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'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#111

Post by Waterluvian »

thom wrote: post #109
djhworld wrote: post #12

The amount of crap in the app stores that encourage this sort of behaviour is truly, truly shocking. The gaming community often lambast companies like EA etc for loot boxes ("surprise mechanics"), which is definitely a problem that needs to go away, but from this article I suspect there's a lot of examples of absolute bottom of the barrel shovelware on the app stores that's raking it in from accidental purchases from…

I have to explicitly approve every install and purchase on my kids' iPod Touches. I don't know if they would need a fingerprint on my phone to be able to spend money there, but I assume all the tools are in place to control this sort of behaviour. Apple really need to make it clearer and easier for people.

They could make that the default behavior. But I suspect someone whose mandate is moneymaking would veto it.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#113

Post by dom96 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #96
madeofpalk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But still though, they gave the kid their credit card. If you don't want your kid to spend £3000 then don't give it to them? Not defending any particular app's behaviour. Without any first hand knowledge, I certainly believe that there are scummy games out there using dubious methods to get people to rack up IAP.

> they gave the kid their credit card These systems are set up so you really don’t have much choice, though. My son will come to me and say, “Dad, I have some money from Grandma, can I use it to buy willywhacker 2 for my iPod?” I’ll say, “sure” - then he’ll hand me the $5 he got from Grandma and I’ll type my credit card number into wherever the game expects it to be and try to check the “don’t remember this card for…

Can't you buy him a gift card?

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#114

Post by commandlinefan »

JD557 wrote: post #97
commandlinefan wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they gave the kid their credit card These systems are set up so you really don’t have much choice, though. My son will come to me and say, “Dad, I have some money from Grandma, can I use it to buy willywhacker 2 for my iPod?” I’ll say, “sure” - then he’ll hand me the $5 he got from Grandma and I’ll type my credit card number into wherever the game expects it to be and try to check the “don’t remember this card for…

This seems like a nice use case for virtual credit cards with a very strict limit (just create one with $5).

Yeah, there are also gift cards you can buy at the grocery store (for a $5 activation fee!), but I've actually found that a lot of merchants don't accept them - they have some way of telling which credit cards are "unlimited" and which are gift cards and just rejecting the gift cards as "suspected fraud".

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#115

Post by notus »

iMerNibor wrote: post #104
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you ever use a debit card over a credit card?

As a european my question is exactly the opposite, why would you ever use a credit card if you can just pay directly with the money you have? The concept just seems to bizzare as someone who has grown up with their country specific bank cards - getting a credit card or even a visa/mastercard debit card is something fairly unusual. I do realize you american people have to build a credit score and there's cashback sche…

Well one reason people use credit cards a lot in the US is that it is much easier to dispute a payment charged to a credit card then it is a debit card. Additionally a charge on a credit card is not money you currently have it is more potential money, whereas a charge on a debit card is tied directly to your bank account and can take a while to be returned in the case of fraud. At one point you used to be basically SOL if fraud occurred using your debit card.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#116

Post by dahdum »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #58
vorpalhex wrote: post #6

But how do you tell the difference between an adult and a kid with their parents password and bank card? If you trust your kid with your bank account and get burned.. isn't that kind of on you?

Well... There is no way to distinguish between an adult and a kid with their parents' credentials. If the precedent gets set that you can buy in-game currency and then reverse the charge on the grounds that that was your friend's kid, not you, what will happen? All I see is that it becomes tougher to offer games that are monetized in this style, which seems like a positive effect. So assigning responsibility to the p…

> then reverse the charge on the grounds that that was your friend's kid, not you, what will happen

I think they’d start asking for the police report in that case, or telling you to call your CC company to report the unauthorized transactions.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#117

Post by pintxo »

djhworld wrote: post #74
schnevets wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just having an internal debate about the merits of a spending cap. I'm not usually one for such blunt regulation, but there really is no way to justify spending +$100 on mobile games daily unless an individual is addicted, deceived, or in some other way psychologically manipulated. Although society would probably benefit from similar caps in casinos, and I doubt that regulation will ever arrive be legislated.

I remember hearing about one guy asking his bank to essentially block any gambling transaction as he was an addict https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45652429 Obviously there are ways to cirumvent that but it seemed to help him. I suspect it's harder to block these in app purchases at the bank level though, unless everything goes through Apple/Google pay and you block at that level

In Germany you can set yourself on the black list of your local casino or whatever. It‘s a legally required feature.

https://www.verspiel-nicht-dein-leben.de/spielsucht/spielers...

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#118

Post by kzzzznot »

djhworld wrote: post #74
schnevets wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just having an internal debate about the merits of a spending cap. I'm not usually one for such blunt regulation, but there really is no way to justify spending +$100 on mobile games daily unless an individual is addicted, deceived, or in some other way psychologically manipulated. Although society would probably benefit from similar caps in casinos, and I doubt that regulation will ever arrive be legislated.

I remember hearing about one guy asking his bank to essentially block any gambling transaction as he was an addict https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45652429 Obviously there are ways to cirumvent that but it seemed to help him. I suspect it's harder to block these in app purchases at the bank level though, unless everything goes through Apple/Google pay and you block at that level

Most gambling software has self-banning (for time periods) functionality also btw

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#119

Post by maze-le »

nabergh wrote: post #105
maze-le wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost fell into such a trap before. I knew about the mechanics, but I was willing to give the developers the benefit of a doubt. And so I started playing, and after a while started to acquire shortcuts with money. Once, twice and at the verge of the third time, I realized what I was doing and stopped immediately. The money you use is never much, but that is just part of the design to make you throw out even more -…

> I would definitely be hooked on that particular game and still throwing money out for -- not much but a faster reward-cycle. Do you think that's an inherently bad thing? Maybe it was for you at the time but I feel like the ability to reliably turn money into entertainment (in this case "a faster reward-cycle") is a great thing to have available to people who already have their basic needs met.

No, not necessarily. It depends on each individual and the circumstances they are in. Its like with drugs, if you have a healthy social circle, a relationship / family you care about and a stable and productive work-environment, it will be a lot harder to get you addicted to the rewards of micro-transactions.

>> I feel like the ability to reliably turn money into entertainment (...) is a great thing to have

Yes, definitely. Each and every person can use (or learn to use) these games responsibly -- Not only games -- books, videos you name it -- like most people here I have a steam account, amazon prime, audible and a few other amenities where I wouldn't use my money in a compulsory manner. But a lot of free-to-play games have these little tweaks, that make it so very easy to spend money and don't even think twice about it. The occasional invite to start a transaction, placed at strategic "blockers" where you'll otherwise have to wait for 24h to advance can already be enough.

The crucial thing is to know about these mechanisms and have some sense of introspection into ones own behavior -- these skills can be learned.

EDIT: After I read some of the other responses and thought about it -- it is also important for us all, to acknowledge that some of these mechanisms do work like drugs -- neurochmically. And like with drugs prohibitions are counterproductive -- but a good effort in regulation might be a good step forward -- I've read very good examples in the other parts of this thread regarding a step like this.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#120

Post by ska »

djhworld wrote: post #64
madeofpalk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe any transaction should have a 2FA style system It does - at least on Apple devices, IAP need to be authenticated with a physical interaction, and Touch/Face ID.

I was thinking more as in, sending the approval to a separate device, but obviously that wouldn't work if you just have one device that you let your kids play on.

I think Apple already (can) do that - but as you note it doesn't help with a shared device.
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