FOMO
Also said as Fear of missing out, Limited-time pressure, Daily login pressure
The worry that you are missing something other people are getting. Przybylski and colleagues gave it a formal scale in 2013. In games it is deliberately created by things that will not come back.
It brings people back, and it can also make the game feel like a job. The scale measures a general anxiety about social life, not a response to game design, so treat claims about what game FOMO does to players with care. What you can say for certain is what the design asks of them: look at the calendar below.
Say it
“Do not make the limited skin vanish forever. Put it in the shop a year later for everyone. And let streaks survive one missed day in seven, so holidays do not break them.”
Where you’ve seen it
Destiny 2's seasonal content used to be removed when seasons ended, and many players wrote about the pressure to finish it in time. Fortnite's battle pass rewards run on the same kind of deadline.
Not to be confused with live event
A one-off in-game concert is a shared moment that you can miss with no lasting penalty. FOMO design makes the missing cost you something permanent, like an exclusive reward.