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'My son spent £3,160 in one game' - BBC News

As politicians call for more regulation, you share your stories about children spending money within games.

www.bbc.co.uk

Last week we told the story of the family whose children emptied their parents' bank account buying players in the video game Fifa .

It generated a big debate about whether parental controls are sufficient, how much responsibility lies with mum and dad - and the ethics of encouraging young players to spend money within games and apps.

Following the BBC's report, deputy Labour leader Tom Watson tweeted calling for "tighter regulation" in gaming, saying there were "considerable fears that gaming is a gateway to gambling".


Damian Collins, chair of the DCMS select committee, which is currently investigating technology and addiction, told the BBC he believes the issue is "a real problem".

"I think there should be an obligation for the company to warn people about suspicious activity, like large increases in spending, just as banks warn their customers about unusual transactions," he said.

Here are some of the stories you shared with us.

My son spent £3,160 in one game
I have a 22 year-old disabled son, who has cerebral palsy, complex epilepsy, autism, learning difficulties and the approximate cognitive ability of a seven-year-old child.

He is unable to do any bilateral activities so relies heavily on his iPad and PlayStation for entertainment and educational activities.

He has recently been playing a game on his iPad called Hidden Artifacts which involves finding various items and matching them to the description.

He has been charged £3160.58 between 18 February and 30 May 2019, clearing out his entire savings.

I contacted iTunes, who were extremely helpful but were unable to refund the amount and suggested I contact Blastworks Ltd, the app developer and game provider. [Under European rules, Apple users in the EU can request to cancel an order within 14 days of purchase ].

I have phoned and emailed several times but have had no response.

It is extremely distressing that vulnerable people, such as my son, become victims of what is thought to be an educational game.

I have tried tirelessly to recoup his life savings but constantly come up against a brick wall.

Susie Breare, Hampshire

Basketball game cost our family £2,000
My 16-year-old son spent nearly £2,000 of my money on EA's NBA basketball game.

He used my bank card and I didn't realise until I had a payment declined.

He accessed the app via Google Play.

EA made no response to me and Google Play has a disclaimer about kids using parents' bank details without permission.

My daughter had to use her university savings to pay the bill for this and it has caused huge damage to our family.

Susan Taylor, Scotland

Our son spent £700 on Clash of Clans
This happened to us a few years ago when we were very new to all this. We are technically savvy but didn't think to put a password on and my son, who was 12, ended up spending around £700.

It was on his own phone and he managed to download Clash of Clans through a Google Play account, enter his own children's bank card details and buy lots of in-game items.

We didn't realise until we checked his bank statement and it was virtually empty. He did not realise the connection, that it was real money leaving his bank account.

We never got our money back, apart from a token amount as a gesture of goodwill.

Anon, West Sussex

My daughter installed the same game three times
My 11-year-old daughter has spent over £100 of my money in a day downloading apps that are the same.

I had Google Play blocked from accessing money from my account but recently they changed settings that somehow allowed my girl to spend money unauthorised. I had to contact the fraud team on three occasions to get money back.

The games my daughter was installing were horse games and Minecraft. She installed the same game three times.

I had no idea until I found my bank account was empty and checked my online statement.

My daughter is now [using] a closed system back on a PS3. No fraud, no online grooming and no bullying.

Julia Pennycuick, Edinburgh

"He was completely inconsolable"
I installed Mini Golf King on my phone for my son who is five. He knows he's not allowed to spend money in games, yet this game successfully tricked him into spending £300 on in-app purchases.

Fortunately, my card issuer blocked some of the transactions, but a purchase for £75 went through, along with a few smaller ones.

When my son realised that he'd spent real money, he was completely inconsolable, saying he was so sorry for being naughty and he thought they were pretend coins.

My refund request via Google Play was automatically rejected.

I explained that my son is autistic, and his disability makes him vulnerable (he doesn't really understand the concept of being manipulated and he wouldn't necessarily understand why people who make games want money).

Google said I should contact Mini Golf King, which said it did not generally refund in-app purchases once the purchased items had been used.

It offered to delete the account and submit a refund case to the store from which the purchases had been made, but said this would be non-reversible.

I have heard nothing since.

