Cheating in Candy Crush Saga

Abstract

The rise of social casual mobile games has been in tandem with the rise of the 'freemium' business model, where games are free-to-play but feature premium content or advantages at a small cost. Candy Crush Saga is one of the most successful freemium games of all time, with an estimated annual revenue over $US1.8 billion dollars. However, many players (some estimate over 50%) are vehemently opposed to making any in-game purchases. In this chapter we report our research that found many players consider these legal purchases as forms of cheating, and unpack the consequences of these sentiments for game design.