games

These things will earn you a pittance, far, far below minimum wage. It's not worth it if you want to make money. If you have time to play games for many hours in the hope of getting money from it, you'd be much better served with a part-time job.

Literally anything (dog walking, car washing, gardening, cleaning) will earn you 50 fold what you'd get from these scam apps.

They tend to lead you along with winnings and then stagnate when you're close to the minimum payout. You won't actually play that many games; the majority of the time you'll be watching ads.

Avoid like the plague.

tl;dr: not worth it. try to get a job if you can. even doing gig economy work pays better.

idk about proper testing most QA positions are "proper jobs" (they mostly get hired as contractors) but most of these "download apps and get paid" mobile platforms are just scams that are paying even below minimum wage in places like india and it's all designed to scam children and the elderly into wasting their time watching ads.

as for games that have "economies" like crypto games or some niche MMOs they either have high withdrawal fees and caps to keep the money in their ecosystem or because of broken incentives they are not lucrative to play anymore. at the top of the crypto boom you could make above minimum wage of Philippines in some of these games using accounts from "sponsors" (people that had money to buy the underlying shitcoins) but it's no longer feasible.

as for grinding in MMOs and selling your loot or coins on an off game platform (which is definitely against the terms of service of the game) again it doesn't pay enough. it may be enough for someone in venezuela or rural china to farm MMO gold coins for 40$ a month but for someone living in the US it isn't enough. also you most likely can't sell it directly to players and have to use intermediary platforms which are run by borderline criminals and there's no guarantee they don't just steal all your funds and run.

as for my last point, the allure of playing video games for cash has captured the minds of everyone since at least the 90s (you mean i can have fun and get paid? sign me up!) but in reality it's one of the most mind numbing activities one can perform. aside from the sheer mental fortitude required to handle 8 hours of non stop clicking things, it'll hurt you physically. it can be mild like eye fatigue and back pain to worse conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome and injury to the neck and the back alongside eye strain and worsening vision. it's a desk job where you have to focus at all times and you have to keep working to chase pennies.

I'm really sorry about your situation but it's simply just not feasible. look for other means of supporting yourself.

Almost all of those platforms are just exploitative, and more often than not scams of some kind. Best to treat it like online surveys and avoid them like the plague. https://www.youtube.com/@jauwn This guy does pretty good coverage of crypto and NFT games, and because of it has some very good explanations on why these types of play to earn games don't work.