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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'

#301

Post by tialaramex »

foldingmoney wrote: post #252
fkdo wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my right as a member of a democracy to call out when a company is doing something unethical with the hope of swaying the opinion of my peers against such business practices. It's my privilege to do so on this platform. This type of behavior is unethical which is an entirely different thing than illegal. I hope we can adjust regulations on the market to make such behavior illegal. I have this hope because I don't…

Yes, I probably should have framed my answer more carefully. My point wasn't that people shouldn't complain about this stuff. My point was just that businesses, by their nature, are sociopathic (regardless of whether anyone who works at them is a sociopath).

This isn't true. It's actively _weird_ that some people insist it's true. Most businesses are set up for some actual reason and their founders weren't thinking "I wonder how I can get lots of money given I have no ethical precepts whatsoever"

My current CEO has actually ranted about this at some length, that he'll run into people in the same game (startup founders pitching for investment or to find early customers) and some of them really do think the point of what they're doing is to get money. What is the _money_ for, idiots? Did you just really want lots of pictures of the Queen? No? Then your whole ethos is pointless busywork.

Even people who have a goal that I think is silly, like Musk's colony on Mars, at least that's actually a goal. You can look at things and say "That helps with the goal" (e.g. re-usable launch vehicle) or "That does not help" (e.g. accusing random people who disagree with you on twitter of being criminals).

If you just need to buy food and pay rent then, fine, whatever, work for the psychopath business that is just acquiring money for no discernible purpose. But if you've got to a point where you can pick, go find a business that has a purpose you at least mostly agree with.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#302

Post by IntegralCalcs »

Growing up I was often nervous of accidentally purchasing something in an app store or other online accounts. Free trials will not always notify you when your free trial is up and your payments will automatically go through. Personally I believe regulations are necessary in order to avoid accidental payments for expensive applications.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#303

Post by enterx »

As a previous employee of one of the biggest free to play game companies i felt pretty bad.

What parents aren't aware of is the fact that game companies except the developers employ professional PhD psychologists to take advantage of people - mostly kids.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#304

Post by apatters »

olalonde wrote: post #285
toomanybeersies wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root cause of addiction is the same, whether it's a behavioural addiction like video games, exercise, gambling, or sex, or drugs. It's reward seeking behaviour trying to cause a rise in dopamine levels. The physiological effects of substance abuse is generally worse, but the cause is the same, from my experience and people I know the root cause is underlying psychological issues that cause people to engage in sel…

Your armchair theory is wrong though. The root cause of nicotine, hard drugs and alcohol addiction is overwhelmingly physical, not psychological.

As far as I understand this statement is inaccurate in regards to alcohol (I'm not sure about the other drugs).

Psychological and physical dependency are two separate things. Alcohol addiction normally begins with psychological dependency and may or may not progress to a physical dependency too: https://goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions/drinking-...

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#305

Post by robin_reala »

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…

Apple’s curation programme is Apple Arcade: https://www.apple.com/apple-arcade/ . The takeaway headline: “No ads. No in‑app purchases.”

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#306

Post by megous »

Konnstann wrote: post #72
megous wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who spends the price of an iPhone (per month, for months on end) on some stupid game? One (game dev) would have to be very much full of it, to assume this is legit. And, that they never responded to the parents tells it all.

People who can buy an iPhone a month for months on end and not care. One of my friends is a whale, he just doesn't really care about the expense.

I doubt it's all that common, though.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#307

Post by ialexpw »

Duriel wrote: post #267
dmix wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about phone companies with limited data plans? A friend of mine had his kid use his iPhone's hotspot and got a $800 bill connecting it to his tablet to watch movies while on vacation. Is this the phone companies fault because the person let his kid know his iPhone password?

I wouldn’t say its the phone company’s fault directly but did they even try to contact your friend in any way to let them know that their bill is now 2, 3, 4 or even 5 times bigger than usual?

