The mobile game market is saturated with tons of poorly designed, money-grubbing games. That’s nothing new. What’s new is how aggressive these terrible games have become with their advertising.

Fake Mobile Game Ads Are Everywhere

It feels like every other ad I see is for some mediocre mobile game that I know will be a disappointment before I even play it. But they come up so often that I couldn’t help but get curious. Against my better judgment, I decided to check some of them out.

I’ve lost count of how many fake mobile game ads I’ve been forced to endure. They’re annoyingly persistent, appearing everywhere from YouTube to Reddit, and even inside other mobile games.

The ads themselves are often sloppy and downright absurd. Many feature AI-generated voice-overs, blatantly sexist themes, or gameplay footage that’s obviously fake. Then, they’ll slap on a celebrity endorsement in a belated attempt to make the game seem more legitimate. Looking at you, Anthony Starr.

And yet, despite how terrible these ads are, they seem to be working. The games they promote have millions of downloads on Apple and Google’s stores. My explanation for this confusing turn of events is that, despite being very bad, these ads are very good at weaponizing our egos.

If you notice, in almost all of these ads, the person playing the game is hilariously bad at it. This is no accident. It’s designed to frustrate you and make you think, “I could do so much better!” By the time the ad ends, you’re so annoyed you feel compelled to download the game just to prove your point.

It’s almost unbelievable that frustrating viewers is a core marketing strategy, but it clearly works. You can’t argue with millions of downloads.

The Games in the Ads Don’t Exist

The irony of these fake mobile game ads is that after downloading them, you realize you’re the one who’s been played. The games you see in the ads either don’t exist, or they form such a small part of a larger whole that it might as well be a completely different game.

Why do they do this? Why draw you in with decent-looking gameplay only to let you down with a whole different game? Well, it comes down to one thing: microtransactions. The games they advertise in these ads are good at convincing people to download, but they don’t lend themselves to the kind of long-term engagement that convinces people to crack open their wallets.

So, what the creators of these games do is build mini-games into a much larger game that is easier to monetize. Then they make ads for the mini-game and hope that when you download the game and discover the deception, you’ll like it enough to stay regardless.

Of course, a lot of people will immediately uninstall once they see that the game isn’t what they were led to believe. But some will stay, and an even smaller crowd will pay for items in the game. To the publisher, that makes it all worth it.

I Tried Three of the Worst

Despite knowing that these games would most likely suck, I had to satisfy my curiosity. So, I downloaded the three that I see most often in ads: Evony: The Kings Return, Hero Wars Alliance, and Gossip Harbor. I spent a couple of hours playing them, and it was a… unique experience, to say the least.

Evony: The Kings Return

In the ads, Evony is what I’m choosing to call a “pick-the-right-lane shooter” game. The objective is to advance along the path while grabbing buffs, avoiding debuffs, and defeating your enemies. Even the app icon and screenshots on the Google Play Store double down on this image.

So, imagine my surprise when I downloaded the game only to discover it was actually a base-building game in disguise.

At first, I didn’t realize I’d been duped. The game opened with the shooter game from the ads, so it seemed legit. But as soon as I completed that level, I was thrown into what looked like a base-building game—and not even a good one you’d lose 10 years of your life to.

I tried to ignore all the base-building elements and focus on the shooter game, but that didn’t last long. About ten levels in, I got a notification: “Keep needs to be at level 3 to proceed.” To move forward, I had no choice but to dive into the base-building portion of the game.

From there, the pattern became clear. You need resources to upgrade your buildings before you can play more of the shooter levels. First, resources are plentiful, and the upgrades happen instantly. But as you progress, the upgrades take longer, and resources become scarce. And that’s when the game starts pushing you toward microtransactions—offering gems to speed up upgrades or purchase resources.

Hero Wars Alliance

Hero Wars has to take the crown for running one of the most inane and persistent ad campaigns ever. They’ve churned out not ten, not a hundred, but over 1,000 ads—most of which have bizarre storylines, tease gameplay that doesn’t exist, or even blatant plagiarism of other popular game titles.

If you’re feeling brave (or masochistic), there’s a YouTube channel called HeroWars Ads Collector where you can watch every single ad Hero Wars has ever made. But fair warning, you might lose a few brain cells doing so.

After downloading the game and agreeing to a very sketchy privacy policy, I started playing, and surprise, surprise—it was nothing like I was promised.

I wasn’t expecting a game that required a lot of skill, but the reality was somehow worse. It turns out you don’t actually need to do anything in Hero Wars. For the most part, the game plays itself. Your job is just to click dialogue boxes.

Occasionally, you do get to play the tower puzzles that are featured in some of the ads, but they’re laughably simple, and as long as you know basic math, you’ll breeze through them without breaking a sweat.

Of course, the game is also aggressively pay-to-win. Early on, progress is steady, but as you get further in, everything slows to a crawl unless you’re willing to open your wallet.

Gossip Harbor

The ads for Gossip Harbor are downright grim. Every single one seems to feature a freezing woman and child who’ve just been kicked out of their home, and sometimes, a baby in a trash can. For once, I was glad that the ads were misleading and the storyline was different.

Compared to the other two games I played, Gossip Harbor wasn’t half bad. It had a certain charm, and there was something oddly satisfying about merging items to create new ones.

Unfortunately, after just a few minutes of playing, the cracks started to show. I realized playing the game cost “energy” and that my supply was severely limited. Worse still, it refilled at an agonizingly slow pace, meaning I only got a few minutes of play before being forced to wait for it to recharge.

And of course, then came the inevitable cash grab. If I didn’t want to wait, I could use gems to speed things up. But once you’ve burned through the few free gems you started with, the only reliable way to get more is—you guessed it—by spending real money.

Good Mobile Games Exist

Needless to say, I will not be keeping any of these games on my phone, and you shouldn’t waste your time with any of them either. Not when there are genuinely good games on the Play Store and App Store. They might be a bit more expensive upfront, but at least you’ll have the assurance of getting exactly what you paid for.

You don’t even have to stick with native smartphone games. You can download emulators and play retro console games on your phone. If you use an iPhone, there’s also Apple Arcade, which gives you tons of great games without any of those pesky microtransactions.

Despite the mountains of trash polluting its waters, there are still plenty of good mobile games out there, but you won’t find any of them in random ads on YouTube. You need to look a little deeper to find games that are actually worth your time and effort.