History Main / MoneyForNothing

* ''WesternAnimation/WallE'': This trope is in effect for Buy N Large, the megacorporation which turned the Earth inhospitable to life through out-of-control consumerism, and then sent its customers into space to cruise around until conditions improved enough for re-settlement. The people living on the Buy N Large flagship ''Axiom'' buy all of their goods and services from the company, which is in full control of the StarshipLuxurious and all the resources on it. Because the return flight to Earth was secretly cancelled, Buy N Large has nowhere to spend the money, so it is useless for them. (AbsentAliens is also in effect.) The humans don't do any work, and Buy N Large's robots perform all of the upkeep, so the entire economy is technically pointless. It seems as if money is only kept around to maintain the pretense that everyone will return to Earth someday.

** Next to ''0'', the series' {{Gaiden Game}}s, ''VideoGame/Judgment'' and ''VideoGame/LostJudgment'', while not without some EarlyGameHell (especially the former), end up [[DownplayedTrope on the lighter end]] of this thanks in part to the VR Salon, which is one of the most reliable sources of income in both games. In the first title, there's still plenty to spend your money on (i.e., Med Kits, Extracts), but it's in full force in the second since a certain shop that sells items that were TooAwesomeToUse in older entries through Experience Points (which are much, ''much'' easier to come by than in the first game), effectively letting you stock up on Royal Joker Cards and millions of yen in profits from selling all of the valuable VendorTrash that can be bought in the game's Casino.

* ''VideoGame/{{Anachronox}}'': Sender Station, which becomes the de facto HubLevel some ways in, has several Vendor Bots who buy and sell various VendorTrash that have no use elsewhere. While they always sell at a modest markup, the prices between vendors are wildly inconsistent, and there's always someone who sells a given thing for cheaper than another will buy for. And they have functionally infinite supplies. Assuming you don't mind doing a lot of clicking and some walking, it's easy to "buy low, sell high" until you break the bank. And should you actually lose all your money, the Vendor Bots will give you delivery quests that will earn you enough to get you going again.

* Making money in ''VideoGame/{{Hardwar}}'' actually isn't that difficult to do in the game as there are many ways to get rich while piloting a moth. Bounty hunting for pirates is usually the most common profession to play as a player character but the enemy-to-profit ratio is of limited lucrativity as outlaw pilots have to kill innocent pilots to have prices put on their heads and bounties have a hard limit ranging from 500 to 2000 credits (2000 credits is four innocent pilot kills, and it is capped at that limit even after an outlaw pilot kills more than four innocent pilots). Outlaw pilots also will have additional bounties on their heads if they kill pilots flying moths belonging to a particular faction other than regular pilots, with the same hard limits as that as killing independent pilots, but this is a relatively uncommon occurrence. Pilots generally earn money much faster when trading in goods, scavenging loot from the crater, or pirating innocent pilots for their cargo; all of these professions can be done provided that they have a cargo pod and a drone fitted into their moth. These professions are considered a lot more dangerous than bounty hunting as there are the risks of being preyed upon by pirates or being on the wanted list by the Police or a certain faction such as Lazarus, Klamp-G, and so forth. The ultimate way to get rich in the game is to buy your own hangar, purchase manufacturing kits, and produce goods to the public (the feature to manufacture your own goods is made available in later versions of the game). If done appropriately, you can accrue so much money in the game that you will never feel penniless in the city of Misplaced Optimism and at that point, there's nothing that you can't afford to get as long as you have that much money in your account. And despite the presence of two LoanShark companies who exist in the game to provide quick but time-dependent money for inexperienced players who seemingly have trouble to get around their ways of life in the crater, even these companies are considered a trivial novelty due to the not-so-difficult ways of getting rich in the game as they aren't even worth the trouble going to their respective buildings just to borrow money from. Even if you fail to pay back the loan after two days have passed after the deadline, you still won't have that much trouble dealing with the debt collector who comes after you in a [[MightyGlacier menacing but slow Death's Head moth]] [[ArtificialStupidity thanks to the game's simplistic AI]].

* ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'' is even worse about this. You'll only have to spend your money on repairing your equipment, which costs a piddling amount of gold to do, even at higher levels. You also no longer need to spend money to revive your mercenaries; they automatically revive after a certain amount of time. Another feature was added after "Version 2.0" came out called "The Vault". Killing a Treasure Goblin randomly transports a player to the Vault, where breaking the pots open and defeating BonusBoss Greed will net over ten million gold. Greed is also guaranteed to drop a socketable gem to make monsters randomly explode in a shower of gold coins, so that just one trip to the Vault will mean never having to worry about money again.

