Dark Patterns in Mobile Games: How Diablo Immortal and CoD Mobile Nudge Players to Spend

Hook: Why designers should stop treating players like wallets

If you ship mobile features that hook players into long sessions and nudge them to click "buy" — then regulators and players will soon demand proof you did it ethically. Over the past 18 months the industry has moved from a debate about whether some mechanics are manipulative to concrete investigations and rule-making. The result? Designers must now understand the exact UI/UX mechanics that convert attention into unplanned spending — and change how they build retention and monetization so they respect user autonomy and protect children.

Why this matters in 2026

In January 2026 Italy's competition authority, the AutoritE0 Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM), opened probes into Activision Blizzard titles calling out “misleading and aggressive” sales practices tied to game interfaces and monetization flows. Regulators specifically raised concerns that design elements encourage long play sessions and impulsive purchases, especially among minors.

“These practices ... may influence players as consumers — including minors — leading them to spend significant amounts, sometimes exceeding what is necessary to progress in the game and without being fully aware of the expenditure involved.” — AGCM, Jan 2026

That investigation is the most visible example of a larger 2025–2026 trend: regulators across markets are scrutinizing microtransactions, loot boxes, and the UI techniques that make purchases feel frictionless or inevitable. For designers and product leads, this means two things: the old default of dark patterns as “growth hacks” is a liability, and being proactive about ethical design is fast becoming a competitive advantage.

What regulators and researchers identified — specific dark patterns to watch

Below are the concrete patterns that frequently appear in the AGCM briefing and similar regulatory guidance. If you design mobile games, audit your UI against these.

• Urgency timers and countdowns — Limited-time offers that use ticking clocks to create artificial scarcity and time pressure. (See retail & sale examples in clearance & smart-bundle guides.)
• Faux exclusivity / FOMO nudges — Messaging that suggests rewards will never return (“only available now!”) when the design actually allows repeated access.
• Obfuscated currency and pricing — Virtual currencies sold in bundles without clear equivalence to real-world money, or with small print hiding the effective cost per item.
• Loot boxes and variable rewards — Randomized reward mechanics with variable odds and near-miss feedback that increase compulsion to keep buying.
• Loss aversion prompts — “Claim now or lose” patterns that weaponize a daily reward model to push purchases.
• Default choices and pre-selected options — Offering payment-enabled checkboxes or bundling extras by default during checkout.
• Bright, child-appealing visual affordances — UI, audio, and animation choices that lower resistance for minors (large buy buttons, celebratory sounds after optional purchases). Consider documenting safety requirements in policy and legal workflows (docs-as-code for legal teams).
• Persistent micro‑purchase prompts — Repeating modal popups after losses or near-wins, or immediately after a player spends time on a progression gate.
• Progress gating tied to currency — Slow grind deliberately designed so that buying currency significantly reduces friction to progress.
• Social pressure mechanics — Shaming or showing friends’ purchases to nudge spending via social comparison.

Designer analysis: Why these patterns work — and why they’re dangerous

From a behavioral standpoint, these mechanics work because they tap into predictable cognitive biases and neurochemical responses: variable rewards (operant conditioning), time pressure (scarcity heuristic), loss aversion, and social comparison. As a designer, you can exploit these signals to increase retention and ARPU (average revenue per user). The danger is twofold:

1. Ethical impact — When mechanics bypass informed consent or target children, they take advantage of immature impulse control and can cause financial harm.
2. Regulatory & reputational risk — Investigations, fines, and consumer backlash can destroy the long-term brand value gained by short-term monetization wins.

In short: mechanics that maximize short-term revenue by designating attention as an asset often do so by diminishing user agency. The measurable consequences (regulatory scrutiny, churn, negative reviews, store penalties) are becoming common in 2026.

Concrete UI examples from high-profile titles

While the AGCM named Diablo Immortal and Call of Duty Mobile in its January 2026 notice, what matters to designers is the class of UI/UX elements those games use. Typical examples observed across popular mobile titles include:

• Sale banners with an explicit countdown; when the timer ends the “sale” returns later with a slightly different label, creating a repeated sense of scarcity.
• Currency packs with confusing tiers (e.g., 500 gems, 1050 gems) where the real-money-per-gem cost is not shown on the main purchase tile.
• Loot boxes that show “almost got it!” animations and highlight near-miss results to increase chasing behavior.
• Post-match modals that show a premium offer with a glowing “Buy” CTA and a small, tertiary “No thanks” text link.

