grow a garden proves you can be f2p fair and still print money

i spend most of my time here dragging paywalls, so let me point at somebody doing it right for once.

grow a garden is a massive game and it never locks the actual game behind money. you plant, it grows even while youre logged off, you sell, you reinvest in better seeds, and a free player reaches the same fat endgame harvests a spender does, just a little slower. the passes and premium seeds? shortcuts. sprinklers, auto stuff, cosmetics, a head start. none of it is the ending sold back to you.

thats the whole line for me. sell me convenience, dont sell me the win. a paying player should arrive first, not arrive somewhere a free player literally cant go. grow a garden gets that, and its one of the biggest games on the platform, so clearly you dont have to gut your players to make money.

is it flawless? no, the limited weather events lean way too hard on fomo and id cut them. but the core economy is fair, and fair is rare enough around here that i had to write it down. if a farming game can pull these numbers without holding the fun hostage, every gacha game choosing to paywall instead is just choosing to.