---
title: 'Monopoly Go: The Money and Addiction Machine | Scopely'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=NomVW1mm4BY'
video_id: 'NomVW1mm4BY'
date: 2026-07-22
duration_sec: 1011
channel: 'BaityBait'
---

# Monopoly Go: The Money and Addiction Machine | Scopely

> Source: [Monopoly Go: The Money and Addiction Machine | Scopely](https://youtube.com/watch?v=NomVW1mm4BY)

## Summary

This video analyzes the mobile game Monopoly Go, revealing how it disguises a slot machine as a family-friendly board game to generate massive revenue and addiction. The creator explains the game's mechanics, monetization strategies, and the psychological tricks used to hook players, ultimately warning viewers about the dangers of such predatory mobile games.

### Key Points

- **Mobile gaming is the biggest industry driver** [00:02] — The video starts by noting that mobile games generate more revenue than the global taco industry, highlighting how disconnected most gamers are from the biggest sector of gaming.
- **Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile dominate** [00:28] — Honor of Kings, a mobile League of Legends clone by Tencent, was already the highest-grossing game despite limited availability. PUBG Mobile also generates huge revenue.
- **Monopoly Go is a slot machine, not a board game** [01:25] — The game uses the Monopoly brand but is actually a slot machine: you roll dice automatically, win money based on chance, and have minimal player interaction.
- **Core mechanics: rolls, raids, and shields** [02:44] — Players have limited rolls per day, can raid other players' boards via a slot mini-game, and can buy shields to protect their buildings. The game pressures players to spend money on rolls and shields.
- **Sponsorship segment: NOR VPN** [04:46] — The video includes a sponsored segment for NOR VPN, promoting its privacy features and eSIM service.
- **Objective: build monuments to advance levels** [06:33] — The goal is to build monuments using in-game money, progressing through increasingly expensive boards (from 15,000 to 33 billion coins). This creates an endless grind similar to Candy Crush.
- **Monopoly Go generated $2 billion in 10 months** [09:01] — The game earned $1 billion in its first 7 months and another billion in the next 3 months, reaching a quarter of GTA V's lifetime revenue in a fraction of the time.
- **Keys to success: brand trust and massive advertising** [10:18] — Scopely acquired the Monopoly brand from Hasbro to attract adults who trust the family-friendly image. They spent nearly $500 million on advertising in less than a year.
- **Removed complexity and added social pressure** [12:07] — The game eliminates strategic elements like building placement, making it accessible to everyone. Social features are used to pressure players: raids damage buildings, and shields cost money.
- **Pay-to-win mechanics and constant pop-ups** [13:47] — The game offers multipliers (x2, x10) that become necessary to progress, and bombards players with pop-ups to buy rolls, money, or shields. Free players get only 100 spins daily, but events require over 1,000 spins.
- **Monopoly Go is a dangerous trap for nostalgic adults** [15:20] — The game combines slot addiction mechanics with a familiar, family-friendly brand to exploit people unaware of the dangers of mobile gambling. The creator advises staying away and warning friends and family.

### Conclusion

Monopoly Go is a predatory mobile game that uses slot machine mechanics disguised as a nostalgic board game to generate billions in revenue. The best defense is awareness and avoiding such games entirely.

