The Prevalence and Co-occurrences of Dark Patterns in Mobile Free-to-Play Games

This study examines how dark patterns, which are design strategies that manipulate or pressure players into decisions against their interests, are distributed and interact within mobile free-to-play games. Existing work on mobile game dark patterns has relied largely on player self-reports and has treated games as wholes rather than analyzing how multiple manipulative elements function together within individual gameplay features. The authors position their work as a more rigorous, design-level mapping that can support future empirical, theoretical, and regulatory efforts.

The analysis is a content analysis of the 50 top-grossing free-to-play mobile games on Google Play in the United States as of June 2025. One author played each game for roughly an hour, and a second author applied a coding method adapted from the App Dark Design framework. Every game in the sample contained dark pattern elements, with four types, Psychological Manipulation, Intermediate Currencies, Pay for Expendable Updates, and Play by Appointment, appearing in more than 80 percent of titles. Psychological Manipulation was the most pervasive, averaging more than six distinct instances per game.

Using Spearman correlations to examine co-occurrence, the study finds that Psychological Manipulation correlates strongly with all six Monetary dark patterns as well as with Play by Appointment, and that the Monetary dark patterns are highly intercorrelated among themselves. These patterns suggest that manipulative design is closely tied to monetization models rather than appearing as isolated features.

The authors interpret these results as evidence of inconsistencies in existing dark pattern taxonomies and of a blurred boundary between manipulation and legitimate persuasion. The prevalence of Intermediate Currencies in casual mobile games is read as a trend toward "financialization," raising questions about whether players' in-game spending reflects rational optimization or engineered manipulation. By mapping dark patterns and their interactions at the design level, the study aims to offer a more precise theoretical framework for identifying them and to inform assessment, regulation, and player education.