People will say "well, you should be supervising him". I was! I was in the room.

But the game is a children's game, rated PEGI 3 [suitable for players aged three and above].

I would allow him to watch a U-rated film and I assumed PEGI 3 games were safe to play with casual supervision.

Claire, West Yorkshire

My boy spent almost £1,000 on Fortnite
When he was 15, my boy spent almost £1,000 on Fortnite.

The issue was it was small cumulative amounts that don't seem significant until you add them up over eight months.

He doesn't have Fortnite any more... and my car will be clean for the next 15 years!

 

[Alexios]

I mean, yeah, some of those individuals need to be cared for more closely so this shit doesn't happen. Some of the predatory practices are shitty and should be ceased but things like a little girl buying the same apps over and over? Teach her or ban her from using the tablet or phone in that way. Maybe a solution can be an one-time complex procedure to enable purchases so people understand it's a damn big deal if you pass it around to random people in the household because even if you just want to buy this one cheap thing for yourself there are tons of expensive shit to buy on the same store so you should pay attention to avoid it happening without your consent? But you'd think people inputting their credit card details would pay enough attention to that shit anyway. If you wouldn't trust your credit card to that person why are you giving them a phone that can act as one?

 

[M.W.]

Digital babysitters are expensive

 

[GamesAreFun]

I mean, yeah, some of those individuals need to be cared for more closely so this shit doesn't happen. Some of the predatory practices are shitty and should be ceased but things like a little girl buying the same apps over and over? Teach her or ban her from using the tablet or phone in that way. Maybe a solution can be an one-time complex procedure to enable purchases so people understand it's a damn big deal if you pass it around to random people in the household because even if you just want to buy this one cheap thing for yourself there are tons of expensive shit to buy on the same store so you should pay attention to avoid it happening without your consent? But you'd think people inputting their credit card details would pay enough attention to that shit anyway. If you wouldn't trust your credit card to that person why are you giving them a phone that can act as one?

As a parent, one is very busy and a lot of people are virtually tech illiterate. It's easy to hook up your credit card to your Android/iOS account years back and forget it's then tied to every device you ever own automatically.

Instead of victim blaming parents and defending the predatory practice, the blame should lie squarely with the developers of such games. The mechanics are entirely designed around tricking vulnerable children and adults into buying "virtual currency" with nagging reminders and time-out mechanics unless you purchase.

And it's despicable that they refuse to refund when they know it was a small child who spent $1k on their virtual currency.

I hope the industry is strictly regulated and these mechanics completely banned when children are playing. It's a form of gambling.

 

[EightBit Man]

 

[Alexios]

As a parent, one is very busy and a lot of people are virtually tech illiterate. It's easy to hook up your credit card to your Android/iOS account years back and forget it's then tied to every device you ever own automatically.

Instead of victim blaming parents and defending the predatory practice, the blame should lie squarely with the developers of such games. The mechanics are entirely designed around tricking vulnerable children and adults into buying "virtual currency" with nagging reminders and time-out mechanics unless you purchase.

And it's despicable that they refuse to refund when they know it was a small child who spent $1k on their virtual currency.

I hope the industry is strictly regulated and these mechanics completely banned when children are playing. It's a form of gambling.

You quote me but don't respond to what I actually said. Where did I even begin to defend predatory practices? Was it when I said they should be ceased?

Understanding the difference between predatory practices and simply convenient to the user stores like Google Play is quite important.

I don't want a complex verification procedure legislated to take place every time I want to buy something because some people don't want to take 10 minutes to get it.

One might as well tell Amazon to get rid of one click checkout or whatever they call it because some dude's kid got on the PC and bought a bunch of shit he found on his door the next day.

 

[Tesseract]

the solution here imo, and i said this back in 2009 when predatory practices were starting, is to disable automatic billing / payment saving

just get rid of it, legislative oversight if you must

 

[DESTROYA]

That’s insane.
Life lesson, never have ant CC info tied to your account , get the prepaid cards and you have much more control on spending.
Predatory practices.

 

[bitbydeath]

The parents should know better.

 

[Aggelos]

What about Dead or Alive 5 and all the DLCs that are worth about $1200?

