We all know there are plenty of games on Facebook, like recent hits Farmville, Mafia wars and Texas HoldEm poker, all created by game company Zynga.

Zynga’s revenue model is entirely based on players buying virtual goods - like gaining quick access to more land in farm-game Farmville - to enhance their game experience and competitiveness. What you perhaps didn’t know, is that besides buying virtual currency with credit card or Paypal, Zynga signed a deal with Offerpal last month to allow players to do survey’s to receive virtual currency.

Trade a few minutes of your time for some virtual currency bucks. Sounds like a good deal right? Well, we’re not quite sure about that. Offerpal Media allows third party’s to create surveys for their platform. One of the bigger third party is Celldorado, (a quick Google search shows Spyware related results for the name, but we’re not certain if that’s linked) which give the user the impression that they receive virtual currency for the survey, but they are actually signing terms for a paid SMS subscription that could cost you up to 27 Euro (40 Dollars). Suddenly, that small payment turned in a big game investment!

Considering the idea that these games are also played by children and tweens, whom are not aware of little letters in terms – we think it is despicable that they allow this to happen on their network.

Thus, we have contacted Offerpal regarding their deceptive surveys and were told: “We’ve got about a thousand surveys in our system, and yes, some of them offer an incentive that requires a subscription tied to your mobile phone. Most, however, do not.” To us, this sounds like they are turning a blind eye to such malpractitioners. Guess that Facebook will keep offering these payment methods for now. We have put the following video up to make Zynga game players, Offerpal and others aware that companies that provide surveys, like Celldorado, are asking ridiculous amounts of subscription fee.

(picture CC by brendanwood , pictures used in video CC by )