History Main / BribingYourWayToVictory

* Parodied in [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/03/08 this]] ''Webcomic/PennyArcade'' strip, where one can pay to get a guaranteed "I" block in ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}''. The sad thing is, two months after the strip was published, Creator/ElectronicArts released ''Tetris Blitz'', which is more or less a {{Defictionalization}} of the strip.

* ''Literature/TrappedInADatingSimTheWorldOfOtomeGamesIsToughForMobs'': According to Leon, the otome game his sister forced him to complete was so hard, he had to resort to this, buying resources and equipment just to have a fighting chance.

You may be in luck. For a "modest fee", the game's developers might be willing to sell you "something extra" to "boost your performance". Don't worry, it's "not really cheating" since anybody else could do the same, and you gotta trust the game's developers on this, right?

A common variant of this trope is to put in countless hours of incredibly dull ForcedLevelGrinding with minimal content at the lower levels, then allow players to skip it by buying ExperiencePoints and/or whatever currency they would otherwise need to grind out to progress. This essentially results in an AllegedlyFreeGame with the ''illusion'' of being able to EarnYourFun, even though the latter is rendered useless since you rarely save more than a dollar per hour of grind compared to just coughing up the money - mowing the neighbor's lawn would be less work, more fun, ''and'' still pay more. In cases like this, and other situations where you can buy quicker access to stuff you can get in the game, it seems like the developers think their game is boring enough, at least at the early stages, that people will pay money to play ''less'' of it.

This is very difficult to implement in a way that doesn't hurt the experience for players unwilling to spend the extra money.

** [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Cyber-Stein Cyber-Stein]]. Dear god, ''Cyber-Stein''. When it was first released in the TCG, it was exclusively a tournament prize, and only a rare few were handed out. This, combined with a fairly good effect that makes one turn kills extremely easily, meant that the one eBay auction that sold this card saw a bid of ''20,000$ USD''. (The bidder welshed, however, and the card was later sold for 7,000$.) Fortunately, the card saw a proper public release... way back in 2005 and didn't see a re-release until 2019... as a Secret Rare. The OCG Cyber-Stein does not share the same problem, however, as it has appeared in a handful of sets, especially two structure deck appearances, meaning that the card is quite easy to come by.

* ''Website/{{Cracked}}.com'''s ''[[http://www.cracked.com/video_18558_why-shopping-in-video-game-universe-sucks.html Why Shopping In A Video Game Universe Sucks]]'' has a character coming in to buy a sword, for [[AdamSmithHatesYourGuts an exorbitant amount of in-game currency (400,000 Credits)]], or "$10 American". He responds with "no, this is where I draw the line. I swore I would never do... ''this''". He hems and haws over it for a little bit, and finally asks if they take Visa upon being informed that it [[ForcedTransformation turns]] enemies into chickens.

* Employee poaching also extends to professional athletics, especially leagues without a salary cap. Rich teams can simply snap up all of the best players and steamroll the opposition. Salary caps make this strategy flat-out suicidal; teams that stack star players will find themselves hitting the cap very quickly, forcing them to fill the rest of the team with low-value garbage and making CripplingOverspecialization very much an issue.
** Of course, recruiting aging players based on their past success does not necessarily translate to more success. The New York Yankees had baseball's highest payroll from 2000-2013 and were only able to win two World Series championships. By the early [[TheNewTens 2010s]], the Steinbrenners realized that trying to buy their way to victory wasn't sustainable and so the team began to dump their highest paid players, reduce their spending on free agents, and focus more on developing minor league prospects.

* Athlete poaching -- or 'international recruiting', as a more neutral term -- extends even to the highest levels of sport. If you're an [[UsefulNotes/OlympicGames Olympic-level]] athlete, some governments will offer big cash and fast-tracked citizenship to compete under their flag. As an egregious example, all of Bahrain's Olympic medals were won by naturalized athletes born in Kenya and Ethiopia.
** [[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14608944.2022.2125943 This study]] cites several others about sports where this often occurs and also discusses Chinese citizens' opinions on the topic (China has been a large practitioner of international recruitment in recent years).
** [[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/australia-accused-of-poaching-canadian-athletes-1.184621 This article]] claims that leading up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Australia recruited and naturalized ''312'' elite athletes and coaches. It paid off; Australia set a personal record for medals in 2000 with 58.

