skill.
Power creep
Continually releasing more powerful paid items so previously bought ones become obsolete, pressuring repeat purchases to keep up.
Predatory / forced advertising
Unskippable or rewarded ads — sometimes disguised as content — are bundled into progression.
Risk conversion / guaranteed-acquisition bypass
A guaranteed direct purchase lets players bypass gacha randomness — usually priced far above the gamble's expected value.
Variable-ratio reward / near-miss
Slot-machine-like reinforcement and 'almost won' framing drive repeated attempts.
VIP tiers / cumulative-spend escalation
Privileges, rewards, and status are gated behind cumulative spending thresholds, ratcheting players toward ever-higher outlay.
Aesthetic / sensory manipulation
Celebratory audio-visual feedback reinforces spending and reward moments.
Aggressive nagging / interruptive upsell
Frequent pop-ups repeatedly steer the player to the store.
Bad defaults / preselection
The provider-preferred option is already selected or treated as the normal path, so inaction becomes consent, spending, or data sharing.
Bait-and-switch / product not as expected
The advertised content or experience differs materially from what is actually delivered.
Bundle anchoring & decoys
Tiered packs are priced to steer players toward a 'best value' middle option through anchoring and decoys.
Bundle bonus / multi-draw incentive
Drawing many gacha pulls at once is rewarded with a bonus, pushing players toward larger single gambles.
Choice overload / option flooding
The interface floods the player with too many overlapping options, currencies, bundles, settings, or offers to compare meaningfully.
Collection & completionism pressure
A visible, incomplete collection — roster, index, grid — compels players to keep playing or paying to complete the set.
Comparison prevention
Making it hard to compare prices, odds, or options so players can't judge value.
Content treadmill
A relentless cadence of new seasons, stories, and limited updates keeps players returning so they never fall behind an ever-moving target.
Creator tipping & crowdfunded content
Routing real money to creators or crowdfunding unreleased content, where prosocial “support” framing lowers price scrutiny.
Daily login / streaks
Escalating rewards and loss-aversion penalties punish missing a day.
Early-buyer penalty / retroactive markdown
Players who buy early at full price are penalised when the same content is later sold cheaper or given away.
Encourages anti-social behaviour
Designs that reward or normalise toxic, aggressive, or anti-social behaviour in order to drive engagement.
Endowed progress
Giving players an artificial head-start or visible partial progress so the urge to complete it pulls them onward.
Energy / wait timers (appointment mechanics)
Play is gated by real-time cooldowns that can be bypassed for money.
Fake social proof
Fabricated or unverifiable signals of others' activity — “1M players bought this!”, fake live counters — used to pressure decisions.
Feedforward ambiguity / unclear consequences
The interface fails to make clear what a button, prompt, or action will actually do before the player commits.
First-charge discount lure
A one-off, heavily discounted first purchase that converts non-payers into payers, then reverts to full price.
FOMO / limited-time offers
Artificial scarcity and urgency pressure players into purchases before a countdown expires.
Hidden costs
The true cost of a purchase is revealed late, or never.
Illusion of control / skill framing
Chance outcomes are presented as if skill or choice could influence them.
Impersonation / disguised system-as-friend
System messages are styled to look like communication from a peer.
Interruptible-but-sticky loops
Auto-advancing or endless content resists natural stopping points.
Involuntary social ranking / identity labels
The system assigns relationship labels, closeness ranks, or social-cluster positions to people from behavioural data they did not choose to make socially meaningful.
Language inaccessibility / complex copy
Important purchase, privacy, odds, or consent information is presented in language the player cannot reasonably understand.
Licensed-IP collaboration FOMO
Time-limited cosmetics tied to a popular external brand or franchise drive purchases through fandom and scarcity rather than gameplay value.
Manufactured competition
Leaderboards, resetting ranks, and rivalry framing turn social comparison into a driver of compulsive play and spending.
Misdirection / false visual hierarchy
Visual salience steers the player toward the provider-preferred option.
Monetised social status
Visible status is sold to exploit peer comparison and the desire to belong.
Monetising basic quality-of-life
The game charges to remove friction that the game itself introduced.
Optimism & frequency bias
Framing that inflates perceived chances of winning — emphasising wins and near-misses, downplaying losses — to exploit optimism and frequency illusions.
Pay-for-early-access
Selling early access to content, weapons, or updates so patience becomes a purchasable advantage.
Pay-to-skip / engineered grind
Progression is deliberately slowed so the game can sell time-savers that remove the friction it introduced.
Polymorphic / fragmented currency
Many purpose-specific, non-interchangeable currencies fragment a player's funds so true value and price are impossible to track.
Premium-currency obfuscation
Real money is converted into in-game currency at non-round ratios that break the player's price intuition.
Reciprocity
Giving the player or their friends a free gift to create a felt obligation to give back — by spending, playing, or recruiting.
Remedy / paid second chance
After a deliberately scarce item is 'missed', the game sells a second chance to buy it back.
Romantic / intimate mechanics
A romantic or affectionate bond — with a character or another player — is engineered, then its progression is routed through spending or compulsion loops.
Social obligation / guilt
The design leverages teammates' dependence to compel continued play or spending.
Subscription / battle-pass traps
Easy entry and obstructed cancellation, with 'earned' value that expires if you stop paying or playing.
Sunk-cost / entrapment
Designs make prior investment justify further spending or time.
Time fog / playtime opacity
Elapsed time and session length are concealed so players lose track of how long they have played.
Trick wording / misleading copy
Confusing, ambiguous, or expectation-violating wording makes the player take an action they did not mean to take.
Value obfuscation / false narratives
What a purchase actually yields is misrepresented through framing or false comparison.
Confirmshaming
Opt-out wording is laden with guilt to discourage the protective choice.
Fragmented downloads / hidden storage cost
The true storage footprint is concealed until install begins, after the player is already committed.
Gifting / invitation spam (social pyramid)
Progress is tied to recruiting or pestering friends.
Grinding / engineered repetition
Repetitive effort is inflated to extend play or to drive pay-to-skip purchases.