5 ‘Free’ iPhone Games That Will Quietly Drain Your Wallet

Free-to-play games are a dime a dozen these days, especially in the App Store. It’s not hard to find a game that seems free at first, only to later find that you’ll have to spend some money if you really want to play it properly.

Of course, F2P games aren’t automatically bad. There are plenty of excellent games that let you enjoy most of their content without spending a dime, with purchases mostly confined to cosmetic items or other extras that don’t have much effect on how well you perform.

However, it feels like that’s the exception and not the norm. Things become more frustrating when money starts influencing progression or competitive power. A game may technically let you unlock everything for free, but that distinction doesn’t mean much if doing so takes months while someone willing to spend hundreds of dollars can reach the same point almost immediately.

This means there are some free-to-play games that you should stay away from — unless you actually are willing to start emptying your wallet, that is. While many of them are genuinely entertaining, the problem isn’t necessarily the gameplay itself; many of the games on this list have attracted criticism for being too aggressive when it comes to monetization. Read on for 5 games where you should really know what you’re getting into before investing hundreds of hours in them.