The creator of Hon, s2 Games, announced a new promotion for the Japan Earthquake. They increased the amount of gold goblin coins that you would get when you use real money to purchase them. In addition to this benefit they announced that they will be donating 10 % of their revenue through this promotion to help the people in Japan.
All it is, is the picture of the heart next to your user profile to show that you support the recovery of Japan after the earthquake. The interesting marketing aspect of this is the fact the the heart is a “premium” item (as talked about in one of my previous posts). This is a premium item that can only be bought with 25 gold goblin coins. However the only way to get gold goblin coins is to purchase them with real cash.
The picture above is a direct screen shot from the coin purchasing menu in the game. As you can see the least you can buy is $10 USD which gives you a total of 840 gold goblin coins (thanks to the promotion of extra coins to attract users to buy coins). However as mentioned above the Japan heart only costs 25 gold coins, so basically if you wanted to show your support for the people in Japan through this Hon promotion you would have to spend minimum $ 10 dollars just to donate 10 % which is $1 dollar to help Japan. By using this promotion Hon is saying it is trying to help the situation in Japan however, when users purchase even the bare minimum to afford the heart icon, they are giving $9 dollars to s2 Games and only donating $1 to help Japan. This is an intelligent way to use events around the world to make money and promote the game. There are many fundraisers or charity organizations which are donating far more then 10 % towards the tragedy in Japan. Although this is a brilliant way for S2 Games to make money, how ethical is it?