Power creep
Continually releasing more powerful paid items so previously bought ones become obsolete, pressuring repeat purchases to keep up.
- Code
- M13
- Category
- Monetary & randomised
- Severity
- High
- Evidence
- ModerateDocumented in exploitation and player-perception analyses of monetised games.
- Purpose served
- Gameplay & businessServes play and the provider at once — the contested middle where context decides whether it's deceptive.
- Mechanism family
- Monetary / randomised
- Platforms
- Mobile / F2P · Live-service · PC / console
- Player costs
- FinancialCompetitive fairness
- Modes
- ExploitativeCoercive
- Tags
- power creepmonetizationcompetitionobsolescenceserves gameplayserves businesstransparent but exploitativeno meaningful opt outconsent underminedtemporal pressuresocial pressuremonetary pressureemotional pressurevulnerability exploitation
- Also known as
- power inflation, planned obsolescence
How it works
Each new release — characters, gear, cards — is stronger than the last, so the value of earlier purchases steadily decays and players must keep buying the newest tier to stay effective.
Why it can be harmful
It manufactures planned obsolescence of the player’s own investments, converting fear of falling behind into recurring spend; in competitive modes it shades into pay-to-win and erodes the fairness contract.
Examples in the wild
- Gacha RPGs where new banner units outclass older ones
- Card games that print a stronger set each season
- Sports titles whose new player items outshine last year's
Illustrative genre examples to aid recognition — not allegations about specific titles.
References
- King, D. L.; Delfabbro, P. H. (2019). Unfair play? Video games as exploitative monetized services: An examination of game patents from a consumer protection perspective. Computers in Human Behavior. doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.07.017 · 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
Community catalogue
The community site DarkPattern.games catalogues a related pattern, “Power Creep”, with 10+ example game mentions captured in our source crawl, including Dye Hard - Color War, Hatch Dragons, Paper.io 2, Pikmin Bloom.
Community-contributed and votes-based; the listed game titles are page-level examples from that catalogue, not a full game-profile crawl or our assessment. View on DarkPattern.games →
Related patterns
Pay-for-early-access
Selling early access to content, weapons, or updates so patience becomes a purchasable advantage.
Manufactured competition
Leaderboards, resetting ranks, and rivalry framing turn social comparison into a driver of compulsive play and spending.
Social obligation / guilt
The design leverages teammates' dependence to compel continued play or spending.
Pay-to-skip / engineered grind
Progression is deliberately slowed so the game can sell time-savers that remove the friction it introduced.
Creator tipping & crowdfunded content
Routing real money to creators or crowdfunding unreleased content, where prosocial “support” framing lowers price scrutiny.
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.