Slashdot Mirror
UK Gov To Investigate 'Aggressive' In-app Purchases
hypnosec writes "The UK Government will be examining whether free to download apps are putting unfair pressure on kids to pay up for additional content within the game through in-app purchases. Office of Fair Trading (OFT), UK, will be carrying out the investigation of games that include 'commercially aggressive' in-app purchases after a number of cases have been reported whereby parents have incurred huge bills after their kids have spent huge amounts on in-app purchases."
. . . should not be the government's problem.
Ah, parents these days . . . and their children . . . most of the time they're somebody else's problem.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
You mean like a game that lets you make steady progress for a few hours, then suddenly ups the difficulty level to a point where the only way to continue is to pay for something? Few adults can resist, how many kids would be able to?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
These parents blaming the games for this is like people blaming mcdonnalds for their kids' obesity... Whatever happened to parents actually parenting?
... the gaming industry has turned into a crime syndicate over the last 6-7 years. It's been discusting with the rise of F2P and charging for virtual items in MMO's with both WoW and diablo 3 being among the biggest offenders.
Reality is we need to crack down on software you can never own and can be "turned off" whenever a company says so. So many older apps/games functionality is fubar because of current anti-customer industry practices. The bad thing is kids and stupid adults feed these companies money year after year.
Give kids their own debit cards so they can spend their allowance/paychecks online without risking their family's budget. No need nanny-state crackdowns here.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
My 5 year old son taught me a very important lesson about having a PIN on your payment methods...
Luckily it only cost me £25 ($40).
Not being a great reader my son just clicks OK to all the boxes that pop up, so there is great opportunity for game manufacturers to dupe unsuspecting parents into spending lots of their cash.
It is a one time only scam though which I really should have thought through but I, along with thousands of other hapless parents, have inadvertently contributed to Zepto Labs' coffers.
Education for parents is the solution IMHO. I got mine the hard way ;-)
Every man for himself, all in favour say "I"
Parents should be monitoring their children 24 hours a day and seven days a week. If they can't do that, then they shouldn't be parents. It's well known adults don't need to sleep and that they have the power of ubiquity.
Children are not capable of entering into a legal contract, so they can't buy anything without parental consent. Simply contest/reverse any credit card charges racked up by these apps. Credit card companies really don't like to put up with that shit, so if a merchant keeps getting hit by this due to predatory marketing, they'll eventually be cut off.
How about the governments stay out of private business and let the people make their own decisions whether to let their kids play games and make in game purchases and better explains how is it that the governments force aggressive purchases of bank debt by tax payers?
You can't handle the truth.
Isn't part of the problem that most popular tablets/phones are single user only? Android only recently added this feature in 4.2 and iOS is (AFAIK) single user only.
Having a different login for the kids would solve the problem.
There's a lot of nasty software out there that is specifically targeted at kids and charges huge amounts for ingame items. My kids are at a young age and they simply do not understand the difference between real cash and virtual ingame cash, to them it's all the same. So if an app says 'do you want to buy this for 99,99 euros', they just tap 'yes'.
What I don't understand is why a parent would give an iPad/Nexus/whatever with a fully accessible master account to a child. On my iPad I just disabled in-app purchases and set password to 'every time' instead of 'once every 15 minutes'. And no app buying or removing either.
What is the billing mechanism, anyways? Is it the wireless carrier? I'm an adult, and I wouldn't want that billing "feature" enabled on my phone, just in case I fat-fingered the wrong key.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
I don't have kids, and I don't have an iPad either. However I do have friends who are, to be blunt, technically naive. It might surprise the Slashdot crowd, but one friend actually went on a work course where they were taught such things as the difference between files and folders! (To be fair the same friend is trying to get more computer literate - she has bought herself "Windows for Dummies" and is studiously working through it. I think she's actually thought of as something of a geek at where she works; she's a qualified midwife and works in a hospital unit for premature babies, so she's not in anyway 'stupid', just not computer literate).
Anyway, the point is that many would not understand the technology or technological trends in a way that we would on Slashdot. To many a game is a game, whether physical (a board game or card game or some such) or virtual (Solitaire anyone?) Games in the past do not allow you to 'buy extras' mid game, so this behaviour is unexpected. From past experience allowing your child (or mother) to play a game on a computer or iPad would be considered safe - the possibility of actual money being spent would not be considered and therefore not dealt with. To be honest, not being an iPad owner nor a computer game player, I would not be aware of this 'feature' in games - after all I've never seen it in Solitaire!
So let's not blame the parents. Let's instead blame those taking advantage of the possibilities of new technology and of the naivete of actual users. It is this that's behind the investigated by the OFT.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake
Subject says it all, really.
. . . should not be the government's problem.
If your business plan relies on kids who don't understanding that they're being ripped off. Then that's some degree of fraud or illegal marketing.
It seems that there's this mindset, that if you have long legal agreement, it okay to sell people things they regret buying.
