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Google To Stop Describing Games With In-App Purchases As 'Free'
An anonymous reader writes After a series of investigations, lawsuits, and fines over how in-app purchases are advertised and communicated to users, Google has agreed to stop labeling games that use in-app purchases as "Free." This change is the result of a request by the European Commission to stop misleading customers about the costs involved with using certain apps. "Games should not contain direct exhortation to children to buy items in a game or to persuade an adult to buy items for them; Consumers should be adequately informed about the payment arrangements for purchases and should not be debited through default settings without consumers' explicit consent." The EC notes that Apple has not yet done anything to address these concerns.
Free apps with in-app purchases show that fact right under the 'Buy' button. And a simple setting controls whether in-app purchases are allowed at all, require approval, or can go through automatically (default is require approval). And iOS 8 has the proxy stuff for family accounts (parental approval for everything if you want).
How is this Apple 'doing nothing'?
I print, therefore I am.
We should be able to filter out adware applications too. I don't understand how people tolerate adware and nag screens on their cellphone. I thought the days of the infamous WinZIP "I agree" were over. I certainly wouldn't use a file browser, instant messaging client or or text editor on my PC with ads. I don't see why it would be anymore acceptable on phones.
These "free" games use the same addiction mechanisms, called operant conditioning, as gambling. I am surprised targeting these at minors is even allowed.
What I wish app stores made it easier to do is to distinguish between apps that offer one-time DLC in the form additional content (e.g. more levels, maps, factions, game modes, etc.) vs freemium apps with repeatable purchases for in-game currency and power-ups (which you need to get around the "free" game's increasing difficulty and enforced waits). The former is fine, and a good way to let people try-before-they-buy, but the latter is a toxic plague of money-grubbing crapware. As-is, I have to do things like drill down into the list of top in-app purchases and read the titles to see if consists of things like "level pack" or "10,000 gems". I'd also love it if they showed what percentage of users buy which in-app purchases, or the median amount of money spent per user on in-app purchases.
You're right: absolutely nothing is free. Except Linux and Chrome and Internet Explorer and Java and TCP and pictures of the Alps and FreeCiv and Libre Office and Wikipedia and the RepRap design and CERN data and the open hardware repository and NIH publications and water filter designs and Acura NSX blueprints and clothing patterns and Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive and don't even think about saying they're "not really free". In all cases we're talking about voluntary contributions of work. Games are as digital as all of these others and claiming no game is free in that context is total bullshit.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
In terms of monentary cost, many useful things are. Free software also used to be less of a crapshoot (is it *really* safe, a virus/trojan, adware, or nagware)?
Apache: Free
OpenOffice/LibreOffice: Free
Java: Free
There were/are also a lot of free utilities that - while not pretty - were basically in the realm of "hey I made this to solve X for myself and thought somebody else might find it useful."
There may be some learning involved to *use* the product, and certainly many FOSS solutions involve community-provided updates, but in terms of personal cost it's free for me.
Worse yet are PAID apps that have in-app purchases. Companies double-dipping piss me off to no end. Either make your app free with in-app purchases, or sell it to me without extra charges later.
Uh, no. Those aren't free. They're free for you the end user. But somebody pays for them. Just because it's not you doesn't make it automatically free.
In most cases, those people are called donors. Donors can be someone unaffilliated with the organization, or they could be the very same people providing the service. Likewise, donations can come in numerous forms like time, resources, goodwill, even money.
Sometimes, society pays, i.e. everybody pays. And when everybody pays so that only a few people benefit, that's when there are problems. Fortunately, none of those on your list fall into that category.
So no, those things you listed aren't free. To claim that they are free is to ignore the people who've paid for them so that they can be free for you.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
So you agree that they're free in the sense that everyone in the discussion has been using the word "free."
I'm confused. You admitted that they're free "for you." Who has been arguing that they are costless for all? Who has defined "free" as costless for all? How do you reconcile costless for all with "free for you?"
Actually, I'm not confused at all. You've constructed a pseudo-syllogism using a false proposition in an attempt to belittle the GP while making yourself feel authoritative and smart.
Free doesn't mean what you think it means. You're not even a pedant, you're simply wrong. Go away.