Yeah if you play ssf you sidestep these problems entirely and then the only problem you might have is simply just inventory management (which also only comes up in the lategame)
You can easily get through PoE1’s main campaign without paying a dime
Someone also posted a video of them essentially getting through the “midgame” of path of exile in 24 hours without paying as well youtu.be/JeIDCxQhZM4
However, during that midgame he shows that he really starts having trouble with the lack of stash tabs for trading. It’s doable, but that’s kind of where you start hitting your limits
All in all, if you play for the main campaign it’s essentially just a free game, and if you play without trading the game is still designed to be somewhat doable. Really the only thing you miss out on is trading
Whatever metric they use to track installs has to prevent abuse like this
I would be eagerly awaiting a follow-up response from unity from this, because as it stands right now, consensus among gamedev circles is that unity won’t prevent abuse at all, which is just awful for multiple groups of people.
someone paying for your game and then re-downloading it every hour would cost you $144 a month
someone paying for your game and then re-downloading it every 5 minutes would cost you $1728 a month
web games exist, and if the Unity Runtime Download metric is used there, well, that is going to be an expensive bill for anyone putting any sense of monetization in their web game