Newsflash: it's not okay. If you do a transaction well aware that the other party is doing a bad deal and that other party doesn't know or understand it, it called fraud.
Fraud is hard to prove, but that doesn't make it legal!!!
Usually, I'm the first to cry "no way" if government thinks it needs to butt in with the thinkofthechildren card. But they do have a point here. Game companies are tying to use the naivety and gullibility of kids to squeeze money out of them. And short of 24/7 monitoring, there is little parents can do. More and more games require you to enter a CC number "just in case", so you can play at all. And let's be honest, you can tell your kids 10 times that they must not spend real money, often it's easy to overlook whether you're spending in game or real money on your purchase. It's deliberately done so it's hard for the user to notice, and twice so for kids who don't really have a working concept of the value of money. For a 5 year old, 1, 10 and 100 bucks are just numbers, they don't really know how much is "much" and what is still "little". Not to mention that many little things add up, and kids have even less a concept for that.
What I would still prefer to a regulation would be some kind of "child friendly environment" ad sticker that gets promoted and that gets handed to games that don't try to rip off kids, as a guideline for parents which games are suitable for their children. Such games would, e.g. offer online purchases only for vouchers instead of CCs for kids under 14, would allow parents a separate login to monitor their kids' spending habits, would constantly show how much money has been spent this month already and would allow parents to set limits to how much their kids may spend per week or month. I could well see something like a "seal of approval" by some child protection group that such games could use to advertise their games, what government should do is either form such a group or endorse a reputable one and advertise that "seal" as a way for parents to discriminate between good and bad games.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The UK Government will be examining whether free to download apps are putting unfair pressure on kids to pay up for additional content within the game through in-app purchases.
Let's help them with that so they can get on with the important job of searching the Pope's quarters for suspicious crucifixes and rosaries...
0. Kids are generally easier to con and less responsible than adults. That's why we don't let them drive, drink, vote or have credit cards.
1. Yes - they're disingenuously called "free-to-play" games and every app store is heaving with them. Technically you can enjoy the game without paying, but they're specifically designed to tempt you to open your wallet. Particularly insidious are the ones with both an imaginary in-game economy and the option of spending real money, where the two concepts can easily get blurred enough to fool a kid. A parent wouldn't necessarily pot this if they 'checked out' the game for a few minutes.
2. Evidence - the industry wouldn't be doing this if they weren't making more money from in-app purchases than by charging a fair, one-off price for the game.
3. Solution - the Govenment doesn't want to get any further into video game censorship than it already is, but we already have age-rating systems. Any game with in-app purchases should be marked as "Funded by in-app purchases and not suitable for under 16s" and make use of whatever parental controls exist on the platform. Games could be exempted if they could demonstrate that they had adequate mechanisms to allow parents to cap spending, and had payments disabled by default. (Giving a kid a limited budget to manage is not a bad thing, but they need training wheels!)
4. Next steps - don't bother: by the time you finish grinding out your report, customer pressure will have forced all the reputable app stores and age-rating schemes to fix this: Apple have already improved labelling of games with in-app purchases.
5. Conclusion - even the solutions in (3) and (4) won't solve this problem - there's too much money in it - but they might help responsible people avoid this trap. Sadly, we'll still see a lot of potentially good gameplay wrecked by greed for in-app purchases.
Now, let's have a quick look for stains in Mr Holmes' underpants.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I use android. I did not connect any credit card to the google account, so there is no bill to rack up - other than normal phone bills. Of course that means I can't purchase apps either, but there are enough free apps for me. For music, I buy the CD and rip it myself to ogg. Better than MP3, and the CD is a nice backup if the phone is lost an/or I switch providers.
The in-game purchase model is wrong. You should have to move a fixed amount of money into the game first, before being able to spend. That way, no surprises. And the rich can still spend freely, purchasing their way through some boring game. But they don't want that, they'll loose "sales" to the careless . . .
I agree that some of these games could be excessive if you purchased all the in-game items. I calculated that purchasing each "premium" item at least once could cost between $100 and $500 for Simpsons: Tapped Out. This is very similar to gambling. You can have sensible people that view it as some entertainment and will stop after a limit, or you have the people that don't set limits and lose a lot. With that comparison, kids are protected from gambling so there should be something in place for software companies to protect children. Software companies do need to make money of course, and this method is important because it allows the consumer to try a game before buying/paying for it. It also allows people that don't want to grind to be able to experience the end-game content. I do object to games like Simpsons: Tapped Out that make it next to impossible to ever get premium items without paying, but that's their choice. On the flip side, some responsible parenting would be good too. Teach children the value of money and of working for a reward (in-game or otherwise). Don't give your children access to phones or software that are attached to credit cards or billing accounts. Restrict them to game/gift cards for purchasing content. (perhaps that could be the new currency for allowances?)
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
I already have the report... but when you try to skip straight to the conclusion it says you need to purchase the SuperJump power for $0.99.
You do know that its possible for both parents and businesses to share responsibility for things like this?
