Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-78.144.136.125-20160416204649/@comment-26715739-20160422080123

Kula kawika wrote: Yeah, I get the marketing aspects of this. However, since being competitive in this game requires you spend quite a lot of gold, I can see how people would tire of being second-class players and leave -- if I'm getting 5 GC per day and you're able to get 200 GC, there's simply no way, short of spending a lot of actual cash, that I can compete with you. Kills me in time trials, gauntlets and other events (don't get me started about realtime racing). You may be right that it's nothing sinister, but I certainly would call it inept. Inept? Not remotely - and it all follows the freemium model where 1 person * $100 is better than 19 people at $5.

If you're in a low/no ad market then the odds are that you are simply not worth as much as a player to FM as someone in a high ad market.

What they've found recently (and it amazes me that it has taken them this long to think of this approach) is that they can get lots more people watching lots more ads if they put it on things like upgrade times, ticket replenishment etc (so long as it doesn't look like that's taking away from free gold).

If they make an extra $100 from getting people in "high value" countries watching ads, they're not too fussed if it means they lose $50 from gold buying players in lower value countries. They're still making more money.