From the predatory morass of “buy now, pay later” schemes – which famously and meme-ably made their way to the world of DoorDash food deliveries earlier this year – arises a slimy new option: financing in-game purchases. I’m sure nothing regrettable will come of this, considering how well-regulated and famously immune to exploitation in-game transactions tend to be.
The new system is the result of a partnership between Affirm, a prominent BNPL provider, and Xsolla, a company that makes payment software used by thousands of companies like Epic and Sega, as well as numerous free-to-play and mobile games. In an announcement published late last month, Affirm said that its services are now “automatically available to [Xsolla partners’] players – enabling them to split purchases into interest-free biweekly payments or longer-term monthly installments for carts starting at $50.”
While the companies did not specify which games this has been applied to, it is not hard to imagine a scenario where a player piles up a heap of cosmetics in a free-to-play MMO or a bunch of currency in a battle royale and then pays off the real-world cost in installments.
The two companies went on to bloviate about how they prioritize “empowering” developers and players “by putting transparency and personalization at the center of every transaction.”
This news flew under the radar a little bit, which is why I’m dredging it up now. BNPL advocates, which tend to be the companies benefitting from this new, tech-facilitated form of debt, will tell you that they’re offering a service preferable to traditional credit, as payment plans involve fixed terms, can be interest free, and don’t require high credit scores.
But anybody with a functioning brain will counter that you cannot separate these things from one another as though you’re an old-timey prospector panning for gold. America is a nation built on debt, with a 2024 New York Fed report finding that American household debt sat at $17.8 trillion. Companies large and small worm their way into the cracks of this busted foundation and, of course, extract profit.
According to The Guardian, research has shown that some BNPL users exhibited symptoms of greater financial distress.
“What you need to think about is the rest of the consumer’s portfolio. If they’re making BNPL payments … maybe they’re not paying off their credit card, maybe they’re not paying their cellphone bill, and that’s actually more concerning,” said Ed deHaan, a researcher who published a paper on the matter in 2023. “They’re essentially substituting one payment for another.”
Additionally, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – which was trying to subject games with robust in-game currency marketplaces to cursory regulation before the Trump administration gutted it earlier this year – published a report in January showing that more than 60 percent of BNPL users had simultaneous loans and held higher balances on other credit lines, and that most BNPL loans went to consumers with subprime or lower credit scores.
If you want more granular examples, social media is rife with them.
In other words, these systems disproportionately target people who are either on a slippery slope or have already hit rock bottom. They are parasitic, yet another byproduct of rising costs, economic instability, and wealth disparity. In a functioning society, there would be no need for such a thing, which is why the ludicrous notion of financing burritos became such a pervasive meme. But here we are.
Unfortunately, I doubt an increasingly desperate video game industry will have any qualms with leaning on Affirm. Young people are spending less on games this year compared to last, but US spending on video game subscriptions, specifically, reached an all-time high in May 2025.
"Looks to me that the pressures of higher prices in everyday spending categories like food and general economic uncertainty has folks looking for value," Circana video game industry analyst Mat Piscatella said on Bluesky.
