Sky: Children of the Light - A Masterclass in Audience Exploitation and Corporate Greed - 2024/9/30

Sky: Children of the Light (also referred to as Sky, Sky: COTL, and That Sky Game) is a peaceful and cozy MMO RPG game that focuses on promoting and maintaining a positive and safe culture where kindness, self expression, and acceptance of others is encouraged. How ironic it is, then, that the development team, That Game Company (TGC) viciously exploits and manipulates its playerbase solely for its own monetary gain.

Being an indie game company, it comes as no surprise that TGC must make money to be able to cover costs for servers, animators, illustrators, and other such things in order to continue hosting the game. As such, things such as in-app purchases (IAP) are, in my opinion, completely fine, especially because Sky is free to download on every available platform. However, the tactics used to make the money to cover these costs and make a profit are extremely predatory.

For one, the pricing of IAP are absurd. The Days of Fortune Enchanted Umbrella is an item that a player can hold. When a player holds it in the rain, the player is shielded from the rain. A useful function, since rain is damaging to the player, but since IAP would really only be purchased by more expierienced players, for whom the rain is only an inconvenience rather than an actual threat, it's less useful and moreso just attention to detail on the developer's part. This virtual umbrella that can only be seen when you equipt it to your player is $15.00 in USD. For reference, I can find a real, tangible umbrella that has real-life use and function for only $7.00 in USD, meaning the Days of Fortune Enchanted Umbrella is approximately 214% the cost of a real umbrella.

This isn't an isolated instance, though. Various other in-game umbrellas cost anywhere from $15-20 USD. Cape IAPs have historically cost anywhere from $20-30 USD. If you were to buy all IAP that are currently available as of writing, will return in the future, can be purchased from any platform, and give in game items (as opposed to only giving in game currency (IGC)), it would cost $1081.15 USD. This is an absurd amount alone, but many people spend this much in addition to purchasing IGC and season passes with every season.

In addition to these high prices, TGC actively encourages the purchase of all of these items by inducing FOMO, or the fear of missing out, in players. Many, items are available to purchase within a limited window. In the case of IAP items, they are only available during the event or season they're a part of, with season IAPs never returning due to copyright issues. While on paper this isn't an issue, this can create a pressure to buy an IAP item while it's available, because "it won't come back for another year". TGC creates an environment where your options are to fork over absurd amounts of money for an in-game item within the allotted time frame (usually around 2 weeks), or wait one year for it to return.

This issue is made worse by the fact that all of the "cool" items for events are locked behind a paywall. For example, the latest event, Days of Moonlight, had only 2 items available to free to play (F2P) players: a lantern prop and a MINISCULE hairpiece. However, the IAPs for this event included a new hairstyle, a new outfit, and earrings. Since the introduction of furniture items, many items available to F2P players are now furniture. And by furniture, I mean mostly plain rugs that are just recolors of themselves.

Though, if this weren't bad enough TGC also creates FOMO surrounding F2P items as well. They are all only available within an allotted time frame. For events, its usually around 2 weeks, with a wait time of a year if you happen to miss the event. However, there is a mechanic in the game that allows spirits from past seasons to return temporarily and sell their items for a limited amount of time. These travelling spirits are only available to purchase from for 4 days, and if you miss one that you want, you may have to wait over 3 years for them to return.

In addition to this, TGC has also been steadily increasing the pricing of travelling spirit items as well. Pleaful parent, the first travelling spirit to visit that sold a cape, sold theirs for only 36 candles (Sky's IGC) in March of 2020. More recently, all of the travelling spirits in the travelling spirit group in September of 2024 which sold a cape offered one for 80 candles, or 222% of the 2020 price of a cape.

However, these numbers mean little to nothing outside of the daily candle limit, being 15 candles. Although possible to get 21 candles in 1 day, it takes several hours to do so, and when even getting 15 candles takes an hour at best, many opt only to get 15. With this context, buying only ONE of these 80 candle capes would require 6 days of collecting candles. In my experience, it isn't uncommon to count the number of days until you have enough candles for a certain cosmetic.

However, there has been no increase in daily candles, despite the increasing pricing of in game items. I feel this is intentional. The increase in prices is meant to keep players poor and constantly grinding for for the few candles they can get, artificially increasing play time. When a player manages to collect a decent amount of candles, that's around when the next travelling spirit arrives, and if they have an item you want then you're out of luck. Either fork over half of your candles for a single mask or wait God knows how long. It's quite clear that TGC views its players as nothing more than assets, generating it revenue either directly through IAP purchases or indirectly through inflated in-app time.

We are nothing more than wage slaves in a game meant to create an escape from the cruelness of reality.

It is becoming increasingly clear, both to me and other players of the game. More players, both long and short time, are talking about quitting and actually doing so, myself included. There are more gripes I have about how TGC runs their game, such as poor management of bugs, but I couldn't find a way to incorporate it into this essay. I wouldn't be opposed to writing about it in the future, but for now, I just want a break from this terrible game.