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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'

#131

Post by _nalply »

In civil law countries it is outright illegal for purchases of children going through if parents disapprove.

For example art. 19 Swiss Civil Code (https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19070042/...) says: «[...] may only enter into obligations [...] with the consent of their legal representative.»

In other words, children can only «buy» things if parents don't object.

However I can imagine that it is sometimes simply impossible to get the monay back. National law as empty words.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#132

Post by darkpuma »

nine_k wrote: post #67
fortran77 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of this is "bad parenting", but games that say they're OK for 3 year olds (like the mini-golf game described in the article) shouldn't make it easy for a 3 year old to spend money. I have less sympathy for the high-school and college kids who did this.

A three-years-old should not have an ability to spend money using a card, period. Much like a three-years-old should not have an ability to light matches, or push a screwdriver into a power socket, or operate a chainsaw.

If a three year old came into your hardware store waving his mother's credit card and assured the staff that he had parental permission to buy a chainsaw, would you fire the employee that sold him that chainsaw? Or would you, like the company in question in this article, refuse to respond to phone calls from that confused mother?

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#133

Post by mac_was »

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?

Did you read the article at all? A game says it is for 3 years old and above and it uses trickery to manipulate a 5 year old into thinking that real money is just game coins. How are you supposed to control that?

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#135

Post by Retric »

thom wrote: post #121
Waterluvian wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Has anyone done a breakdown of Apple's profit from hardware vs (in-)app purchases? Feels like this is a situation where they're not selling the devices as loss leaders, and could easily improve people's experiences and perceptions by cracking down a bit, without it really costing them much. Feels along the same lines as the privacy push - they _could_ make lots of money selling your data, but they're selling the peac…

That is somewhat misleading as some apps are essentially shareware, aka free with a single in app purchase to the the full version.

I think Apple would be well served by limiting in app purchases to either 200$ over the lifetime of app or 20$ per month. That would get rid of most bad press without costing them much. They could even then allow specific exceptions on a case by case basis.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#136

Post by cced »

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…

Can the use of the term “surprise mechanics” not in itself lead to some definition of gambling? eg.: Gamblers continuously perform some behaviour in order to activate some sort of “surprise circuit” within the mind?

Surely their definition is not too far from that of gambling or the mechanics of the circuits activated by gambling/surprises, within the mind.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#137

Post by oposa »

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).

There is a lot you can do, but you shouldn't have to. This isn't someone burning down their school. This is the first world becoming the third world in digital.

In the third world you always to watch yourself so you don't hurt, scammed or abused with little recourse. So being curious, doing something different or challenging the status quo becomes a liability. Eventually there isn't much development at all, only corruption and people knowing their place.

When you buy something in a store with cash in person, after having it shown by an employee, you can still in most cases return the thing at your will. But when some clicks a button moving a few bytes with a digital payment that in reality costs nothing, there is of course nothing that can be done. This industry is just increasingly rubbish.

Don't click this, don't open that e-mail and don't answer the phone. You don't know who it is from or who it is going to. Don't have that password, don't type it there, don't have it too long and don't make it too short. We can automate your job, but not authentication. Don't publish that, don't vote like this and don't live here. Know your place.

(At least my banks haven't offered virtual cards for many years).

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#138

Post by darkpuma »

dx87 wrote: post #59
willk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These games were not just on Apple's platform. I think these types of games are predatory. What is wrong with just selling a whole game? It is hard to find any game these days that comes out complete. Blizzard did it with Star Craft 2 and for that reason, I refused to buy it.

Companies do it because you make more money for less effort, it's called games as a service. Instead of having to develop a game from scratch every few years and hope the income lasts until their next release, they create a game that they can use as a platform for expansions and microtransactions to provide consistent income over 7-10 years. Young gamers are getting so used to it that I've seen them call people entit…

> " Young gamers are getting so used to it "

Young consumers of all sorts are participants in a war many of them don't even realize exists. A war in which their opposition are marketing professionals, trained in psychology in universities to trick and exploit children. Against this, a lot of kids don't stand a chance. And it seems the marketers sleep at night by blaming the parents for failing to protect their children from predators like themselves, or by making what they (mistakenly) believe to be favorable analogies to other predatory industries targeting children, such as "collectable card games" or 900 number "video game tip lines."

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#139

Post by maze-le »

ohyes wrote: post #127
nabergh wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In that case, what’s wrong with heroine? You’re just sticking entertainment into your arm. (This is intentionally hyperbolic). This issue isn’t really the money -> gratification conversion, it’s the addictive nature of the process. If I’ve done everything I can to addict you to my product (to remove your ability to decide for yourself)... I’m in a morally bad area. I’m of the opinion that some of these addictive resp…

That is a very bad example. In Switzerland, if you are a severe addict, you can get heroine in pharmacies. The most important restriction is that if you buy the stuff, you are also bound to go to a therapeutic clinic and have staff assisting you whenever you want to withdraw. There are also clean injection rooms and other social mechanisms that help you get off the stuff.

The result -- fewer heroine addicts, fewer drug-related crime, less active criminal underworld (because of lower drug-related income).

An adult discourse and proper handling of addiction and substance abuse not only helps the addicts, but the whole society.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#140

Post by ACow_Adonis »

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.

Does it still look like such a good thing of you're already in a world that is capable of supplying almost unlimited free entertainment (or education, for that matter). I mean, I'd say the preference for entertainment over education is somewhat depressing/pathological, but let's leave that 'elitist' position behind...

In times passed we had a limited supply of literature, music, games, even god forbid, TV and movies. But these days we can put those on mediums that practically never degrade, and the rate of production has gone through the roof, and the producers of many of those goods are either dead and gone or there is no way to get money to them for their work, and we have the technical means to get them to whoever could want them at an almost zero marginal cost.

In that environment, a population that clocks time mindlessly feeding dollars to another party looks pretty sick. Which is, it would be my contention, is exactly what they are.

It is essentially the same as the old and uneducated who pump billions of dollars through the mindless gambling machines in my country. Not a image of humanity anyone would talk about with anything approaching pride/respect. Frankly, we should be ashamed...

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