I mean, why should they? Most phone companies allow you to set budgets, I do not see this as an issue with the phone company in this scenario at all. As other people have said, parents should be monitoring their kids spending (if at all), most stores have an option to require the password - I do not see why this is not enough.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#308

Post by kalleboo »

ldoughty wrote: post #232
Lazare wrote: post #229

I think an obvious solution here is simply to strengthen consumer protection laws and shift the burden of preventing this from the consumer to the vendor. The common thread in all these stories was "a kid spends a bunch of money, parent asks for a refund, is told no". But consider if the law says that digital goods such as this must be refunded on demand unless you can prove the purchaser wasn't a child. (If you want…

I think parents need to understand that you can't give children a credit card, or credit-card like power. I was 14 before I was given access to a credit card.. and was given a dire warning about when it could and should be used. If parents can't lock out purchases so they have to physically approve each purchase, then yes, they should be able to get refunds and penalties... But if they give their children the passwor…

> It would take Apple, Google, Steam, etc.

Ironically Apple used to have this feature, but removed it when they added the Family Sharing "ask parent for approval" feature.

https://9to5mac.com/2016/04/14/apple-to-end-itunes-allowance...

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#309

Post by FreezerburnV »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #167

I strongly believe that video games today are comparable to alcohol in the 60's. Y'know, how people in the 60's would say "Oh Johnny just likes his liquor" when Johnny's drinking at 9AM, drunk at 10 and hungover by 2. Right now we have people who are facing serious problems with video games, and yet we brush them off casually and callously. I can't count the number of stories on reddit about playing video games all d…

I, personally, feel somewhat offended by this characterization. While it’s true that I can stay up too late playing some video games (have to be specific ones to get me invested enough), I can do the same for other things like binge-watching anime. (And the root cause is my mild depression anyway or my ADHD depending on activity, I believe) But the current vast majority of what I do when playing games is honest practice and effort to reach a semi-pro level at my chosen game. And there are actual careers being made by the pro players of the game, or streamers playing it. On top of that, by learning how to play this team-based game more effectively, I’ve encountered a surprising number of lessons that apply outside of the game. (How to interact with “unpleasant” people, how to make suggestions without making someone feel belligerent and do the opposite, how “expending” a resource first puts you in a worse situation, etc) And on top of that making new friends by playing with the same people for months in a competitive environment. You can learn a lot of practical things, including discipline and dedication, from trying to improve to be a higher level player.

Granted this is a specific “track” that most are likely not going to be following, but I think some lessons apply even if you just want to improve and get a higher “Elo rating”. And there can be negative interactions, just like almost anything in this world can become unhealthy for someone. But I think the vast majority of people can interact with video games in a healthy way that helps them destress, or cope with something in life, or whatever else. Seeing the “overwhelming numbers of reddit posts” feels almost like confirmation bias, or at least just seeing something that feels like a problem when it’s likely affecting less than 0.1% of people playing video games. On the flip side I’ve read stories in the past about how video games have saved lives, because it gave people something to live for in a horrible part of their lives. And when they get to a bettering place, they’re able to interact with them in a much healthier way because they themselves are in a healthier place.

Anyway, this is a big rambly thing I typed on a phone, so it’s hopefully cohesive and understandable. But I felt a need to give an opposite perspective from someone who has never been able to dedicate their free time to anything for more than a week or something until I found a competitive game I wanted to make a run at getting into at least the semi-pro scene with, maybe even someday the pro scene.

EDIT: And I have a healthy life outside of the game too. I’m married with a wife who is supporting me in getting better at this game, I hold the job making the vast majority of our money, have a healthy relationship with family on both my and her side, have good friends, help around the house, etc. I’m not just sitting in a dark parents basement playing games all day. But I do put a lot of hours into it because it’s whats necessary to get better, and maybe I’m choosing to trade that time for some other thing, but it’s a choice I’ve consciously made for improvement, much like someone here might make that choice to build a product. I shouldn’t be “shamed” for building one skill while someone doing almost exactly the same thing but in an “approved” arena is lauded.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#310

Post by jotm »

plankers wrote: post #237
bboreham wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2FA will be required across the EU in September (outside of some exemptions, eg a charge under €30) https://www.barclaycard.co.uk/business/news-and-insights/wha...

I was about to say this won't help at all with the microtransaction problem detailed in the article, but then I read your link and found this more complete (although confusing) description of the exemption you name: >single transactions must be less than €30, up to a maximum of €100 or five transactions It's the "or" there that I don't quite understand. Does this mean that any 5 transactions can be made without 2FA a…

Limit is 100 Euros, or 5 transactions. Reach either = 2FA. Single transaction limit is 30Eur. If higher = 2FA.
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