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Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery leans heavily on in-app purchases

It's not really a mystery why some players are walking away

By Brad Bennett
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery leans heavily on in-app purchases

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery launched on the App Store and Google Play earlier this week and players are already claiming to be walking away from the title because of its rampant in-app purchases.

An early level that involves users escaping from a Devil’s Snare — the plant used to guard the Philosopher’s Stone in the first Harry Potter novel — is forcing players to either wait up to eight hours, or buy more energy from the in-game store.

This wouldn’t be a big issue, except players don’t have the ability to save their energy at this point in the game and are meant to hit this eight-hour wall as a way to encourage them to shell our real-world cash.

The level apparently occurs less than an hour into the game. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery in-app purchases range from a $1.29 CAD for 25 gems which nets players only 10 bits of energy, to $124.99 for 3,125 gems translates into around 1,800 energy tokens.

The game can be downloaded for free on iOS here and Android here.

Via: Polygon

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