There’s a sin I keep meeting in founders who were players first: the proud vow that the game is never pay-to-win, only skins, the most player-friendly studio that ever shipped. Staying off the predatory stuff is right. But vanity items top out near half a percent pay rate, each one sold exactly once, and they quietly tax the people who built the game. The unromantic truth is that the players who pay are usually your most engaged — paying cohorts retain better than the average install, not worse. Selling real value to people who want it isn’t the opposite of caring about players. It’s how the team that made the game gets to make another.