Why Reddit Believes The Starbucks For Life Game Is A Sham

If you've been collecting stickers all month for Starbuck's annual Starbucks For Life game, the intrepid rule readers over at Reddit have some bad news. Starbucks For Life is a game for Starbucks Rewards members that involves collecting stickers over the course of a month to win a variety of prizes. There are things as small as bonus Stars all the way up to larger wins like a $1,000 Delta gift card, and of course, the grand prize, which the company defines as one free food item or standard drink a day for the next 30 years. Even if it's not technically for life, that's a pretty amazing score. So, of course Starbucks die-hards are all itching to collect those stickers.

But on a recent Reddit post, users have been discussing revelations from the fine print on the game that show just how unlikely winning really is. User PM_CTD has a long post outlining the actual odds for each prize, and surprise surprise, it looks like Starbucks isn't too keen on giving out a ton of free drinks, with only five grand prizes being available no matter how many people play. The anger of the post, and the "sham" aspect of this, however, is less about how rare winning is than the sticker system itself. Because each big prize needs three stickers to win, users will often collect the first two very quickly, but then find themselves getting repeat stickers and never actually claiming the final one they need, no matter how many Cold Brews, Peppermint Mochas, or Starbucks pastries they down.

Of course, this system is a classic design for encouraging people to play sweepstakes, because, as PM_CTD put it on Reddit, "Starbucks makes it seem like you're so close to winning a big prize, to encourage you to spend more and get more entries, but the truth is, you're far from winning." And while this may seem shady to some, and it certainly is manipulative, it's also nothing new. As another commenter explained in the replies, "Anyone who was alive during McDonald's Monopoly shouldn't be surprised by this concept. Everyone got Park Place." And that's exactly right. Instead of making each winning piece equally likely, odds games juice participation. 

This gets you buying more McDonald's burgers or popular Starbucks drinks by making some pieces more common than they should be, and they balance it out by making other pieces incredibly rare. For example, if you need two pieces to win a prize, McDonald's or Starbucks can make the odds one in 1,000,000 by making the odds of getting each piece one in 1,000. Instead, they give out one piece one in 10 times, and then make the second piece one in 100,000. Same odds, but more people think they are close to winning because they got the first piece, so people keep playing. For the more skeptical among us, this kind of manipulation won't come as a shock, but let it be a reminder to always read the fine print.