* If you're a dirty cheater (or dedicated with a lot of time to burn), ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'' has you covered with GameBreaker items found in shops, dropped by enemies, and just about nothing else. It's pretty easy to have your inventory fill up with worthless crap that you can't offload without going through a merchant medium first (unless you own ''Warden's Keep''). Thankfully, ''Awakening'' increased the amount of expensive stuff to buy, and included a storage chest right in the Vigil's Keep throne room (your hub for the expansion). But of course, once they're gone....
* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' does avert this at the base level, since the vanilla game only allows the player to gather around 80 gold in Act 1 (50 of which has to go toward the CashGate to enter Act 2). But if all the expansion packs have been installed, there are a number of items which can be worn that increase the amount of money dropped by enemies. With the ''Black Emporium'' DLC, there's also a Rune of Fortune which can be added to any armor pieces to achieve the same effect. The Emporium sells only one such rune, but it also sells the schematic to craft more of it (which must be purchased in Act 1 or it's {{Permanently Miss|able Content}}ed), so as long as the crafting resources needed are uncovered, you can make as many Runes of Fortune as you're willing to pay for. Since adding multiple Runes of Fortune to armor will cause the effect to ''stack'', it's very easy to acquire immense wealth.
* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'' tries to avoid this by letting you convert money into Influence (essentially, ExperiencePoints for the title organization at large, rather than for individual characters) and Inquisition {{Perk}}s by purchasing deeds from a special merchant at [[PlayerHeadquarters Skyhold]]. This serves as a good money dump... until you hit the Inquisition level {{cap}} (20), after which all you can spend your money on are some rare unique items available from faraway merchants (not helped any that the best endgame items are [[ItemCrafting produced by the Inquisition itself]]). Bioware later released the free ''Black Emporium'' DLC to all consoles to avert this even harder. It gives players not only powerful schematics, but unique items and every crafting material in the game for purchase.

* In ''[[VideoGame/DragonQuestIII Dragon Warrior III]]'', the party system worked by having you to go into a tavern in the first city and generate three characters of whichever class you wanted. If you wished to try adventuring with a different group, you could put your current group in "storage" and make a new one. The Soldier class ''always'' generates wearing leather armor that sells for 112 G and carrying a club that sells for 22 G. So, you could put your current group away, make three soldiers, sell their equipment for 134 G, store 'em, and make three more...over and over until you got sick of it.\\

* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'', there's little practical use for gil at the endgame. Vendor gear are invariably inferior to crafted gear, dungeon drops, and raid gear. The only major money sinks in the game are the absurdly expensive BraggingRightsReward golden mounts and housing. Aside from that, gil is only useful for covering teleportation fees (which can easily be waived by aetheryte tickets earned from hunts and the Masked Carnivale) and buying things from other players via the market board. The relatively low 5% tax keeps inflation from rising too quickly, but longtime players will inevitably accrue millions of gil just by doing their daily roulettes.

* Averted with Influence (or "Inf") in ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes''. There was very little that could be directly purchased with it (just single origin enhancements that were vastly inferior to crafted enhancements). However, the inclusion of {{Money Sink}}s (mostly crafting costs and a 10% auction fee) kept inflation enough under control that Inf was stable enough to be useful as a medium of trade between players. This was also helped by the fact that there were very few untradeable items (and most untradeable items were just currency for tradeable items anyway).

