Short version: my wife has been playing this game on her phone. It’s a sort of Tetris-y wood block puzzle game. Turns out it used up about 15GB of our limited data plan this month. How could this one game use that much data?
Longer version: my wife and I have this ongoing argument about her data usage. We have an old limited data plan, 12GB a month, and pay out the wazoo for each additional GB that we go over. And when we do go over, it is almost always her phone.
Got a text alert the other day that we were close to our data limit. I logged into our account and checked the usage, and it showed my phone at around half a GB and my wife’s phone with a whopping 20. So we looked at her phone to see what apps were using the data, and this Qblocks game had used 15GB. I can’t imagine why a fairly simple phone game should be using that much data. It must be constantly downloading something in the background (and possibly even when she’s not actively playing the game?). I asked her to delete it, because that’s just nuts.
I haven’t played it myself, but I would assume it is like many other phone games I play - banner ads at the top or bottom, and/or short video ads after every few rounds. But I’ve never played a game that sucked up that much data, and it doesn’t appear to be terribly resource-intensive, so I’m just baffled. I may have to install it and play it a bit just to see if I can figure out what’s going on.
Most likely ads. Could be background operations or just the periodic game interrupting ads. There might be settings that will stop some of it. If you really like the game get an unlimited data plan.
I’m seeing lots of reviews complaining about the frequency of ads in this game. That’s the likely culprit.
My phone has settings that can restrict data usage of apps that aren’t actively being used. It’s possible that it’s doing a lot of background downloading.
There are also different kinds of ads. Some are just animated banners, some are full video, and some actually push a partial and functional version of the advertised app or game that you can interact with in the ad window. I don’t know if the app owner can preferentially show different types of ads for different payment, but if this app is somehow leaning on the “fattest” ads, that would suck up a ton of data.
Agreed, best case lots of bad ads. Worst case, it installed something that is sending a lot of data somewhere from a trojan or similar. In either case, especially with a limited data plan, I suggest installing AdGuard. Yes, it’s somewhat expensive, but the family plan can work on both your phones and computers. Blocks lots and lots of ads, including most or all in-app ads.
Yeah, in all seriousness if you have a free game that should be fairly lightweight but takes up a lot of space and it’s growing, that data is not for any good reason. That would be a major red flag for me. Even harmless bloat is still bloat, and you’re sacrificing storage for no good reason, but there’s a greater than zero chance that what’s being stored is itself harmful in some way.
That’s part of the problem - she’s been playing it while she’s sitting in the car waiting to pick the grandkids up after school.
I went ahead and switched us to an unlimited data plan, so I guess it’s kind of a moot point now, but I still think it was a good idea to have her remove it and I’m also thinking I should install and run MalwareBytes on her phone to see if she has picked up something nasty.