Polymorphic / fragmented currency
Many purpose-specific, non-interchangeable currencies fragment a player's funds so true value and price are impossible to track.
- Code
- M18
- Category
- Monetary & randomised
- Severity
- Medium
- Evidence
- EmergingCatalogued in qualitative analysis of Chinese and Japanese free-to-play mobile games.
- Purpose served
- Serves businessPrimarily serves the provider's revenue, retention, or data — the most suspect.
- Mechanism family
- Sneaking / Hiding
- Platforms
- Mobile / F2P
- Player costs
- Financial
- Target Audience
- policymakers
- Tags
- virtual currencyprice obfuscationmonetizationserves businesslow transparencymonetary pressurecognitive pressurevulnerability exploitation
- Also known as
- fragmented currency, multiple currencies, non-fungible in-game currency
How it works
Rather than a single wallet, the game splits spending power across many narrowly-scoped currencies — one for gacha, another for the shop, others for events or upgrades — that cannot be exchanged for one another. Players can rarely tell what anything truly costs, or consolidate what they already hold.
Why it can be harmful
Fragmentation defeats price comparison and value intuition, and leaves stranded balances that nudge further purchases to “round up” to a usable amount. It is distinct from simple currency-conversion obfuscation: the mechanism here is partitioning funds into silos so that no single balance is ever quite enough for what the player wants.
Examples in the wild
- Separate currencies for gacha, shop, events, and upgrades that can't be pooled
- Earned soft currency that can't buy what premium currency can
- Event tokens that expire and never convert
Illustrative genre examples to aid recognition — not allegations about specific titles.
References
- Zhang, G. X. (2025). First contact with dark patterns and deceptive designs in Chinese and Japanese free-to-play mobile games. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CHI PLAY). doi.org/10.1145/3748620 · citing patterns
- Petrovskaya, E.; Zendle, D. (2022). Predatory monetisation? A categorisation of unfair, misleading and aggressive monetisation techniques in digital games from the player perspective. Journal of Business Ethics. doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04970-6 · citing patterns
Related patterns
Premium-currency obfuscation
Real money is converted into in-game currency at non-round ratios that break the player's price intuition.
Loot boxes / gacha
Paid, randomised reward containers whose contents — and often whose odds — are unknown before purchase.
Risk conversion / guaranteed-acquisition bypass
A guaranteed direct purchase lets players bypass gacha randomness — usually priced far above the gamble's expected value.
Hidden / undisclosed odds
The probability of outcomes in a paid randomised reward is withheld, buried, or hard to verify.
Hidden costs
The true cost of a purchase is revealed late, or never.
Personalised spend-optimisation
Silently using a player's behavioural data to tune offers, prices, odds, difficulty, or matchmaking to maximise that individual's spending.