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* This was avoided for the first few years of ''VideoGame/StarWarsGalaxies'' thanks to a robust player crafting system and a well-developed in-game economy. Once the players figured out how to abuse the crafting system, however, problems started to crop up in the form of inflation (players could complete missions far faster than they should have been able to), but things eventually stabilized. However, with the much-maligned New Game Enhancements, many forms of "credit sinks" that took money out of the in-game world were removed; as a result, inflation exploded and costs went up by, in some cases, a factor of 1000 or more. The game slowly slid into more of a barter-style economy, ultimately seeing the trope played straight.
* Largely averted in ''VideoGame/GuildWars2''. Nearly any item you could want can be bought with gold on the Trading Post, including legendary weapons. The things that can't are usually crafted...and the base items for those are almost all buyable. Finally, using [[WarpWhistle waypoints]] costs a small amount of money, so a full wallet helps you get around fast. The developers have an economist on staff, who oversees the in-game economy to avoid this trope.
* Averted with Influence (or "Inf") in ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes''. There was very little that could be directly purchased with it (just single origin enhancements that were vastly inferior to crafted enhancements). However, the inclusion of {{Money Sink}}s (mostly crafting costs and a 10% auction fee) kept inflation enough under control that Inf was stable enough to be useful as a medium of trade between players. This was also helped by the fact that there were very few untradeable items (and most untradeable items were just currency for tradeable items anyway).
* ''Videogame/MarvelHeroes'' goes back and forth on this. The game has at least a dozen different types of actual currency (to the point that there's a specific tab on your hero's Character menu that lets you track how much you have of each) and there are various items to spend them on. However, as many of the currencies can only be acquired under particular circumstances (i.e. you can typically only get Omega Access Files during Omega Training events or other big cosmic multi-currency-reward events) it takes a long time to acquire enough of each currency to actually buy the items you'll likely want. After the money is spent on the items you'd likely want, there won't be much use in having leftover currency, so a player will likely just end up accumulating more of it until an update occurs that gives new items to buy.
* Past a certain point (mostly after the Campaign has been concluded), ''VideoGame/TheDivision'' suffers from this big-time. Dark Zone Currency, Phoenix Credits and simply playing harder and harder levels in the Underground/Expansions are the ''only'' things that can see you purchase Gear and Weapons that increase your ranks and gear score. Players frequently amass ''millions'' of "regular" Credits from selling excess inventory, only to find out they can't buy anything particularly useful with them.
* Dungeons and Dragons Online has this problem in spades. The game was not designed to scale past a level cap of 10, with the current level cap of 30 average vendor trash is worth thousands of platinum. The most expensive things to buy in-game are only a few dozen plat. The inflation has been so rampant for years that plat is completely useless as a medium of exchange for players.

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* Since item synthesis is the only thing that costs [[SpellMyNameWithAnS munny]] in ''[[VideoGame/KingdomHearts358DaysOver2 Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days]]'', you will end up with ridiculous amounts of cash rather fast. For who knows what reason, all of the items you can buy from the Organization Moogle cost Heart Points...even though he claims that the reason he follows [[spoiler:Roxas]] is that he would miss all the munny spent at his shop.
* ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigi''

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The song [[Music/BrothersInArmsAlbum "Money for Nothing"]] by Music/DireStraits is the {{Trope Namer|s}}, but not an example: it's about a boorish appliance store worker's envy towards the rock musicians on Creator/{{MTV}}, who he thinks are earning loads of money without doing any "real" work. This trope involves a [[AmbiguousSyntax double-meaning]] not present in the song, which is that the money you're earning for doing next to nothing is also ''good'' for nothing.

** Nopon coins (gold and silver) act like a premium currency, except you mainly get them by opening containers and as drops from unique monsters. You can get some solid (but non-exclusive) accessories with them, but otherwise they're used for raising class ranks and skipping cooking costs. This is useful if you're trying to raise the rank for a class with low compatibility or just want to quickly rank out a class, especially if you're receiving lower amounts of CP per battle because of the party's high level difference against enemies. As for cooking, the coins can help if you don't have the materials at hand and it only costs one coin per meal. Which, naturally, leaves the problem of what to spend the coins on. However, they can also be used for skipping ''gem'' costs, which is an aversion -- you don't do this often because the costs can quickly become exorbitant. (An X-ranked gem – the highest level available – costs 99 gold Nopon coins to create and you can only carry 99 of these maximum. On the other hand, given the difficulty of procuring enough materials or [[GuideDangIt even finding them in the first place]] for later gems, the costs are almost always worth it. What else will you spend them on anyway?)

* The ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigi'' series gets guilty of this near the end of the third game (''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiBowsersInsideStory Bowser's Inside Story]]'') due to all the [[ChestMonster treasure chest enemies]] Bowser faces, combined with coin-earning multipliers and blocks that can rejuvenate your health for no cost. You are guaranteed to have at least 10,000 coins by the end of the game.
* ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiDreamTeam'' falls into this as well, especially in Hard mode. You see, in that mode, you can only carry ten of each item. And lots of enemies drop items on a regular basis. So it ends up being very hard to run out of money by the end of a Hard mode playthrough, since you never need to buy the best items or (much of) the best gear, most mini games are free and the best badges you can buy are fairly cheap in comparison to how much money you actually get (the Miracle and Master badges only cost 2,000 coins and the Gold badge only costs 5,000 coins). On the bright side, there is a neat Gold Hammer item which does significant amounts of damage if you have a lot of money on your person (and which doesn't take away any cash to use) so at least you can use the spare money to power up the InfinityMinusOneSword.