 

[GamesAreFun]

You quote me but don't respond to what I actually said. Where did I even begin to defend predatory practices? Was it when I said they should be ceased?

Understanding the difference between predatory practices and simply convenient to the user stores like Google Play is quite important.

I don't want a complex verification procedure legislated to take place every time I want to buy something because some people don't want to get it.

One might as well tell Amazon to get rid of one click checkout or whatever they call it because some dude's kid got on the PC and bought a bunch of shit he found on his door the next day.

You blamed both the child and the parents.

 

[Tesseract]

The parents should know better.

come on man, they don't know better, children are always a step ahead of their parents with technology

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

I knew this guy that was rich so he didn't give a fuck and would spend like 12k on fucking FateGO.

 

[Ol'Scratch]

This does suck, but how long are parents going to get a free pass for not knowing better. "Oh we just never bothered to learn". Every single one of these situations sans a handful could have been avoided by parents not putting their credit card number into a system. Not bothering to learn even just the most vital parts of a device that costs $100 + should not be just given a free pass because as long as this happens it keeps happening. People depend on this excuse, there are entire businesses founded on this excuse. Kids can get around parental controls to look at titties, kids can do alot, and yes kids can steal parent's credit card and then it is 100% on them. Until then it is on the parent. People love to vilify the companies because it is alot easier than admitting that parents are lazy fucks who are too stupid to rtfm.

 

[InterMusketeer]

I find it difficult to have sympathy for the victims in cases like these. Yeah, microtransactions suck ass, and they prey on stupid people to get ridiculous amounts of money. It's very simple though: Don't let your kid play shitty games and get them a GameBoy or DS or somethng instead. These stories have been appearing regularly since like 2010 or so. This is not news. It's been happening for about a decade now. People are aware that in-app purchases exist. Everyone and their grandmother is using smartphones and knows about this stuff. Parents should check the apps children are installing, have a conversation with them about the payments, and unlink their CC or put a password on there. It's just part of being a responsible parent.

 

[ThatGamingDude]

Being in IT and being a part of meetings where these predatory practices are conceived, I can see it being a two part problem.

A) Parents do need to be educated on the devices that their children are using. Do they need to be at a professional level? No, absolutely not, but awareness of how the device you purchased works and how to configure it is something essential when handing your child a device.
It comes back to that "Pedos are online and doing bad things to your kids," sort of thing; as soon as it involved pedos and such, fuck did parents become real quick to want know how to guide their kids on internet usage and how to configure the devices to not allow for that, and started complaining about parental controls.

Keeping up with the times and how much power you're handing your children is a part of raising children; you wouldn't hand a 12 year old your car keys, nor your straight credit card, why give them a device with the credit card attached?

B) Companies who understand their products are going to be used by children need to put options into place to allow for more parental control, and make these damn more apparent to the average consumer.
Now, can you account for people who have neurological conditions that may affect their comprehension skills? Most definitely, but only to a degree; you wouldn't hand them your credit card if that's the case. Once again, why hand them a device that has your credit card attached and can make purchases? You still have to monitor your children/offspring regardless.

C) Being in your room with your kid is NOT monitoring the kid, that is being in the same room. If all that was required to monitor and care for a child was for you to be in the room, parenting would be a fuck ton easier.
But no, kids climb stuff, get into things, put shiny or random objects in their mouth. A technology device is not a baby sitter, and being in the same room while they piddle around on a tablet or phone and not being ENGAGED in their child is exactly the problem in that scenario.
Instead of keeping the kid locked to a screen you can't see, why not set up a device to cast it to a TV or a bigger display so you can actually monitor what they're doing?

As a teen, wanna know how much shit I got away with purely because my parents didn't read my text messages? Though my friends and myself talked in code similar to our normal activities, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't fool any parents asking "Which iHop we're getting pancakes this weekend," to ask where the party is at
This, coming from a family whose father is a network engineer; he had all the know how, just absolutely no will to want to monitor us that way. Probably explains a lot about how I act >.>

You bet your ass when I have kids, I'm going to be in each one of those devices locking it down to where they can ONLY do what I allow them to; fuck if friend A has "cool parents," who don't lock out their devices, I'd rather avoid having my bank account drained and not being able to provide for my child over being the "cool parent," or whatever crazy new shit is going on at the time I decide to have some rug rats.


tldr; it takes two to tango; parents need to be more involved with their kid and actually parent (Sitting in a room with your kid is not monitoring them, you actually have to watch what they're doing, engaged with the kid), and companies need to step up and take some responsibility that end users are dumb as fuck and need shit displayed in big red text in their face while also preventing them to get to the next step because if not, they won't even take time to read the screen and select "Next," or "Skip."