## Transcript

monthly live streams, or whenever I remember, of checking the mobile games that generate the most money each month. It's a pretty interesting way to see how disconnected we are from the world, since this is by far the biggest driver of the
video game industry. Because it seems that while most of us use it to procrastinate while taking a dump, many, many other people use it to throw money at it like it's a casino. In fact, it generates
more revenue than the taco industry worldwide. As you can see, it's a serious matter. A few months ago, while reviewing this, we saw this ranking: Honor of Kings by Tenzen, of course, a mobile version of League of Legends. This game probably won't ring a bell
because until recently it was only available in China, Brazil, Mexico, and four other countries, and even then it was already the highest-grossing game in the world. Something to think about, folks. PUBG Mobile by Tenzen is also like the PC version of PUBG, but it has nothing to do
with the PC version. Gin Impact by Mioyo—you know, anime girls. In the 80s, we had a crisis in Spain with young people hooked on heroin. In the future, we'll analyze...  The 2020 crisis with the gin Impact of the young Honkai
Star Rail plus cute Chinese girls in my Roblox hole, you know, the legal child slavery factory, Candy Crush, the legal mother slavery factory, Monopoly Go What, we're all live, what the hell? How the hell
How the hell could a Monopoly game be the eighth 've all played Monopoly at some point and know the board game inside and out, and some will tell me, "Well, I've never played it, Bati." You're just a son
versions. I have a Fallout one, but there's a Futurama one, a Godfather one, a Hobbit one, there's even a Big Bang Theory one where every time you go to jail you have to say, "Oh no, I haven't been a potty." And if you've ever played it,
I want you to do a little exercise with this game: How the hell do you manage to monetize this in a free mobile app and earn so much money to become one of the highest-grossing games on the
planet? Pay two pavins for  Getting out of jail requires paying extra money to upgrade buildings. If you do this, you turn it into a pay-to-win game, and those kinds of games aren't usually popular. Well, I want you to take everything you know about
Monopoly and throw it in the trash. Monopoly Go is a slot game that doesn't look like a Monopoly-themed slot game, and that way you understand much better how the hell and that way you understand much better how the hell
Monopoly is that you have a board with that guy in the hat and you roll dice, that's it. I mean, you don't even play with other people, you play alone. I'm going to try to explain how it works and see if you can find
put coins in a machine and pull a lever. In Monopoly Go, you roll dice, your character moves around a board, and you have a certain number of rolls per day. You can reload these rolls if you're lucky with the
rolls themselves, or you can pay to have more. You barely have to make any decisions since you just have to see what you get.  In fact, you have to has an automatic roll mode. You just press the button and let it roll the dice on its own. And
Well, if you land on the colored spaces— the ones that in the game are properties you can buy—here you simply win money. No, not like Monopoly, this is a slot machine, but aside from the part where you can win money, which is what
the color of the property, you win more or less money. If you land on train spaces, you make a raid. I told you before that you don't play against anyone, and that's true, but if you land on these spaces, you go to another player's board to steal money.
How do you steal money? Well, with slots, obviously. three of a kind come up. If you get three coins, you steal a little; if you get three bills, you steal a medium amount; and if you get three rings, you steal a lot. By the way, what the hell is the picture
of the guy being robbed? If you land on jail, it works the same as in the game: you have three rolls to get doubles.  If not, then a fine. If you land can win anything from more spins to money. And the electricity and water companies
sometimes give you money, sometimes they give you whatever they feel like. And this is a bit of a summary; this is basically what you can do in the game. What do you think? It's pretty cool, huh? What does it remind you of? Automatic spins that give you more or
less money for each spin, a result of chance. And maybe the Monopoly pros, those who have the Sheldon Cooper Monopoly at home, have noticed that there's a space missing: the community drawer in the
this drawer did; I think it drew a special card or something. Here, on the other hand, every time you pay fines, they go into this drawer, and if you land here, you take all that money, as long as you have at least five friends playing this game. So
to this harmless online casino so they can get a little hooked too? And watch out, this video is sponsored by NOR VPN.  Listening to control shift and you know perfectly well that's
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Now, if you access the link in the description and get the 2- year plan, you'll get 4 additional months plus a 10GB data bonus. For more description or what you see on screen. Thanks to NOR VPN for sponsoring this
video. Okay, so how the hell do you win this crap if you're not playing against board stealing money from others and this pimp showing up every now and then does n't seem to have a clear objective. First of all, here, just like in
real life, the only one who wins is the house— in this case, the company exploiting each board has objectives, which are to build...  Monuments. And these monuments cost Monopoly money to build. Simply, whenever you
want, you press "build," and as long as you have the money, you build it. That's it. You build them in a magical entity, okay? It's not that you build them on the board, but it's more of a concept. You've built the Statue of Liberty,
where, I don't know, you can't see it. What you do know is that when you build monuments, you if you bought them in the original game, you placed on spaces. They made it so that when another person landed on your property with that house, they would collect more
money. Here it's more or less the same, except that here, if you land on that space, you earn normally. And when you build all the monuments necessary to complete the and you move on to the next one. And this is like Candy Crush; there are infinite levels, each one
example, on the first board, which is New York City, you need to win and spend around 15,000 Monopoly money to be able to beat the level. Then comes London, which is about 120,000, then Venice, which is about 8
million, and so it goes up and up and up. Currently, there are about 260 requires about 33 billion Monopoly coins. Monopoly
went from 15,000 coins to 33 billion! It's quite something, isn't it? The thing is, they keep this will eventually lead to infinite levels, like in Candy Crush. As you build, you also level up as a player. When you level up, you get
level up as a player. When you level up, you get also earn more money for landing on certain tiles. So, this is the gameplay cycle of Monopoly: Go. You spin, which you can set to
earning money. You invest that money in buying monuments, and when you run out of spins, you decide what to do. You spins, or you can pay to have them directly.  Money is in the game, but the
