[dns_snek]

For some definition of "common", yes. Some try to be less shady by asking for consent (e.g. in exchange for in-game credits), others are essentially malware.

For example: https://bright-sdk.com/

> Bright SDK is approved by Apple, Amazon, LG, Huawei, Samsung app stores, and is whitelisted by top Antivirus companies.

[chatmasta]

FYI this is a rebranding of the notorious “Luminati” service that sold a residential proxy network based on the ”Hola VPN” chrome extension. They’ve upped their game and now pay application developers to embed their botnet in their application.

[naikrovek]

the idea that games should be written solely to extract revenue from players is so repulsive to me that I actively disrespect and disfavor people I know who work on things like this.

humans are a truly horrible species and this kind of thing is a great example of why I believe that.

[internet101010]

That's every billion dollar publisher that releases games with initial purchase + microtransactions beyond cosmetics. So Activision/Blizzard, EA, Take Two, and Ubisoft. Like it's one thing to do free-to-play + pay-to-win but it's quite another to charge $60 and then make the game worse solely to drive people to buy things that will make it suck less. And they all do it.