These patterns are not inherently illegal, but when combined and aimed at minors or when they obscure costs, they meet the threshold for regulatory attention in many jurisdictions.

Ethical alternatives — design patterns that respect players and still monetize

Good news: you can design for sustainable revenue and player wellbeing at the same time. Below are practical, implementable UI/UX swaps that preserve business goals while avoiding dark patterns.

1. Transparent pricing and currency disclosure

• Always show real-money equivalents next to virtual currency bundles on the same screen (e.g., “1000 gems — $9.99 — $0.0099/gem”).
• Display true odds for randomized rewards and make the probability link prominent in the purchase flow.

2. Replace artificial urgency with genuine, value-driven scarcity

• If an offer is limited, explain why (e.g., seasonal item, collaboration end date). Avoid perpetual “limited” cycles.
• Use calendar-based events rather than continuous countdowns that reset — this reduces the impression of engineered scarcity. See retail clearance approaches for healthier scarcity models (clearance + AI).

3. Remove manipulative micro‑interactions

• Avoid celebratory sounds, confetti, or success animations tied to optional purchases that reward spending behavior.
• Make “No thanks” or “Maybe later” actions visually equal to purchase CTAs to preserve choice salience.

4. Improve consent and friction for minors

• Default to an age-gated purchase flow for under-16s (or your local regulatory age). Require explicit parental confirmation and PIN entry. Document the flow and legal requirements as part of your teamAD7s policy docs (docs-as-code for legal teams).
• Expose spending limits and allow parents to set caps from the first-run onboarding flow.

5. Offer clear, non-random alternatives

• Instead of loot boxes, offer direct purchase of cosmetic items or a transparent “pity” system where repeated attempts guarantee a drop after X tries.
• Design battle passes and subscriptions with clear roadmaps of rewards, with no hidden paywalls for core progression.

6. Make refunds and receipts frictionless

• Provide an in-app ledger showing purchases and currency balances in both virtual and real-money units.
• Offer cooling-off periods and easy refunds for accidental purchases, with clear instructions available in parental sections.

Practical checklist for auditing your product (for designers and PMs)

Use this checklist during design reviews, QA, and compliance sign-offs.

1. Do all purchase tiles show a real-money equivalent? (Yes / No)
2. Are randomized reward odds visible and accessible in the UI? (Yes / No)
3. Are countdowns and scarcity labels truthful and time‑boxed? (Yes / No)
4. Do purchase CTAs have visual parity with decline actions? (Yes / No)
5. Is there an age-gated default for underage users? (Yes / No)
6. Do parents have easy access to spending limits and purchase history? (Yes / No)
7. Are there analytics hooks to detect post-prompt spend spikes for potential A/B harm testing? (Yes / No)

Telemetry and A/B testing with ethical guardrails

Data-driven design is crucial — but your instrumentation must include harm signals. Track these metrics alongside ARPU and retention: see observability playbooks for instrumentation and runtime validation (observability for workflow microservices).

• Purchase conversion rate following a targeted UI prompt, segmented by age
• Time-to-first-purchase after a retention-triggered nudge
• Spending velocity by cohort (to identify rapid, potentially impulsive purchases)
• Refund rate and chargeback incidents
• Child/underage account purchase frequency

Set hard stops in experiments: never run a monetization variant that increases impulse buys among identified minors; require an ethical review board for split tests that alter friction or urgency mechanics.

Design governance: how studios can operationalize ethical monetization

Large teams need process to stay out of trouble. Consider:

• Design review board: cross-functional sign-off (design, legal, product, child-safety expert) for any purchase flow change. Use documented workflows and code-adjacent policy tools like docs-as-code to keep governance auditable.
• Policy codex: a public-facing monetization policy that commits to transparency and parental protections. Pair policy with publishing workflows and templates (modular publishing workflows).
• Regular audits: internal UX audits against the checklist above, plus third-party reviews focused on child safety and monitoring (perceptual AI & player monitoring).
• Incident response: a plan to quickly remove or revert mechanics flagged by regulators or community feedback.