vast majority of people, for whatever reason, prefer the spins. They feel like they're really playing that way, but what they don't know is that they're actually addicted to the slots. And maybe you're like me, you've seen Monopoly Go and
thought, "How the hell did people get hooked on this crap? I don't understand anything." Well, it's not just that people are hooked, but they're investing real money in real estate. Monopoly Go generated
$1 billion in just 7 months, but if that seems like a lot, just 3 months later it generated another billion. Holy [ __ ]! To give you an idea of ​​how massive it is,
ask you what one of the biggest and most popular audiovisual works in the world is, you're probably going to say GTA. Well, GTA V, as they say, has generated around GTA V, as they say, has generated around
Who wouldn't want to get their hands on 0.1% of that money? No, but this... Monopoly Go has generated a quarter of what a quarter of what GTA V has generated in just 10 months over the course of 10 years. The
spiraling out of control; it's understand many companies saying, "Damn, we're just wasting time developing a game for 6 or 7 years with all the risks that
entails, and then some shitty mobile game made in two afternoons, starring a womanizer in a top hat, generates this much in less than a year. What is this guy doing to have so many
people throwing money at him?" What are the keys behind the so-called success of this game? Well, behind Monopoly Go is Scopely, a companies most of us don't know about, and then you see how much it makes. And that's when you realize that these
you had to rob something, it's more profitable to rob a mobile game company than a bank. So this company thought, "How can we attract an adult audience to..."  A mobile game that works like slots has the same
people, but it targets people who would never download a casino app. So they decided to look for a game that was popular, known to adults, and family-friendly, because that gives you confidence. At first glance, you don't
think, " There's obviously a casino behind this," but rather that many people will probably think of the afternoons or evenings they've spent with their After all, people have heard about how dangerous casinos are, but what they haven't
dangerous mobile games are. So Scovel acquired the Monopoly brand from Hasbro to make a game. It must be said that Hasbro has been prostituting its brand for some time now without much resistance. This old guy is practically
rich, single old man in your area who wants to talk to you." In fact, without going much further, Hasbro already licensed it to another company to make Kissi, literally a Monopoly slots game, so you can see they don't really care what's out there.
Do what you want with your brand as long as they pay what's agreed upon. On the other hand, the company has invested a hell of a fortune in advertising the game. In less than a year, they've spent nearly $500 million on advertising alone. To
give you an idea of ​​how outrageous Red Dead Redemption 2 is, it cost around $500-40 million, including marketing. Furthermore, they've eliminated any kind of complexity or depth the game had.
complexity, but now they've made it for dummies. They've removed the original game to make it accessible to absolutely everyone. In the original Monopoly, you chose where to place your buildings, and that was a
strategic element. Here, you forget all that; it 's all automatic. You simply roll the dice. Let the game do everything for you and enjoy. Isn't it wonderful all those numbers that appear on the screen? All the social aspects
of the original board game have been removed. The little social aspect that Monopoly: Go had has been added very cleverly.  Smart move if last penny out of people. Sure, on the one hand, they limit the
profits you could make. Unless you attract more people to the game, you won't It's like putting a coin in a slot machine, and if three cherries come up, it tells you, "Damn, you could have won a prize here!" But of course, since you don't have any
friends, you [ __ ] antisocial piece of [ __ ]. And then there's the raid system, where, as I said, you steal money from random people, but you also damage their buildings. So, if you don't want some random person damaging your
valuable buildings that took so much effort to build—well, effort to let the game do automatic spins for you—to avoid that, you'll have to buy shields. Or you risk finishing the game today
with 200,000 pins and not being able to play anymore because you're out of spins, and then opening the app tomorrow to find your beloved Statue of Liberty completely destroyed. And on top of that, some guy named Pablo Motos has stolen it.  100,000
pavin in a heist and game constantly pressures you with pop-ups to buy. Hey, buy rolls you don't have left. Hey, buy some Monopoly money so you can get things. Hey, buy me something. I kidnap your daughter.
With your rolls, you have the option to add a multiplier of x2 or x10. This makes a roll cost you five or ten times more, but the times bigger, and this becomes mandatory to use from
advancing since they ask for huge amounts to be able to complete the different constructions, and when you reach those points in the game you will already have played and it is the moment
where the game becomes especially harassing with pop-ups every 5 seconds telling you to take advantage of these multipliers. At the beginning you get dice easily because you level up relatively easily. The ABC of
free-to-play games is to give you a very easy start and give you a huge number of constant rewards.  And numbers on the screen to keep you hooked, and once you're hooked, once you've experienced the thrill of
pulling the lever on the slot machine, that's when it fact, the game has constant events to get more rewards. And although they promise you can do it without paying, it's not really true. Without paying,
you get 100 spins a day, but to complete an event, you need about 1,000 and a half spins. So these events, which last between 24 hours or a maximum of a week, well, no matter what this crook says, the math
to-win. It's just that you can't win. Monopoly Go is the perfect trap for people who have a certain nostalgia for the classic board game but who predatory practices of many of these mobile games. They've really achieved the
perfect combination: they've used all the thoroughly studied practices that generate addiction in slots and applied them to a game with an family-friendly image that evokes nostalgia in many people, and which,
obviously,  They're unaware of everything behind it because, in the end, everyone knows the dangers of casinos, gambling, and slots, but very few people are informed about the same dangers with
these types of games that mimic the same behaviors. complexity whatsoever, whose gameplay mechanics could have been developed by my little cousin, has managed to generate in just over a year what
GTA V did in its entire lifetime. That gives you an idea that the game must have something shady going on. The best thing you can do is stay away from these types of mobile games, but above all, I recommend that you warn friends and
family who aren't so involved in this world and don't know the dangers behind these kinds of games. And the moral of the story is that if you feel like playing Monopoly, as strange as it sounds, it's much healthier and safer to play
Sheldon Cooper's Monopoly than Monopoly Go. My friend, Monopoly Go. My friend, this game is worse than Gin Impact. this game is worse than Gin Impact. [Music]
[Applause] [Music]