More business models that exploit the insecurities of their customers just give me warm, fuzzy feelings inside.

meh, penny arcade decievied me . It's not at all like the iron realms business model, it's just an "optional" monthly subscription program, where you can still play if you don't pay for a month, you just can't advance your charachter or get more loot. (but you can still pvp)

Similar to most "free" games, getting the most out of them requires a conversion of your real money into their internal tokenized currency: a form of reverse alchemy. You can't subscribe with real money, only their faery coins, but this is where things start to get nuts. At a base level, one of their coins is worth a penny - but Acclaim Members get a discount on the purchase of coins, and there are three distinct thresholds of membership, some of which grant coins inherently. You can also get "free" coins by exposing yourself to marketing materials, taking surveys, or purchasing a satellite dish(?). The end result was to confuse the true value of this currency to such an extent that we could no longer discern it, which is (I suppose) the point.