The revolution in free-to-play games has brought with it a collection of high-priced in-game items of questionable value, but Glu Mobile has taken the idea to a new extreme with a
Gun Bros. weapon worth nearly $500.
Touch Arcade notes that the company increased the price of
Gun Bros. top tier Kraken weapon to 3499 of the game's warbucks currency, up from 1400.
At the most generous bulk conversion rate, that much virtual currency would cost a user $487.89 to purchase. Warbucks can also be obtained by watching advertising videos and downloading specific apps, but not easily in such extreme quantities.
The Kraken weapon provides an incredibly powerful spread of homing missiles and periodic laser blasts that easily annihilates most oncoming enemies in the dual-stick shoot-'em-up.
One YouTube user showed that, with the gun "you can just sit here and win, basically," adding that "it's really good but I don't know if it's worth $200 [the old price]."
Large single transactions are a major revenue driver for free-to-play games, with 30 percent of all mobile free-to-play game revenue coming from purchases worth $50 or more, according to
a recent Flurry study.
An
Inside Virtual Goods study from last June found that roughly 5 percent of Facebook game players spend at least $25 per month on at least one free-to-play title, with top spenders dropping tens of thousands of dollars total on the games.
Glu
posted a reduced loss of $3.2 million for the fiscal quarter ending March 31 on decreased revenues of $16.4 million.