 

[bitbydeath]

come on man, they don't know better, children are always a step ahead of their parents with technology

Leaving your credit card details on a computer is a harsh lesson to learn but it does fall on them ultimately.

 

[digital_ghost]

 

[A.Romero]

To me it's the same argument we had 15 years ago with GTA and extreme violence. Parents need to understand the media their children consume. At least the basics.

There is absolutely no reason why a kid should be playing with an account with a credit card associated to it.

I don't like micro transactions but I'd hate they'd be regulated because of stupid parents. It's a slippery slope.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

In spanish: Que no mamen, no saben poner una contraseña??.

in english: dont fuck me... they dont know put a single Password?

in other words: Que no mamen

like the snake of Adam and Eve xDDD

 

[pr0cs]

Parents are dummies, I have two kids approachine teen years ,both have a myriad of devices and I never had this problem. Why? Because I wasn't stupid enough to enter my credit card in any of their devices and I actually am aware of the software they're using.
The ONLY people to blame here are the dumbass parents

 

[GV82]

Parents do need to be better educated and yes this is also a predatory practice much like the free trials on things, they hope you forget your card is tied or forget to cancel and then snap your card is charged.

Out of every case this has happened I wonder how many are actually done by the parents who then have buyers remorse so blame the kids, I know the kids are to blame when they do it accidentally most of the time, but I have to believe that some are adults like 1 person out of every 5000 complaints.

 

[Gargus]

If a child (even a 22 year old with the mind of a 7 year old) spends money on a game online then there is no one to blame but the parent (in this case the handler of the credit card).

If you don't want your kid to waste money on a game then you should not let them have access to the money. It is really that simple. But people anymore don't want to be responsible for anything, they want someone else to deal with it. They want someone else to parent their child, someone else to enforce rules, someone else to be responsible.

My stepson plays tons of free to play games and has never spent 1 cent because we didnt put a payment source on his Google play account. He asked a couple times, we said no and explained why and that was the end of it.

I feel absolutely no pity for a parent who has to pay thousands of dollars for a game because they allowed a CHILD to have access to their money. Kids are stupid and have no concept of money, of course they will run around and spend it all if you allow them. Money means nothing to them because the are kids.

 

[Holm]

I believe a workaround for this would be to restrict children's controls. Nintendo's parent controls does this perfectly, as you can set play time, monitor play activity, etc. A last resort would be to not let the child even have a device.

Though it is partly the child's fault for not listening to their parents' in the first place.

 

[Spukc]

I would love to see EA getting fucked on FIFA
As that is their main cashcow.
And they can't maintain FIFA absurd licencing costs without manipulating kids.

It would be straight out glorious watching them squirm in courts knowing they will get fucked hard if banned.

Stop supporting soulless shit from ubi acti ea and more.

And stop fucking spending cash on inapps you fucking idiots.

 

[-MD-]

Title should be "My son is an idiot and so am I"

 

[Potato Chip PRO]

"My 15 year old son doesn't have Fortnite anymore"....... My guess is Skittles went Bat Sh*t after the dads decision of blocking him on playing Fortnite. Can't imagine other kids reactions.

 

[Petrae]

The video game industry’s success relies in part on stories like these, and you know that it’s not going to voluntarily move to stem the tide. It’ll do what people here are doing: It’ll absolve itself from any responsibility, pinning 100% of the blame on everything else while insisting that lootboxes and other predatory microtransactions are “fun” for customers. They’ll cite parental controls— which many of them aren’t responsible for anyway (that’s on the platform holders).

