With a few exceptions, playing a computer game requires at least some degree of skill. The skill required might be very low, but to be actually a *game* and not an interactive story there has to be some sort of decision-making or timing of button-presses involved that makes some sort of difference to the outcome. Whether a game is difficult or easy depends on the details: How precisely do you need to aim to hit your target? How much time do you have to hit the right button? How many moves do you have to solve that puzzle?

And because that difficulty is variable, it is very common to find games that start out easy and get more and more difficult by varying those parameters: Your responses need to be more precise, you get less time, you get less moves, there are more obstacles. So far, so good. But it is easy to realize that this difficulty is somewhat arbitrary: The basic process of playing Tetris remains the same regardless of how fast the pieces fall, but the speed of the falling pieces compared to the player's reaction time determines how difficult a particular level is. That is even more evident if you look at role-playing games or games that use the role-playing element of characters having gear and statistics: Whether a fight against a particular monster is easy or difficult depends on your gear and stats, often far more than it depends on your ability to press the right button quick enough.

In an age of Free2Play games, that difficulty can be used by the developers in malicious ways: The game starts out easy enough, but quickly becomes more and more difficult to a point where it becomes nearly impossible. And then you get an offer to pay real money for virtual power, which would make the game easier again. That is pretty much regardless of the type of game: Role-playing games sell you epic gear that makes fights easier, while puzzle games sell you bonus moves and other gadgets that solve the puzzle faster.

Most people only complain if these games are PvP, and paying for power is considered to be Pay2Win. But frankly the problem can be even worse in some PvE games, which after a short time become nearly unplayable if you didn't pay for some added power. Because the pay wall is somewhat flexible and at least to some degree depends on player skill, it is somewhat less evident; and players don't complain because others might respond to their complaint by telling them that they suck at that game. That doesn't mean that this isn't a problem. Because in PvE games the developers have a much higher control about the difficulty, it is easier to constantly make the game more and more difficult until the players either give up or pay up. The in-app purchases of bonuses that are described as optional quickly become mandatory, and in some cases skill plays such a small role in determining outcome that even the most skillful need to pay to play.

I much prefer the greater honesty of having a very visible paywall in a game. Hey, you can play until level X for free, but then you need to pay to unlock the rest of the game. Trying to achieve the same by maliciously increasing the difficulty beyond what is justified by game design is just dirty tricks.