Ever played a freemium game before? You know, they’re those titles on iOS (and I’m sure on Android too) which let you download for free, but then hold off with some of the better features until you’ve given them some cash. Or those titles where you progress to a certain level with the expectation that you’re going to be able to continue, but then you run out of coins or something, and you’re forced to hand over real cash in order to go any further.

In my day, those games were called demos. You got a small chunk for free and then you had to pop off to Game if you wanted to get the full thing. And that was absolutely fine. There’s always room for a demo or two. I also believe there is a place in this world for games which only give you a certain number of features before you hand the developer some money. But what I don’t believe is right is the abundance of games which charge an extraordinary amount of money for so very little.

Take, for example, My Country on iOS. It’s a pretty basic city-building game, which is actually quite fun to play when you have a couple of minutes, though it doesn’t really have much of what you’d call longevity. You place buildings, hire employees and continue on until you’ve filled your screen and earned a shed-load of in-world cash. However, the difficulties start pretty soon after you begin the game. In order to hire certain employees, you must collect certain objects whenever you place, upgrade or collect profit from a building. But some of these objects are so few and far between (and placed randomly) that you’re forced to spend real money in order to purchase more in-game currency, allowing you to skip the process of random item dropping and get on with hiring employees. The same goes for expanding into certain territories; mostly you’re fine with the in-game cash, but often the only way to expand is to spend insane amounts of real money.

And let me tell you how insane these amounts get. In order to purchase various amounts of “CountryBucks” which lets you do various things, you’re looking at:

• £1.49 for 20
• £4.99 for 70
• £13.99 for 200
• £34.99 for 500
• £69.99 for 1,000

I can’t be the only one who finds this all a little bit excessive, can I? I mean, Modern Warfare 3 is currently less than just £30, so how can a game as tedious and disengaging as My Country possibly warrant charging almost £70 for absolutely nothing?

Worst of all though, is that proper, established game studios have started jumping on the bandwagon. Yes EA, I’m looking at you. EA have recently come out with a spate of titles for absolutely nothing, but which then rely on the freemium strategy of raking in the cash. I’m pleased to say that people aren’t willing to take this lying down when it comes to EA. Smaller companies can get away with it as it’s really become an expectation that their games are funding in this manner. But I think EA have gone off on a tangeant that they really should have steered clear of.

Take, for example, Theme Park. Theme Park is an absolute classic game and I was rather pleased to see it in the App Store. I was also pleased to see that they weren’t going to charge anything for the game. Result! But, of course, there’s always more to it than that and I was extremely disappointed to find it was freemium. As were many other people, which has resulted in the game receiving (at present) 1,897 1* reviews. Lack of freedom of play – and the fact that to do anything at all you have to hand cash over for in-game tickets – have meant a backlash against this title in particular, although it’s by no means alone.

There’s also Tetris. Now, how could you take Tetris and screw it up? Tetris is the greatest puzzle game there has ever been, it’s also one of the most addictive and it’s the reason why there is still an original GameBoy sat somewhere in a drawer in my parents’ house. But what did EA do to it? They went and offered a subscription service for £20.99 per annum, which gives you in-games coins to boost your score. Which effectively means, if you have the money, you can cheat the game. Where is the fun in that?

You know what I want? I want to spend £5 on a game like My Country. Or Theme Park. Or Tetris. I want to spend £5 and then play the game whenever I want to, without having to fork out extra for it. A game should be fun. It should be relaxing. It shouldn’t mean the stress of having to work extra hours in order to pay for additional content. Which, let’s face it, means absolutely nothing at the end of the day. It shouldn’t mean giving kids a game and then charging their parents a fortune for extra bits, or making them go out to buy an iTunes voucher with their pocket money. There needs to be an end to this disgraceful act of money-grabbing on the part of all developers, but especially the larger studios. We all know you need to make money, but there are alternative methods. Charging people for the game in the first place is the obvious one, but what about in-game advertising. There are options here which don’t involve ripping people off. Developers, please choose them.