This industry needs a good ass-kicking by government agencies. Multiple agencies. If the industry is going to turn a purposeful blind eye to problems like these while desperately trying to explain them away as “surprise mechanics” or other such bullshit, then let governments intervene. Regulate that shit hardcore. Force new ratings and add teeth to them, including tactics like large visible warning labels. Cite that any game with odds-based microtransactions receive the strictest rating possible (AO here in the US) and let retailers decide if they want to be complicit.

I’m 100% behind governments going scorched earth on the industry at this point. Any collateral damage as a result is the industry’s own fault for failing to act on this shit. I don’t want to hear about how government interaction is gonna ruin video games, because the industry that creates them is bringing this shit onto itself.

Wanna blame parents for not being more protective of their financial cards or not being proactive enough in their supervision over what their kids play, buy, and consume? Cool. There’s plenty of blame to be afforded here. But don’t absolve this shitty industry of any responsibility. It could act and attempt to dial this shit down, but it instead doubles down and keeps finding more ways to extract all of the cash from consumer wallets.

 

[Chromata]

It's just surprise mechanics, doesn't everyone love surprises? Parents are in on the fun too with surprise bankruptcy.

 

[GhostOfTsu]

Wow at how dumb people are. It took her several months to notice her braindead kid spent over 3k? He's actually smarter than her.

It takes 1 second to create a separate account for your child or parental controls. Why give them full access to your main account and then complain? And they don't even lock their phones? So anyone can just take it and buy whatever?

I can't believe people are defending these dumbasses. Sad.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

Why are we blaming the parents?

When was it OK and acceptable that you could even spend so much money in a game?

I mean for fuck sakes, a £50 game should be a £50 game. spending £1k on the playstation or xbox store on 200 games is one thing, but over 2 grand being spent ON ONE GAME and we blame the parents? Get the fuck outta here.

The only tighter controls we need is on these money-grabbing pricks that head the games companies that allow this shit to be put into games.

 

[GhostOfTsu]

Why are we blaming the parents?

When was it OK and acceptable that you could even spend so much money in a game?

I mean for fuck sakes, a £50 game should be a £50 game. spending £1k on the playstation or xbox store on 200 games is one thing, but over 2 grand being spent ON ONE GAME and we blame the parents? Get the fuck outta here.

The only tighter controls we need is on these money-grabbing pricks that head the games companies that allow this shit to be put into games.

If someone wants to buy 2000$ of M&M, that's on them. You are not going to cry to Cadbury/manufacturer to impose some limit on how many you can buy. All the tools are there if you want to limit spending. Use them.

If you don't want to play games with MTX then play something else, there are thousands.

 

[LittleBusters]

Back around 2012 or so I spent about $100 on in-app purchases for a couple of games on the iPad. I kicked myself big time over that and never again.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

If someone wants to buy 2000$ of M&M, that's on them. You are not going to cry to Cadbury/manufacturer to impose some limit on how many you can buy. All the tools are there if you want to limit spending. Use them.

If you don't want to play games with MTX then play something else, there are thousands.

Bullshit comparison.

if you spend $2000 on M&Ms you have to find a shop that holds all of that stock, buy It, transport it and take it home and you still have $2000 worth of stock.

A game is £50. One time purchase, you shouldn't then be able to spend £2000 in that one game by clicking one or two buttons.

One is a concious decision with planning required, the other is an excuse to trap people into spending thousands on nothing more than what used to be in a game any way.

Anyone who defends this practice is a corporate ball-washing leach.

 

[Zog]

All I can say is that kids should learn to become responsible gamblers, you can't blame anyone but the irresponsible gamblers. /s

 

[Pidull]

Suggesting this is all on the parents is foolish, were all of you doing everything your parents wanted and expected from you for your entire life? Of course not.

Kids figure shit out, both unintentionally as well as intentionally. My autistic child figured out and memorized our complicated wifi password and I still have no idea how (watching me I presume, which is crazy because it's a completely random and LONG alphanumeric password). He figured out a parental controls PIN recently even though I took care to never input it in front of him. What is an average kid capable of?

But what's fucking disgusting about these stories is that the companies won't refund the payments. They can see a sudden spike that had no precursors, they're selling fake digital goods, and they won't refund the items. They know what they're doing and they don't care, the sooner the rules are changed for these morally bankrupt companies the better.

