Freecash, an app that pays small sums for playing games, briefly hit the App Store's top five, but users say the pay is thin and spending traps are easy to fall into.
Apps that pay you to play mobile games are getting hard to miss. Freecash briefly reached the App Store's top five in September, according to a New York Magazine report. One user says he has cleared $8,000 in total payouts. But advice communities for these apps suggest far more people wash out than stick with them.
These are called get-paid-to, or GPT, apps. Ads on TikTok promise cash for playing games or even for scrolling. In Freecash, a user picks a game from a list of offers, hits goals inside it, then redeems those goals for a few real dollars. Other apps named in the story include KashKick, Swagbucks, Mistplay and Scrambly.
Jeremiah, 44, worked in farming in eastern North Carolina for years and is now on disability. He plays several strategy games at once, including Rise of Kingdoms, Age of Dragons and Legend of Mushroom. He runs multiple profiles on a folding Samsung phone and sets timers so he does not miss upgrades. Other players can raid his in-game resources, which can cut into his real earnings. He calls the games "work."
For game companies, these apps are a way to buy downloads and to filter customers. Small payouts help them find who might spend far more. The industry calls those big spenders whales, a term borrowed from casinos. Earning money in these games is hard. Spending it is easy. Buying in-game resources can speed up progress, but progress is often hard to track.
The apps have existed for more than a decade. They are now showing up in the charts at a time of economic worry. The story does not say how many users actually earn money or how many quit. Jeremiah's results come from heavy daily effort, and he says he sometimes needs days off.
Before trying a pay-to-play app, remember that in-game spending and gambling offers can cost you more than the small payouts you earn.
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