You're playing a game you love, and it keeps offering you things — a skin, a pack, a "limited time" bundle flashing with a timer counting down. Everyone in the game seems to have the cool stuff. The buy button is right there, bright and easy, with real money behind it. It's only a small amount, the game keeps saying. Just a couple of pounds. Then another couple for the next thing. The game is designed to make spending feel painless, fun, and urgent — like you'll miss out forever if you don't tap now. The countdown is ticking. Your thumb hovers over the button. The thing you genuinely want and the thing the game is engineering you to want have started to feel like exactly the same thing.