Rejoice, gamers, for now we can have TruthInTelevision Video Game [=FUs=], where only the rich kids will have all the cool stuff.

Some online games do such a thing as a response to RealMoneyTrade, on the logic that players would do it anyway. The sister trope is the AllegedlyFreeGame, which advertises itself as "free to play" but requires purchases to unlock content, up to and including higher levels and/or the actual ending. To clarify, the difference between these tropes is that RealMoneyTrade is forbidden by the game's developers, while an AllegedlyFreeGame ''cannot'' be played in its entirety without paying money, and Bribing Your Way To Victory allows you to buy better stuff but doesn't lock you out of content.

* A very old technique of RealLife [[TheStrategist strategists]]. In most wars--in a sense all wars--each side is composed of a multitude of factions whose interests happen to coincide. The UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire, for instance, would pay chieftains on the opposing side to defect.
** During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII the British gold coins with an image of Saint George slaying a dragon that were typically used to pay for covert ops were referred to as British "cavalry".

* In UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars, Britain paid most of Europe's crowning heads a number of hefty subsidies, referred to as the "Golden Cavalry of St. George", to either keep them fighting the French or stop them fighting the British. It was very effective. When it came to foreign policy, Napoleon was hopelessly outplayed by an economic naval superpower going around the continent handing out shit-tons of cash like an air hostess with a bowlful of boiled sweets, while he himself had to run his empire on a shoestring budget because the Royal Navy was stopping him from trading with anybody.
* Any team-based pro sport without an enforced salary cap is prone to this, as rich teams can simply snap up all of the best players and steamroll the rest of the opposition. Salary caps make this strategy flat-out suicidal; teams that stack star players will find themselves hitting the cap very quickly, forcing them to fill the rest of the team with low-value garbage and making CripplingOverspecialization very much an issue.
** Of course, paying aging players large sums of money based on their past success does not necessarily translate to success. The New York Yankees had baseball's highest payroll from 2000-2013 and were only able to win two World Series championships. By the early [[TheNewTens New Tens]], the Steinbrenners realized that trying to buy their way to victory wasn't sustainable and so the team began to dump their highest paid players, reduce their spending on free agents, and focus more on developing minor league prospects.

* A few countries offer financial incentives for athletes to compete under their flags. All of Bahrain's medals at the Usefulnotes/OlympicGames were won by naturalized African long-distance runners, and most of Kazakhstan's best tennis players are "imported", usually from Russia.
* Brazilian band Doctor Pheabes was far from a household name, yet was opening local concerts for Guns N' Roses (2014), Black Sabbath (2016) and The Rolling Stones (2016), and also present in festivals such as Rock in Rio, Lollapalooza and Monsters of Rock. The reason is because two of the members founded health care company Prevent Senior, and thus by providing sponsorship and medical services, they literally bought a place in the limelight.

* Kyou in ''LightNovel/AndYouThoughtThereIsNeverAGirlOnline'' buys a lot of premium items the MMORPG Legendary Age that give her a huge advantage in battle, to the annoyance of Hideki and Akane.
* In the backstory of ''LightNovel/Overlord2012'', while the New World was still a VR MMO, these items existed. Since a condition of membership to the guild of Ainz Ooal Gown was being gainfully employed in real life, the Supreme Beings of the guild had a steady supply of them, which contributed to their fearsome reputation. [[spoiler:Even after being trapped in the New World as a physical place, Ainz still has his supply of cash shop items, and they're terrifyingly powerful in a world where they blatantly break the rules of reality. However, he can no longer replace them, and uses them very sparingly.]]

