Mobile Madness: Evony: The King's Return

One of the pioneers of pay to win gaming is at it again. The Evony brand got its start in the 2010s by advertising its browser based strategy game using a series of increasingly sexual banner ads. While the p2w 'strategy' genre has exploded in popularity over the past decade, its heartening to see the original shameless pioneer is still going strong.

Evony: The King's Return is a mobile game available on the Google Play Store and on PC via Emulator that offers largely the same gameplay experience the original Evony has since 2009. Its a 'strategy' title where players slowly build up their city with resources that are earned over time. Training troops, upgrading buildings, and raiding other cities all take time. Conveniently, players can purchase speed boosts and resources directly from the publisher to avoid the waiting. Game of War and Clash of Clans are the best examples of the genre today, but the core gameplay mechanics have been around for decades.

Realizing that gamers have become desensitized to mobile strategy adverts, Evony has resorted to a novel advertising campaign to catch their attention. It has sprinkled in a few 'puzzles' into the game and uses these brief interruptions from the otherwise generic strategy gameplay as the core of their marketing push.

Needless to say, this bait and switch leads to some disgruntled users:

Evony: The King's Return is free to download, so ultimately the deception doesn't cost much besides some bandwidth and lost time. The few whales the publisher manages to snare with this bizarre tactic must make the ad campaign worth it. Advertising a mobile game is not cheap, with publishers often paying several dollars per download at a minimum. If the madness has your interested, give the game a try yourself via the Bluestacks Android Emulator or click the button below: