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Google To Stop Describing Games With In-App Purchases As 'Free'

Posted by Soulskill on from the insert-coin-to-continue dept.

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.

3 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Apple has 'done nothing'??? by printman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  2. Re:Good. Now what about ads? by Garfong · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't want it all for free, but I think companies should be honest about their business model. I think they should distinguish between "Free" trial, "Free" with paid upgrades, "Free" ad-supported, etc.

  3. Nothing is free by phorm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.