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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'

#311

Post by iamthepieman »

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 agree with the similarities with regard to addiction. But the mode of delivery is very very different. You can drink enough hard liquor to get drunk and satisfy the addiction cravings in 30 minutes or less and that 30 minutes of drinking(which you can also do while doing other things) will effect you for the next several hours. If you played video games for 30 minutes a day that would be a "healthy" amount in most cases.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#312

Post by FerretFred »

In the UK there's tremendous lip-service by the gambling industry about keeping vulnerable people safe from becoming addicted to gambling apps.

However, they spend millions constantly promoting any number of gambling apps disguised as games to children. Not just on the Internet, but on daytime TV, where you get a commercial break every 5-10 minutes. I have no idea how they get away with it - the "Regulator" must be asleep.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#313

Post by kalleboo »

dmix wrote: post #250
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…

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?

Yes, being able to accidentally cause $800 overages is terribly anti-consumer.

After it continually happened to people roaming, the EU by law instated a cap where the operators need to request an SMS confirmation once the overages hit a certain cost.

For domestic data, I can't remember the last time I saw a plan that didn't just cap your speeds once you hit your data cap.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#314

Post by 0x76 »

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…

This is a great case for debit cards, here in the Netherlands those are much more common than credit cards, so children (in my experience) learn to be better with money because you can't spend what you don't have, and if all they have is a couple of bucks of pocket money the potential loss is also far less.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#315

Post by pdpi »

apatters wrote: post #304
olalonde wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

> and may or may not progress to a physical dependency too

On the other hand, DT is the only form of withdrawal syndrome that can outright kill you, and alcohol is, generally speaking, one of the most dangerous drugs from which to withdraw.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#316

Post by sdwa »

ahje wrote: post #249
sdwa wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These games are literally designed to exploit vulnerable people, and they use every trick in the book to do it. Criticising parents for not being able to defend against the fruits of millions of hours of labour spent on marketing and r&d which exists solely to exploit is honestly shameful, as if parenting isn't difficult enough already. Do you really think gaming companies exploiting children by introducing them to g…

I agree with what you are saying, I really do, but it's still a really bad idea to give a child access to an store account connected to a credit or debit card. This problem needs to be solved in both ends.

Indeed, but it's only such a truly awful idea exactly because there are a lot of predators out there with no morals looking to prey on children. If a kid went into a physical shop with a credit card and tried to buy something, he wouldn't get anywhere.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#317

Post by megla_ »

nexuist wrote: post #149
ryandrake wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t they all say “$10,000+” in that case? Are there really any games out there that stop you before you make a purchase saying “You already spent $100 this month. Please don’t give us any more of your money!”

For apps that have their own currency, it's of course possible to spend $10k+. But before every exploitative game hopped on the custom currency bandwagon, you used to be able to buy skins/guns/characters/etc. outright with real money. If my game allowed you to buy 5 characters each worth $10, then I could accurately claim the max IAP profit from each user for me would be $50.

But you're talking about one-time purchases, which is common for apps, but not so much for games. But even in apps you have monthly subscriptions that still somewhat skew the way you perceive the price. What's the max IAP profit for Netflix or Spotify? (Subscriptions bought through the app still net a cut to the store provider.)

Virtual currencies are a scam on its own, but even games without them can be exploitative. The monetization of games has become so frequent, that's it's basically accepted as something ordinary. I've noticed that some developers don't even bother creating a currency anymore, you just get the Playstore € prompt for the item you want to buy.

Most free games are built on the premise that it's never-ending or always expanding. Either you can upgrade to infinity or keep playing, because they keep adding new content. I don't think I've ever stumbled upon a game where you have limited things to buy.

The only solution I see, which is just plain unrealistic, is to put IAP apps into a seperate category. I've started doing this, by not downloading apps that have the "Includes IAP" and I'm pretty satisfied. I don't think any game/app should be qualified as FREE, if half of it is locked behind a paywall.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#318

Post by Aenyn »

ialexpw wrote: post #307
Duriel wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In this case it's a roaming surcharge not the kid spending money in the store.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#319

Post by vorpalhex »

ska wrote: post #124
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?

The problem I think is the all-or-nothing aspect. So you trade off convenience for safety and it mostly works out but the worst case is worse than many people think it could be. Why, for example, can you as a parent not set an (even global) spending limit on in app purchases? Why can't you disable in-app purchases per app? I think the answer to those sorts of questions is pretty easy to come up with. Lot's of things…

How inconvenient is it to type your password in to buy stuff?

Disable unauthed purchases if a kid plays with your device.

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