Black market
An illicit or restricted trading channel offering rare, stolen, or otherwise unavailable goods at a premium, usually with legal or reputational risk attached to using it. Escape from Tarkov's flea market restrictions and traders' black-market offers, alongside Fallout: New Vegas's underworld dealings, both use the concept to gate powerful items behind risk, cost, or faction standing rather than simple currency. Designers use black markets to create an alternate, higher-risk economic path distinct from ordinary vendors, to give reputation and morality systems teeth (only criminals or the desperate deal here), and to add narrative texture to the game's economy. Key decisions: what's exclusively available there (items too powerful or lore-sensitive for normal vendors), consequences for engaging with it (bounties, faction hostility, legal risk in-fiction), pricing premiums that reflect the risk, and whether access requires unlocking through reputation or discovery. Pitfall: a black market that's just a reskinned normal shop with higher prices and no actual risk or exclusivity wastes the premise — the danger or exclusivity must be real to justify the framing.
- Dev effort: Small
- Timing: Real-time or turn-based
- Common in: survival, rpg
Seen in
- Escape from Tarkov
- Fallout: New Vegas