Soft and hard currency
Snapshot
~80 sec
Soft and hard currency are not just two colors of coin. They are a trust boundary: one can be earned back if you spend it wrong, the other cannot, and letting one behave like the other is how an economy stops feeling fair.
You will learn
- Tell a soft currency from a hard currency by asking one question: can a player earn it back.
- Explain why converting hard currency into soft currency is safe, but the reverse silently breaks trust.
- Spot the anti-pattern where a soft-priced decision is charged in hard currency instead.
Target outcome
You can look at a proposed currency and state whether it is soft or hard, and catch the moment a design lets one behave like the other.
Visual walkthrough
Visual walkthrough
~5 min
Four terms for reading a currency's trust boundary
Soft currency
A resource you can earn back through play, so a mistake spending it is recoverable.
Hard currency
A resource acquired mainly by paying real money, so a mistake spending it is not recoverable through play alone.
Convertibility
Whether one currency can be exchanged for the other, and in which direction.
One-way gate
The safe direction: hard currency can buy soft currency, but soft currency can never buy hard.
Only one direction of conversion stays safe
Read top to bottom across the trust boundary. Hard currency may fund soft currency; nothing ever climbs back up into the scarce layer.
Scarce / paid layer
Hard currency
Acquired mainly by paying real money, so it stays scarce by design.
Earnable layer
Soft currency
Earned through ordinary play; it replenishes through normal sessions.
Play decision layer
Player decision
An ordinary, repeatable choice the game wants to stay reachable without paying.
Outcome
The result the decision unlocks, whichever currency funded it.
- Hard currencySoft currencymay convert into
- Soft currencyPlayer decisionfunds
- Player decisionOutcomeproduces
Read top to bottom across the trust boundary. Hard currency may fund soft currency; nothing ever climbs back up into the scarce layer. Reading order
- Hard currency
Acquired mainly by paying real money, so it stays scarce by design.
- Soft currency
Earned through ordinary play; it replenishes through normal sessions.
- Player decision
An ordinary, repeatable choice the game wants to stay reachable without paying.
- Outcome
The result the decision unlocks, whichever currency funded it.
Connection explanations
- Hard currency → Soft currency (may convert into)
This conversion is safe because a paying player choosing to fund their soft-currency balance never removes anything from a free player's path.
- Soft currency → Player decision (funds)
Soft currency is meant to keep this decision reachable through ordinary play, with or without ever converting hard currency.
- Player decision → Outcome (produces)
The outcome should look the same regardless of which currency ultimately funded the decision.
Compare what each currency is meant to protect
Approach Acquisition Recoverability Correct use Soft currencyEarned through ordinary play. Earned through ordinary play, such as completing a match or a daily session. A misspend is recoverable; continued play earns more. Price ordinary, repeatable decisions that should stay reachable without paying. Hard currencyAcquired mainly by paying real money. Acquired mainly by paying real money, sometimes with a small earned trickle. A misspend is not recoverable through ordinary play alone. Price one-time, high-value decisions a player deliberately chooses to pay for. Judge a proposed purchase
A new feature lets players spend the same currency they earn from completing matches on an extra daily attempt. Is this safe, and why?
Expected reasoning
Yes. The currency being spent is soft: it was earned through play, so spending it on an extra attempt is a recoverable choice inside the normal play loop. It would only become risky if the extra attempt were priced in hard currency instead, since that would turn an ordinary repeatable decision into one only paying players could recover from.