Chebucto Regional Softball Club

So your proof someone was tricked/scammed/defrauded is that they spent more money on something than you would? They key point you seem intent on avoiding is that you have not shown a single example of someone *actually* being tricked/scammed/defrauded. Someone buying a thing that is arbitrarily priced well outside of it's practical value or actual cost is not a scam, it's literally the definition of a luxury good. Is every person who buys a diamond getting scammed, in your mind? What about those $1000 shoes people buy as an "investment"? Were they scammed in your imagination?

First, to set the record straight: look up the definition of scam If the definition of scam is defrauding someone, I changed nothing about your word choice.

I'm not fixated on the word choice. You just changed it to trick but haven't in any way proven that game companies are "tricking" or "defrauding" anyone. You're just making an empty claim. Explain how spending money on a character skin is a trick. Or buying DLC isn't getting you what you paid for. As far as I can tell you haven't even established that anything they are doing is even "dishonest" which I think is a much much lower bar. You literally have not a god damned thing to back up your pov.

So you agree it's not fraud?

Let's go with a simple approach: is anyone giving money for something where they don't fully understand what they are getting in return. That is, they don't know they are getting a decoration or unlocking a character or whatever?

It's not exactly a scam, though, is it. Are the game companies committing fraud?

That's what you want to fix? Companies trying new monetization strats?