I recently read an article about a game (i think it was realm of the mad gods), where the developers of the game initially priced some items cheaper, but got more expensive as you purchased more (i recall it was chests that allow you to store extra items). Buying 1 is say, $1, and 2 is $2, but buying 4 is $5 (this is to encourage casuals to buy 1, but extract more out of the hardcore players).
This lead to quite a backlash - so they changed the wording, such that buying the 1st one is still $1, but it was made clear that it was discounted X% from the 'real' price. This simple change, stopped almost all backlash.
Well burying pricing and then doing a "gotcha" is pretty offensive. If that's what happened then the lack of transparency was probably the key point people objected to.
I recently read an article about a game (i think it was realm of the mad gods), where the developers of the game initially priced some items cheaper, but got more expensive as you purchased more (i recall it was chests that allow you to store extra items). Buying 1 is say, $1, and 2 is $2, but buying 4 is $5 (this is to encourage casuals to buy 1, but extract more out of the hardcore players).
This lead to quite a backlash - so they changed the wording, such that buying the 1st one is still $1, but it was made clear that it was discounted X% from the 'real' price. This simple change, stopped almost all backlash.
So it is basically a psycological phenomenon. Its a similar thing to what this TED video had to say about how people estimate and make decisions http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_researches_happiness.ht...