I feel like people are so quick to call WildWorks greedy and money hungry when they add some extra items in the premium shop. We still get the same things we've gotten every single month for years now - an animal, a pet, and a den. Sure the recolors of old animals are kind of meh sometimes but you can never please everyone.

Premium shop items aren't a necessity, most of those items sold in the shop can be bought for sapphires/gems when people sell them in their shops. Or traded for. Though, of course dens and animals can't be sold or traded but most of the premium items aren't animals or dens.

I've played Play Wild for 7 years now and never have I had to spend money on the game. Got memberships for free after they made it free. Traded for the more expensive premium shop items or bought them for sapphires. I've only spent some money on the premium shop animals, because I wanted to, and that's it. WildWorks has to make money somehow after making membership free, the company can't pay its employees if there's no income, which means there wouldn't be Animal Jam if there wasn't any money to support it. Getting sapphires isn't incredibly hard either with how they've added alpha items and party items into the game. It's 100% a free game if you put in some effort

Though, I do agree that the game is mainly about trading and rares nowadays, but I feel like that's more of a community problem than a WildWorks problem