Video gaming has become a massive industry, and as such, it has had to indulge in some standard business practices. Namely, they try to completely rip off their key demographic, which happens to be kids. Now sure, more and more we see video games aimed at a more adult audience, but adults are (marginally) harder to trick, and as such, the younger audience is a much easier target.

As adults, who have had to experience things like taxes and paying for our own haircuts, we know that the only thing you can depend on is another human being trying to tarnish a good thing. If there is a dime to be made by pushing someone in a mud puddle, you can bet that there is someone selling artisanal mud. So, of course, there is a whole slew of examples where companies and programmers threw their principles out the window and attempted to take digital candy from babies. Prepare yourself as we go through some of the best examples of video games doing their best to turn players off of video games forever. May this simple list serve as a prime example of what not to do when you are developing a video game.

28 Pokémon Red And Blue Are The Same Game

via: redbull.com

Feel free to bite my head off in the comments section explaining in extensive detail how wrong I am, but honestly, these two games were nearly identical. The story was literally the same in both games, and the only differences were the Pokémon available.

They could have released a single game that had all the Pokémon in it, but instead, they made a handful of those cute monsters exclusive to one game or the other, forcing its audience to buy two different games at full price just to catch ‘em all.

27 Overwatch Loot Crates Are A Gamble

via: thejimquisition.com

The rules of capitalism should be that you pay for goods and services and you get exactly what you pay for. This is almost never the case, because people are greedy creatures. This is also true in Overwatch, which has microtransactions that let you purchase loot crates, hoping for some sweet skins.

I say hoping because you can’t just simply buy the cosmetics you want, you pay for the opportunity to gamble. You could spend countless dollars only to have a pile of skins you find repugnant.

26 Disney Infinity Has Ads In It (Yes, Seriously)

via: polygon.com

Disney Infinity was an insane cash grab. You had to buy figures in order to play as them within the game's universe, which is fun and brilliant, but also super expensive. So, you’d think that after shelling out money for both the Infinity base and all the characters you want, kids could jump right into the adventure.

Of course, Disney being what they are, couldn’t pass up the opportunity to fill their the game with advertisements for their products. So basically, you paid money to hear a sales pitch.

25 FIFA 12 And 13 Are Literally The Same Game

via: pcgamer.com

There’s a common joke in video game circles that all the FIFA games are the same, but honestly, how different can a soccer game be? All you need to do is improve the mechanics and graphics between each title, and that’s a fair improvement in my book.

So, if you skip that step, it’s pretty lame. The only difference between FIFA 12 and 13 is the uniforms and the soundtrack, which is literally the bare minimum you need to do. It’s a barely new skin on an old game, for an increased price.

24 The Uncharted Franchise Is Full Of Ads

via: esperino.com

Ad revenue can be a major factor in creating big projects, but at some point, it just becomes offensive. Like when Uncharted 3 was rife with multiplayer costumes that were plastered with the Subway logo. Heck, buying a sandwich and soda in the real world helped you unlock rare customizable loot in the game.

My favorite unsubtle ad was in the fourth installment, when you NEED to use your Sony phone to solve various puzzles. Just in case it wasn’t clear that this was a Sony PlayStation exclusive title.

23 Everything About Sonic '06

via: youtube.com

Probably one of the most maligned entries in the series, Sonic The Hedgehog, commonly called Sonic 2006, is a nigh unplayable mess. It isn’t fun, the animation is poor, the acting is stilted, and it controls like a toddler moving a fridge up a flight of stairs.

This is in direct contrast to everything fans were shown at multiple demos. The development team had been reduced multiple times during production, and the game was basically unfinished. Despite all this, Sonic fans shelled out a lot of money for this game.

22 Amiibos Make Super Mario Odyssey Easier

via: gamespot.com

Amiibos are another beautiful example of corporate greed. You buy unmoving toys so that they can be put into games, and for Odyssey, using these things actually make the game incredibly easy.

Tapping literally any Amiibo will give Mario an extra heart. Also, tap a Mario Odyssey Amiibo and you can get boons ranging from revealing moon locations all the way over to invincibility. Nintendo didn’t even try to hide the “pay-to-win” aspect of this game.

21 Arkham Knight Doesn't Work On PC (Literally)

via: gamesplanet.com

The Arkham series of games are some of the best I’ve ever played, so my heart broke when I heard that the game was pretty much a no-go for the PC crowd. They were truly missing out on a great game. Why weren’t they made aware that the game didn’t play on PC?

Turns out, the publisher knew it wouldn’t play, but did their best to cover it up. They actually sped up footage of the game on PC to make it look like it ran faster than it actually did.

20 Tetris Lets You Spend Money To Save Money?

via: youtube.com

EA has a reputation for being more concerned about their bottom line than a quality product, so people were relieved to hear they had a new Tetris app. How badly can you mess up Tetris, right?

Badly. The game is rife with ads that constantly interrupt gameplay, and there are more microtransactions than you can shake a stick at. Don’t worry, if you find these transactions too expensive, you can buy a subscription that makes these purchases cheaper. What a bargain.

19 The Simpsons: Tapped Out Only Gives You The Worst Buildings

via: imgur.com

The Simpsons has been on for longer than I’ve been alive, so they’ve had more than a few memorable episodes, characters, and locations. Capitalizing on that is their mobile game Tapped Out, which lets you build your own version of Springfield.