 

[mcz117chief]

As an educator of both children and adults I really wish to chime in here. Recently I started a program aimed at teachers and parents about video gaming. The lecture is about the positives and negatives of video gaming with a whole section dedicated to predatory tactics used by game developers specifically aimed at children or vulnerable people in general. We have a pretty sizable following so I expected dozens of teachers and parents to sign up, in the end only 3 did and none of them showed up. And if you think people didn't know about it therefore no one came then let me set you straight. We offered two lectures last month, one was a guided tour of the cathedral and the other was this. Over 60 teachers signed up for the cathedral and these two programs were right next to each other on the flyer and on our website, so there is no excuse about "people not knowing". The fact of the matter is that people just don't care or are completely uninterested in this topic UNTIL shit like this happens. Luckily at the end of the tour of the cathedral we gave the teachers a small sample of upcoming projects and I also mentioned my lecture. The moment I started talking about people losing ton of money and how mobile gaming can look innocent on the surface I could see their eyes widen and theirs throats swallowing. After the tour was officially over I was approached by many teachers asking me about my lecture and how they would love to know more about the topic, at which point I shouted inside my head "So why the fuck have you not signed up before!" with about this much intensity. Really, it all boils down to people just not giving a fuck because it's "dem video games for kids and basement dwellers, I am a person of culture who listens to Chopin" (this is still what over 90% of people think when they hear the word "video games" in my country) until shit starts flying in their face at which point they shout "but I didn't know, this is all arcane voodoo magic, man!"

 

[420bits]

Why are we blaming the parents?

When was it OK and acceptable that you could even spend so much money in a game?

I mean for fuck sakes, a £50 game should be a £50 game. spending £1k on the playstation or xbox store on 200 games is one thing, but over 2 grand being spent ON ONE GAME and we blame the parents? Get the fuck outta here.

The only tighter controls we need is on these money-grabbing pricks that head the games companies that allow this shit to be put into games.

Why are we blaming the parents?
Because parents are responsible for their kids? It should be in their interest to know what they do online and in game? If you give your kid your wallet filled with cash in a toy-store, are you going to be surprised when he spent it all? You can't blame the store for selling stuff, it's why they exist. If they "don't understand videogames" perhaps they should fucking learn about their kids hobby and not let it be the electronic babysitter. This trend of "BUT I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE, IT'S ALWAYS SOMEONE ELSE FAULT!" is driving me insane.

This problem of people spending thousands of dollars "online" isn't something new, my grandma knows about it and she doesn't even have a computer. It's been in the papers / news for YEARS. But still people refuse to take responsibility for their actions. It's always someone elses fault.

When was it OK and acceptable that you could even spend so much money in a game?
It is fucked up that you can spend so much money on shitty berries or pokeballs but I can't blame the market for it. Because lets face it, the majority of money spent in these kind of games are probably not from children using their parents creditcard, it's from adults using their own.
Don't have any facts or numbers to back it up, but "adult"-people spend 3k on bathwater from some girl they find attractive or spend hundreds of dollars on twitch just to have their name shown onscreen for 2 seconds and their hero say "THANKS BROSEPH FOR THE 20, YOU ARE AMAZING AND I LOVE YOU AND WELCOME TO THE DINGLEBERRYCREW *airhornsound x 50* GIVE THE MAN SOME CLAPS IN THE CHAT, CHAT!"

 

[The Scrivener]

"He was completely inconsolable"

So he was a PC player then?

 

[Helios]

"He was completely inconsolable"

So he was a PC player then?

 

[barslan]

In my country there is a good joke for such situations.

No fault with the thief ?
Nasreddin Hodja has his donkey stolen. Grieving over his loss to his neighbours, he hears them all talking at once:
-“hodja, why on earth didn’t you put a good lock on the barn door?”
says one.
-“A thief breaks in, and you are unaware!” criticizes another.
Yet another blames Hodja:
-“Please don’t take offense but you alone are to blame for it as you do not even have a decent barn. I’ts falling to pieces, period!”
Indignat at the criticism, Hodja reacts:
-“For Heaven’s sake! If you say but is the fault all mine? No fault with the thief?