* ''Videogame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' avoids this quite neatly (especially in the PC vesion), with several unique items only available from certain shops, until you go off to [[spoiler: destroy or capture the Star Forge]], at which point there are no more shops but money pours in like rain anyway. However, the sequel suffers quite badly- anything that's worth having is either likely to drop, only available as a drop (sometimes unique, but not always; it's possible to get two of the legendary Circlet of Saresh...) or craftable. Also, if the player is male (or has a mod to get the handmaiden as a female) there is a rather well known infinite money loop.

** G is your main currency. As there are no healing items in the game (as the party automatically heals off damage outside of battle), the main use of G is buying accessories, which is unfortunately pointless, as between all of the containers of the containers, supply drops, quest rewards, enemy drops, and collectopedia rewards, you'll end up with an unmanageable amount of the things even without buying any. You can also buy a small selection of resources and party-wide buffs, and certain Nopon can summon rain for a fee if you need it for a sidequest and don't want to wait for it to occur naturally, but none of this costs much. The only significant expenditure is likely to be a late-game quest that asks for 500,000 G, which you'll likely have more than twice over by then.

** Nopon coins (gold and silver) act like a premium currency, except you mainly get them by opening containers and as drops from unique monsters. You can get some solid (but non-exclusive) accessories with them, but otherwise they're used for raising class ranks and skipping cooking costs, both fairly pointless... and for skipping ''gem'' costs, which is an aversion-- you don't do this because the costs quickly become unreasonable.

* ''Hot Shots Golf'' has a pro shop with about a couple thousand dollars worth of merchandise. Once you've bought it all, there's nothing else to spend your money on. Seriously, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, not even a token MoneySink or periodic charge. Even better, you don't even need to buy some of those items because you get them as tournament prizes.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Shantae}}'' games tend to fall victim to this. While it varies from game to game, it really doesn't take much effort in any of them to earn enough gems to buy everything in the item shop. The more {{platform game}}-oriented ''Half Genie Hero'' and the {{Metroidvania}}-styled ''Seven Sirens'' are the biggest offenders, as the process of replaying levels or exploring the world for hidden collectibles as you unlock new powers will net you enough money to buy every upgrade before you hit the last two chapters of either, making you an absolute powerhouse. In addition, the former has an optional dance you can buy that outright creates gems, while the latter lets you cash in excess cards for gems once you reach Armor Town.

** G is your main currency. It's main use is buying accessories, which is unfortunately pointless, as between all of the containers of the containers, supply drops, quest rewards, enemy drops, and collectopedia rewards, you'll end up with an unmanageable amount of the things even without buying any. You can also buy a small selection of resources and party-wide buffs, but none of this costs much. The only significant expenditure is likely to be a late-game quest that asks for 500,000 G, which you'll likely have more than twice that on hand.
** Ether cylinders cylinders are used to reboot ferronis hulks, a rare, one-time expenditure, and to craft gems, which are gated much more by their costs in materials.
** Nopon coins (gold and silver) act like a premium currency, except you mainly get tham by opening containers. You can get some solid (but non-exclusive) accessories with them, but otherwise they're used for raising class ranks and skipping cooking costs, both fairly pointless... and for skipping ''gem'' costs, which is an aversion-- you don't do this because the costs quickly become unreasonable.

** In the first game, you can find dollars ''everywhere'', and selling the guns you find but won't use is an extremely quick way to earn thousands upon thousands of $$$. However, the only ways to spend that money on are on ammo packs, of which the most expensive doesn't reach 80 bucks, and the [[SturgeonsLaw occasional]] good firearm, class/grenade mod, or shield. It gets so bad that money overflow[[labelnote:what?]]a glitch that screws the money counter after a certain amount is collected and ''completely'' empties the player's wallet upon death[[/labelnote]] is dangerously common, and a box that literally serves no other purpose than to remove '''eight millions''' off your funds (giving a [[MedalOfDishonor non-achievement]] in the process during the first time) becomes an important asset in later playthroughs to avoid it.

