(2009-11-06) Techcrunch Social Gaming Scams

Tech Crunch is running a series of posts on the scams run through many Social Gaming networks on MySpace and FaceBook. In short, these games try to get people to pay cash for in-game currency (Virtual Money) so they can level up faster and have a better overall experience. Which is fine. But for users who won't pay cash, a wide variety of "offers" are available where they can get in-game currency in exchange for Lead-Gen-type offers. Most of these offers are bad for consumers because it confusingly gets them to pay far more for in-game currency than if they just paid cash (there are notable exceptions, but the scammy stuff tends to crowd out the legitimate offers). And it's also bad for legitimate advertisers. Zynga and others.

An update. Arrington calls-out FaceBook for failing to enforce their supposed policies. In the comments someone calls out Zynga's investors (including Fred Wilson's Union Square Ventures), and Tom Foremski agreed and then posted about it.

Nov12: Umair Haque draws parallels to Credit Crisis 2008 and predicts a crash in WebAd-s.