So how does Farmville and Mafia Wars make money?
November 1st, 2009 by COD
If you are on Facebook you undoubtedly know those two games. If you aren’t obsessed with at least one of them, you know somebody who is. (For the record, I got bored with Mafia Wars in a couple of weeks and soon thereafter blocked the application. I blocked Farmville without ever playing it, and I’ve blocked most of the rest too.)
The short answer is advertising. Many of those “take this quiz and we’ll give you Mafia hit points” are really a scam to trick you into subscribing to various $10 services that spam your phone. There is a legitimate business model in offering the base game for free and selling the ability to build your character quickly, however at present those offers are crowded out by the more spammy stuff.
So be careful if you are playing any of those Facebook games.
One Response to “So how does Farmville and Mafia Wars make money?”
I tried Knighthood and thought it was pretty stupid, so I blocked all the other games. I know some people who are just obsessed with Farmtown or Farmville, whatever it is, some of the same people that were in a Neopets group my daughter and I belonged to.(We quit Neopets about 3 years ago).