Examples of industry shifts: what we saw in late 2025 and early 2026

By the end of 2025 a number of publishers started rolling back particularly aggressive mechanics after community and regulator pressure. Key moves included clearer odds disclosure, more explicit adult consent flows, and temporary removal of certain randomized packs in regions tightening loot-box rules. In early 2026, with the AGCM investigations public, several publishers publicly committed to expanded parental controls and voluntary “ethical monetization” pledges.

These shifts show a market trend: compliance will no longer be just legal; it will be a product differentiator. Players and app stores reward transparency — and penalize misleading interfaces.

How to make ethical design a competitive asset

Designers can reframe ethical monetization as user experience that builds trust and lifetime value. Practical steps:

• Market your transparency: show odds, show prices, promote parental controls — use this in store pages and marketing. Use modular publishing templates to streamline messages (modular publishing workflows).
• Measure LTV not just 30-day ARPU. Ethical design reduces churn and litigation risk, improving long-term metrics — pair product metrics with cost and revenue playbooks (e.g., cloud cost optimization and long-term unit economics).
• Engage communities: invite player feedback on monetization and publish changes you make as a result.

Advanced design patterns to explore in 2026

As the market evolves, early movers will experiment with models that keep games profitable without dark patterns.

• Transparent subscriptions: subscriptions with clear benefit calendars and opt-in only renewals (no sneaky auto‑upgrades).
• Fair-luck guarantees: guarantee a valuable drop after a fixed number of attempts instead of purely randomized systems.
• Time-rich monetization: sell time-saver options plainly as convenience, with alternatives that let players earn the same content via longer play.
• Community-funded content: marketplace models where creators sell cosmetics directly with clear terms and revenue shares — see creator and clip repurposing playbooks for alternative monetization flows (hybrid clip & creator architectures).

Quick reference: UX anti-dark pattern rules (printable)

1. Make cost understandable in one glance.
2. Never hide odds for randomized purchases.
3. Equalize decline and accept CTAs visually.
4. Do not default to parental-unsafe settings; force explicit consent for purchases by minors.
5. Log and surface all purchases in real-money terms immediately.

Final thoughts — designers’ responsibilities in 2026

Regulators like the AGCM are making it clear: how you design purchase flows is not only a growth lever — it is a compliance and ethical issue. In 2026, the strongest studios will be those that marry smart monetization with clear UI affordances, explicit consent, and guardrails for vulnerable players. Shifting away from manipulative patterns won’t just reduce legal risk; it will build a healthier player community and more durable revenue.

Actionable next steps

Start a product initiative this quarter with these three deliverables:

1. Run a monetization UX audit against the checklist above and publish a one-page remediation plan.
2. Implement mandatory age gating + parental purchase PIN for underage accounts before your next release. (Document and version control the flow in your legal and design playbooks.)
3. Set telemetry flags for any monetization variant that increases purchase velocity among young cohorts and enforce an ethical review before rollout. Use observability tooling to surface experiment harm signals (observability playbook).

Call to action

If you’re a designer, PM, or studio lead: audit your live flows this week. Share your findings with your team, and if you want a ready-to-run checklist and sample UI copy that replaces dark patterns with ethical alternatives, sign up for our designer toolkit at boardgames.news/design-ethics (free for the next 30 days). Join the conversation — the community of designers committed to ethical monetization is growing, and your next product decision can set the standard.

Related Reading

• Advanced Strategy: Observability for Workflow Microservices — From Sequence Diagrams to Runtime Validation (2026 Playbook)
• Docs-as-Code for Legal Teams: An Advanced Playbook for 2026 Workflows
• Beyond the Box Score: Perceptual AI & RAG for Player Monitoring — EuroLeague Playbook 2026
• Future-Proofing Publishing Workflows: Modular Delivery & Templates-as-Code (2026 Blueprint)