 

[Sp3eD]

“My 11-year-old daughter has spent over £100 of my money in a day downloading apps that are the same.

“I had no idea until I found my bank account was empty and checked my online statement.

Hmmmmm. Might be a little victim blaming, but I’m sure that dude has a little more problems then iPad apps. Maybe time to hock the iPad.

 

[TLZ]

Ok. Now I believe in reptilians.

 

[Starlight Lotice]

These stories about disabled people better be bullshit as it is a poor excuse to blame kids.

I feel sorry for them but they really need to wise up on these digital storefronts who are doing little to assist in purchasing problems.

 

[Screamer-RSA]

Doesn't matter who you guys blame for this, parents, people with gambling addiction etc, the more these stories hit headlines the more politicians are going to notice. Can't wait for the day a company like EA who put all their eggs in the mtx basket to not be able to sell those anymore. Suddenly they are going to actually have to make games.

 

[tassletine]

If someone wants to buy 2000$ of M&M, that's on them. You are not going to cry to Cadbury/manufacturer to impose some limit on how many you can buy. All the tools are there if you want to limit spending. Use them.

If you don't want to play games with MTX then play something else, there are thousands.

If you go into a shop to buy a large amount of anything they would question it -- and at the very least would offer you a discount.
Best example is Alcohol. It's not served when it's considered that the person could cause harm to either themselves or someone else.

It's about being responsible on both ends, not just being a moneygrabbing little grub.

 

[Blancka]

In my country there is a good joke for such situations.

No fault with the thief ?
Nasreddin Hodja has his donkey stolen. Grieving over his loss to his neighbours, he hears them all talking at once:
-“hodja, why on earth didn’t you put a good lock on the barn door?”
says one.
-“A thief breaks in, and you are unaware!” criticizes another.
Yet another blames Hodja:
-“Please don’t take offense but you alone are to blame for it as you do not even have a decent barn. I’ts falling to pieces, period!”
Indignat at the criticism, Hodja reacts:
-“For Heaven’s sake! If you say but is the fault all mine? No fault with the thief?

Being a victim doesn't absolve someone of blame. It's a thiefs fault if they steal from you, but that doesn't mean you're blame free when you leave your front door and car unlocked. When it comes to things people have no control over, like marketing at kids, it's silly to not blame the parents. You don't blame the sun for sunburn, or the sea when people drown. You accept them as dangers because that's just a reality.

Well now in app purchases are a reality, as are parental controls on every OS and platform that sells these. It's 2019. Tech illiteracy isn't normal, even for older people at this point. It's just wilful ignorance and shouldn't be met with sympathy.

I know "STOP VICTIM BLAMING" has become an SJW meme at this point, but sometimes the victim is at fault too, and I have little sympathy for what amounts to the result of a concoction of ignorance and idiocy.

Honestly the only "just" thing that people should be complaining about with this sort of thing is their kids constantly pestering them asking for vbucks or whatever digital currency their game of choice uses. The kids having access to payment cards is a parenting issue, not a marketing one

 

[Lanrutcon]

These games are actively designed to make you spend cash. Scientifically, purposefully engineered to get to your wallet.

Who's going to win: Mom and parental controls, or tech-savvy Timmy and a corporation spending millions in R&D each year to ensure their product has every psychological advantage when it comes to influencing your spending habits.

You'd be a fucking idiot to bet on one of those sides.

 

[TeamGhobad]

your son shouldn't have access to your bank account then..

 

[Blancka]

These games are actively designed to make you spend cash. Scientifically, purposefully engineered to get to your wallet.

Who's going to win: Mom and parental controls, or tech-savvy Timmy and a corporation spending millions in R&D each year to ensure their product has every psychological advantage when it comes to influencing your spending habits.

You'd be a fucking idiot to bet on one of those sides.

Mom and parental controls so long as she actually uses them. Don't save the card to the system or require password for use. Many banks also offer some form of two-factor authentication for online purchases too. Physical cards for digital currency are another way around it. Make your kid save their own money and use it for PSN/estore cash for example.

Companies can market all they want, but a kid can't spend money they don't have. If a parent can't handle the responsibility of keeping a card safe they shouldn't be trusted with the responsibility of raising a child.