The problem is, the buildings they let you set about town are some of the more boring ones (probably Flanders’ house). If you want something iconic, like Moe’s or the Power Plant, you’ll need to spend “doughnuts.” Doughnuts will cost you real money, by the way. D’oh!

18 Hogwarts Mystery Wants You To Pay To Not Be Eliminated

via: gamereactor.eu

Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery is a game that launched on mobile devices a few months ago and quickly became notorious for microtransactions aimed at its audiences. The most famous is when your characters begin to get attacked by a magical weed called Devil’s Snare.

You need energy to break free of the tentacle, but even if you enter the encounter with full energy, you will quickly run out. You can either watch your avatar get throttled while you wait for your energy to refill, or you can pay some muggle money to buy more energy.

17 Xbox 360 Originally Sold Without A Hard Drive

via: vice.com

Nobody would blame you if you assumed that when you bought a new console, it would come with the capability to download games. After all, that’s one of the very few things you expect it to do; however, early 360s did not come with that option.

Instead, you were encouraged to buy memory cards, which turned out to be outrageously expensive. Some people thought they could get by without either, but soon found out that open-world games were basically rendered unplayable.

16 Pokémon GO Items Are Too Expensive

via: theverge.com

Remember the craze that took the world by storm, then promptly vanished? I think it is safe to say that a lot of the reason for the drop in popularity is due to how unfairly the system of Pokémon GO was structured.

Pokéballs were extremely expensive, which isn’t a problem for adults, but it's a huge burden on kids. Not to mention, people in more rural areas have way less access to shops and gyms, making the game a huge drain on their wallet if they wanted to continue playing.

15 Peter Molyneux Absconds With Everyone's Money

via: polygon.com

I have a word limit on these articles, so I can’t actually list all the times Peter Molyneux has lied about a video game. In fact, it would be a shorter list to give examples of times he was 100% truthful about one of his projects.

The worst example is when he went to Kickstarter to fund an upcoming game called Godus. Once he raised the money, he released an alpha and beta version and then kind of disappeared. The game remains unfinished to this day, and the Kickstarter and early access money disappeared into Molyneux’s pockets.

14 Dolphin Discovery Is A Completely Different Game

via: amazon.com

For whatever reason, a girl named Jess wanted to play a DS game called Discovery Kids: Dolphin Discovery. She bought the game, which was advertised as being about training a dolphin for an amusement park, and found out that the game was actually set on a desert island.

Turns out, inside the box of her game was a completely different dolphin game. When she reached out to the publisher, hoping to receive the game she wanted, she got stonewalled. It’s all actually pretty weird, so here’s the full story.

13 Solitaire Costs Money Now (For Some Reason)

via: areaware.com

Solitaire is the lonesome, weird, boring card game that comes free on your computer. That is a universal fact, like disliking socks. So, imagine if a company had the gall to want to get you to pay for Solitaire. Well, not exactly pay, but “upgrade to premium,” which actually might be worse.

What really grinds my gears about this is the fact that premium mode removes ads. You’ll note that those ads are actually added in, since every computer before this had an ad free solitaire. So, you are paying a monthly fee to remove something that wasn’t originally there.

12 All The Bravest May Never Give You The Bravest

via: youtube.com

There have been more Final Fantasy games than should be humanly possible (I refuse to count them, they are absurdly named). After over 30 years of these games, the series has amassed a fairly large roster of memorable characters, many of which you could play as in the mobile game Final Fantasy: All The Bravest.

Well, you could play as them if you wanted to fork over some cash. To play as a favorite character, you had to pay $1 real money, and even then, that dollar only gives you the opportunity to randomly get a favorite character, so hypothetically, you could fork over $85 and never unlock your personal favorite.

11 Angry Birds Is A Rip Off

via: thearthunters.com

Let me start out by saying that I actually really enjoyed playing Angry Birds. It was fun, colorful, and the mechanics worked flawlessly. If you could avoid the countless microtransactions that are constantly thrown at you, it’s pretty cheap, too.

Not as cheap as the game it rips off, though. The free web browser game Crush The Castle is almost exactly like this. The reason it wasn’t as popular is that it didn’t have the polished, brightly-colored animal mascots that Angry Birds has.

10 Big Surprise, Stacker Is Rigged

via: reddit.com

If you’ve ever been to an arcade or movie theater, you’ve seen Stacker. It lured you in with the ability to win some pretty hefty prizes, like cameras, shoes, or even laptops. For three dollars, who wouldn’t try their luck?

When the establishment sets up the cabinet, though, they get to manually set the win ratio. The company recommends a ratio of 1 win in every 400 plays, but a really greedy store owner can scale that number to as high or low as they see fit.

9 No T-Rex In Jurassic Park Builder

via: jurassicparkbuilder.wikia.com

What do you think of when I say Jurassic Park? You either think of Chris Pratt’s beautiful face, or a T-Rex. So, it would be perfectly understandable if you thought a Jurassic Park game featured a Tyrannosaurus Rex. You’d be technically correct, as Jurassic Park Builder does let you have one, but…

The T-Rex costs a whopping $30. Yes, players don’t get access to the most iconic dinosaur of the series unless they want to shell out some actual cold, hard cash. That’s more money than you would’ve payed for a movie ticket.