* In ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'', "Gun Gale Online" allows IRL money to be converted into in-game credits and vice-versa. [[spoiler: Part of what makes Death Gun so dangerous is that in addition to being a highly skilled player, his real life persona is a sick boy who gets a huge allowance from his doctor parents, which allows him to splurge on high-end equipment like rare guns and ammo, an InvisibilityCloak and materials to craft a makeshift estoc so that he can use his sword skills from SAO.]]

* ''LightNovel/TrappedInADatingSimTheWorldOfOtomeGamesIsToughForMobs'': According to Leon, the otome game his sister forced him to complete was so hard, he had to resort to this, buying resources and equipment just to have a fighting chance.

* The parodic roleplaying game ''Violence: the Role-Playing Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed'' allows a player to improve his character's stats by paying the GameMaster, or by sending money to the game's author.

* [[http://gameological.com/2012/05/scrabble-for-cheaters/ Scrabble For Cheaters]] does this in a tongue-in-cheek way. You can buy the ability to play proper nouns, add 10 points to any tile, or even make up [[ScrabbleBabble entirely new words]] for a *cough* modest fee ($50 - $500 per use.) However, the tournament where this is taking place is a non-profit tutoring center, and all proceeds (i.e.: Scrabble-bribes) go to keeping it running.

* Ride/DisneyThemeParks, which used to avert this with its Fastpass system, now offers it directly with Genie+ and the Lightning Lane system. Genie+ gives a purchaser something akin to the old Fastpass system, where a new pass can be obtained when one is used or after 120 minutes, whichever comes first. The Lightning Lane for a given ride can be purchased individually.

Rejoice, gamers, for now we can have TruthInTelevision [[ClassicVideoGameScrewYous Video Game FUs,]] where only the rich kids will have all the cool stuff.

* While Ride/DisneyThemeParks do not sell 'front of the line' passes, and their 'Fastpass' line-skipping passes are available to all guests, they do offer various other ways where guests can spend money to shorten lines:
** Most directly, they offer guided tours which allow guests to bypass the lines. These tours generally cost hundreds of dollars per person per hour.
** Indirectly, guests at Ride/WaltDisneyWorld who stay at a Disney hotel can reserve Fastpasses 60 days from checkin. Guests staying at (typically less-expensive) off-property hotels can only reserve at 30 days, at which point the passes for high-demand rides are long gone.
** Guests at Ride/{{Disneyland}} can purchase '[=MaxPass=]', which lets them obtain Fastpasses online instead of having to go over to the ride's kiosks. This makes it much easier to get new Fastpasses whenever another set becomes available, including while standing in line for another ride.
* Ride/SixFlags sells their Fastpass-equivalent, Flash Pass, at multiple levels. Regular passes make you wait as long as you'd have to wait in line, with the exception that you can go do other things while you wait. Gold passes cut that wait time in half, and Platinum passes allow you to ride immediately. Cost increases with each level, to the point where Platinum can cost twice as much as it cost to enter the park in the first place.

[[folder:Machinima]]
* Parodied in ''Machinima/HalfLifeButTheAIIsSelfAware'', where [[AIIsACrapShoot Dr. Coomer]] offers Gordon hints or shortcuts in exchange for "[=PlayCoins=]™." [[spoiler:During the FinalBoss fight, Gordon giving Coomer all of his [=PlayCoins=]™ allows the latter to activate SuperMode and win the day.]]
[[/folder]]

* ''Website/{{Cracked}}.com'''s ''[[http://www.cracked.com/video_18558_why-shopping-in-video-game-universe-sucks.html Why Shopping In A Video Game Universe Sucks]]'' has a character coming in to buy a sword, for [[AdamSmithHatesYourGuts an exorbitant amount of in-game currency (400,000 Credits)]], or "$10 American". He responds with "no, this is where I draw the line. I swore I would never do... ''this''". He hems and haws over it for a little bit, and finally asks if they take Visa upon being informed that it [[ForcedTransfomation turns]] enemies into chickens.