You seem eager to heap responsibility and blame on parents, but hey, businesses should be able to pursue the mighty buck wherever it leads, without consequences. Sounds fair.
Parents should watch what their kids are doing, and not give in to pestering - but that doesn't make it right for supposedly reputable businesses to lurk in the bushes poised to spring out and take advantage as soon as a parent makes a mistake.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
vthere should be a no pin mode for free stuff / updates.
Back when I had WOW cable they made to you go though all the buy screens for the free VOD stuff that had a price of $0.00. Directv does not use the do you want to buy X movie for X price on the free VOD stuff.
I can see a system where some get's used to clicking though buy screens with a price of $0 getting tipped up by a one the costs more then $0.
Why do you need the password for the free stuff?
Just never allow any form of payment on your device. No credit card, no phone billing, no store-bought 'credits', nothing, nada, zilch. This does mean you and those around you can not use a whole range of programs on that device but you'll soon find out you're not missing out on anything at all. Nothing. No bucket of smurfberries ever made anyone a better person. No virtual furniture ever made anyone a happier person. No VIP-badge ever turned someone from self-suggested failure into a social success.
This is especially important if you have children. Teach your children well. Feed them on your dreams, don't feed them to someone's business plan.
If this 'kills the industry', so be it. That industry made themselves ripe for slaughter anyway.
--frank[at]unternet.org
open-ended charging possible? "Just in case?" How about, FUCK NO, you don't get my CC unless I know exactly what you are charging.
Look, stupid is as stupid does. Just more proof that computer gaming is mostly an activity participated in by the stupid.
Business people are completely amoral, and will seek to maximise income (and shield this income from taxation) using whatever methods and loopholes they and their advisors can discover. Laws and the Human Rights of consumers are simply things that can usually be worked around. Worse, when these scumbags start making real money from their exploitation of the marketplace, they start to pay off politicians to either forestall action against their evil methods, or to actually introduce new laws to explicitly protect these despicable ways of doing business.
In a decent world, Apple itself would be fined tens of BILLIONS of dollars to punish it for exploiting the market, and to clean up the 'Wild West' Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft et al seem to think they operate in. Our world isn't decent, and the filth that run each of these companies are best buds with the most powerful politicians in most nations of the West.
Braindead betas are trained at school to belief what isn't against the Law is always acceptable, and that betas who fall prey to the machinations of evil business people only have themselves to blame. With such attitudes smashed into people's heads, proper, decent solutions to each new generation of conmen come slower and slower.
Any alpha can throw out numerous solutions to the abuse of in-app purchases in seconds. They will all be based on the principle of 'greater good', and thus show zero sympathy to both Apple and the companies that abuse this model. If Apple refuses to start each app session that can involve financial transactions with a password check, Apple itself should be held responsible for the entire transaction, and fined massively every time a person under 18 is able to trigger such transactions. Every app that can involve financial transactions should be FORCED to request the user set a weekly/monthly limit BEFORE the app is used.
Apple should be required to request a monthly total maximum expenditure figure from the user, and ensure this is never exceeded (on financial systems Apple tracks, of course). Apple should be required to maintain a compensation fund of tens of billions to even be allowed to run its 'bank'- compensation that is paid to any user whose apps end up attempting to use unreasonable payment levels- a judgement to be made by an independent panel that considers ONLY the likely real value of a service.
For all you cretins that try to blame the user, understand this. Were the criminal game companies soaking suckers for, say, one hundred dollars a month max, they would still be making a fortune, and no-one would be reporting the story. Understand what UNBRIDLED GREED means. Without proper regulation, there is literally no limit to the extent of evil Apple and its proxies will engage in. The Chinese have the right idea with their willingness to put the worst of their criminal business people to a firing-squad.
You can't blame a five-year old for not being able to read and understand pop-up messages when playing a game on a phone.
There needs to be a way for parents to control that (like the password that has to be entered before in-app purchases) so they don't get hit with surprise bills.
And yes, parents need to be aware of it and use it.
The problem I see is that free games used to be financed by advertisers who wanted their banners seen. But now we have free games with in-app purchases. An example might be a first person shooter game where if you want more than a bow and arrow, you have to buy a gun, and ammo (separately). Or a virtual reality game where you are naked until you buy some clothes. In a early game called, Jones in the Fast Lane, if you waited too long to buy clothes, your avatar ended up sporting a barrel with suspenders. Of course that was not for real money. But getting back to games with paid for advantages. You don't have to be killed every few minutes by foes with superior weapons very long before you want to buy a machine gun. I got involved in one such game thinking if I was skillful enough, I wouldn't have to spend real money for enhancements, but it was not so. My policy now it to delete a game as soon as it becomes obvious it is a trap leading to in-app purchases.
www.helpotherseo.com
====( http://www.sheptrade.com/ )==== This is a shopping paradise We need your support and trust, you can find many cheap and high stuff,Believe you will love it, WE ACCEPT CREDIT CARD /WESTERN UNION PAYMENT YOU MUST NOT MISS IT!!!