# Money is only used for [[MoneyIsExperiencePoints upgrades]] and/or cosmetic items and become useless once you buy them all.

** It seems NI realized how silly the levels of money were -- in the PSP remakes of Both 1 and 2 you can buy music for quite a hefty price to play in the item world instead of the default one. The actual songs cost between 100K to one billion HL each.

** ''VideoGame/Splatoon3'' would continue the trend. Weapons are now no longer purchasable with cash either, with Sheldon only accepting "Sheldon Licenses", which you obtain from regularly using and experimenting with weapons in the multiplayer modes. This would leave clothing as the only thing you purchase with cash now if it wasn't for the addition of a new store that sells miscellaneous items you can use to decorate your "splat tag" and locker, with new ones added periodically and you being able to buy multiples of them. Despite this, food tickets still exist and those miscellaneous items can be gotten in other ways, meaning you can still stockpile cash hand over fist pretty easiy.

** Nopon coins act like a premium currency, except you mainly get tham by opening containers. You can get some solid (but non-exclusive) accessories with them, but otherwise they're used for raising class ranks and skipping cooking costs, both fairly pointless... and for skipping ''gem'' costs, which is an aversion-- you don't do this because the costs quickly become unreasonable.

* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles3'' is ''extremely'' generous with giving you gold; you'll receive it not only as rewards for battles and sidequests, but the game auto-sells any items you find that hit the cap, including Nopon Coins and Ether Cylinders. There are very few things to spend it on; the most expensive things you'll encounter will run around 10,000 or so. There's a single sidequest that requires you to cumulatively spend 500,000 gold, but it's so late in the game that unless you're deliberately splurging at every item shop, you can easily have over twice that much without even trying.

** ''VideoGame/Splatoon3'' would continue the trend. Weapons are now no longer purchasable with cash either, with Sheldon only accepting "Sheldon Licenses", which you obtain from regularly using and experimenting with weapons in the multiplayer modes. This would leave clothing as the only thing you purchase with cash now if it wasn't for the addition of a new store that sells miscellaneous items you can use to decorate your "splat tag" and locker, with new ones added periodically and you being able to buy multiples of them. Despite this, food tickets still exist and those miscellaneous items can be gotten in other ways, meaning you can still stockpile cash pretty easiy.

* Money in ''VideoGame/NetHack'' is a strange case; having some money around can help you bribe your way past a couple of (not hard) bosses, and buying protection from priests is often beneficial; but beyond that everything in shops can simply be stolen by a well-trained pet and it's dirt cheap to buy anyway (unless you stumble across [[InfinityPlusOneSword Grayswandir]] in a shop, you lucky sod), which means money is just there for extra points if you beat the game, and taking up space in your backpack ([[DevelopersForesight one hundred and thirty seven thousand gold pieces actually have weight in this game...]]).

* When you start ''VideoGame/CastleOfTheWinds'', you have three thousand copper to your name, and that's before buying your starting equipment. By the end of the game you're getting double-digits of platinum, and each platinum piece is worth 1000 cp.

* ''VideoGame/DungeonsOfDredmor'': Depending on your build and how lucky you've been with random finds, you'll eventually have more money than you know what to do with somewhere around floor 10 or so.

* ''VideoGame/FatalLabyrinth'' has gold, but no stores and no way to spend it. The only function gold has in the game is getting you a nicer grave and more people to attend your funeral in the event of your ([[NintendoHard all too likely]]) [[GameOver demise]].

* Money in the ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'' series is used to buy weapons and equipment, as well as add and/or reroll the ability slots for said equipment (in the first game). Despite all this, even if one buys all of the available weapons and equipment in the game, and work to optimize a build for all these weapons, those who play regularly will probably still have a lot of money left over. This is especially the case in the second game onward. In addition to money, your FriendInTheBlackMarket also accepts Super Sea Snails instead. While these could only be gotten via Splatfests in the first game, making them a limited commodity, starting in the second game, you are now given one as a reward every time you level up past Level 30, allowing you to stockpile mountains of cash. As a trade-off, adding and rerolling slots can now only be paid for with snails, but the game also gives you multiple ways to get food tickets that not only allow you to increase your rate of experience gain (so you can get snails much quicker), but also increase your monetary payout after winning a game.