A lot of people here seem to be missing the main point of this post. It's not about crowdfunding or advertising, it's about using hugely manipulative tactics within the games to get people to basically throw money at them.
The reason they're called microtransactions is because they're small, usually priced at a point that's negligible. Using these tactics, they entice people to buy over and over again, each time the spend is a negligible amount but over time it adds up to hundreds or thousands.
That point is really undermined by putting so much attention on Star Citizen, which raises all its money outside the game and raised a crapton of money before there was any game - trying to link crowdfunding to micropayments confuses the issue. Crowdfunded games don't exist yet and thus can't raise money soley through the sort of psychological manipulation he decries. The whole piece is either scattered and incoherent or fundentally dishonest. Or both.
[The Price Is Right video slot machine] is what slot pros call "a cherry dribbler," a machine that dispenses lots of small payouts while it nibbles at your stash rather than biting off large chunks of it.
The problem is that there is nothing that can be done due to the fact that its all opt-in and is based on ( as the article points out ) psychology. Free to play has gamed the inherit structure of the world wide web.
Gambling isn't the same because the money users spend isn't used as a bet for a real-world money return. That is why when this stuff goes to court it gets thrown out.F2P relies on pure psychology and large sums of marketing dollars.
what about the gambling apps that, from top to bottom are exactly a slot machine with the only difference being that you can't get money out, only facebook trophies?
As I said, the reason these things get thrown out of court is because it isn't gambling since no money is expected by the user. If you're asking me a legal opinion I'm not a lawyer. I'm just telling you what I've read. I'm not advocating free to play.
The reason they're called microtransactions is because they're small, usually priced at a point that's negligible. Using these tactics, they entice people to buy over and over again, each time the spend is a negligible amount but over time it adds up to hundreds or thousands.