Slashdot Mirror
Kid Racks Up $5,900 Bill Playing Jurassic World On Dad's iPad (pcmag.com)
theodp writes: For Mohamed Shugaa, the scariest Jurassic World creature is perhaps Apple CEO Tim Cook, not the Indominus Rex. That's because Shugaa discovered his 7-year-old son had managed to rack up a $5,900 bill playing the Jurassic World game on his iPad in six days. "Why would Apple think I would be spending thousands of pounds on buying dinosaurs and upgrading a game," Shugaa told The Metro. "Why didn't they email me to check I knew these payments were being made? I got nothing from them. How much longer would it have gone on for?" Shugaa discovered his son's 65 in-app purchases when a payment he tried to make to a business supplier was declined. His son had upgraded dinosaurs using the game currency 'Dino Bucks' without realizing it was charging his Dad in real money. The good news is that Apple has decided to refund the money, so the kid doesn't have to worry about Apple making him work 8,500 hours for $5,980 to settle the debt. Btw, before you developers get too excited about the possibility of using In-App Purchase to take kids to the cleaners at $6,000-a-pop, remember that Apple call dibs on the first $1,800!
Talk about naive. A seven year old absolutely needs to be supervised when using a mobile or any internet connected device. The most maddening part of this is that he seems to be expecting Apple to babysit his kid.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
They require a credit card to install free apps. What gets me is they required password for doing anything on the app store even free apps, but no password to buy thousands in upgrades. It's a deliberate scam, or incredible incompetence. I succpect the latter.
The smart child had memorized his father's Apple ID password
A password was required to make an in-game purchase, and even if the father entered it himself, that only works for 15 minutes. How is it Apple's fault that the kid memorized the guy's password?
My question is why would hand a child a device to 'play' with that is tied to a system authorized to make payments? I realize all kinds of people do that every day but its still stupid. You would not hand your kid a wad of cash to used building a house of cards, why would you hand them a computer with credit information embedded?
Both IOS and Android can be set so you at least have to enter your Apple / Google password to make a purchase. If your device isn't set to lock itself with a short timeout or you ever hand it to anyone you can't trust entirely (like your spouse) then you absolutely should have the password for ordering functions on! It is true that the result is this also requires the password for free stuff, but there again if you can't be arsed to manage the entertainment software on your phone for your kid, you probably should get them their own device like maybe a PSP or their own phone with no credit card info associated.
Frankly this is an expensive lesson but this day should pay up and learn it well.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
This is maybe the shittiest article I've seen posted to Slashdot in a long time, and that's saying something.
First, why does the blame fall to Tim Cook of all people instead of the developers of the game?
Second, Apple has already set up a Family Sharing system to prevent just this sort of thing. Never mind the fact that your have to give your kid your password to the account tied to a credit card for this to happen in the first place.
http://www.apple.com/icloud/fa...
To say nothing of the fact that in the article itself they said Apple refunded him the money. But yeah, they're assholes because he doesn't know not to give your kid access to your credit card.
Finally throw in a dash of globalization scare tactics and remind developers that they *only* get 70% of the IAP revenue, which they know about already, and you've got the Slashdot Shithead Trifecta.
Schnapple
The elephant in the room is that we, as a society, are allowing these games to exist at all. Yes they are entertainment products but they should have limits on their abusive nature. I mean if you can fleece someone for $500 on a game that no one would pay $60 for - good for you you've scammed someone but $5000+ is criminal (or rather should be).
This is a dark pattern which is a user interface designed to trick people into doing things.
I'm surprised how many Slashdotters have replied "he ought to keep closer control of what his kid is doing" and "Apple isn't at fault, they just created the system". Apple is responsible for the user interface and just because the user "could have navigated the user interface" and not had his kid buy the in-app purchases doesn't mean that Apple isn't responsible. "You could have figured out the bad user interface" is never an excuse, especially when the bad user interface is on purpose.
I feel IMHO should be banned on any game targeting an audience below 12 years old. At the very least in-app purchases above a certain amount or accumulated amount should require external authentication, to prevent this exact scenario.
As for the 'in-app purchase are evil' subject, it is because you'll frequently get a free app and then find it goes on to nickel-and-dime the whole experience. What is the real price of a free app with in-app purchasing? Here we saw it was potentially well above $5000. At that price $60 console games look cheap.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
We don't just "allow" them, as a society, we demand them.
We're a society that happily spends $8 on a latte we drink in under a minute but refuses to pay $1 for a game we'd spend hours on.
We're a society that balks at paying a monthly subscription fee to pay for game servers, yet will happily spend far more money on fake items. Think of how many times you've heard of a game "going free to play" and had their profits skyrocket because of it?
The elephant in the room is that, yes, Apple does absolutely think it's possible some guy will randomly spend $6000 on virtual dinosaurs. It happens all the time. And we, as a society, are quite willing to make that possible solely so we don't have to spend our latte-money on a game we'd spend far more time with. We demanded free to play games, and we got them.
Fortunately, current iPads have that built-in fingerprint trigger lock that gun manufactures can still only dream of.
As a firearms owner and carrier (30+ years of EDC) I would never, ever want a fingerprint reader or interlock on any of my firearms. When I pull the trigger, I want it to go bang, period. I don't want to see a "LOW BATTERY" warning or a find out a circuit is fried when I need it most.
Might as well put a fingerprint interlock on a fire extinguisher or a baseball bat- do you have any idea how often those things are misused?
(And for the record, I'm not some right-wing whacko, I'm one of the most liberal, left-leaning people you'll ever meet, no joke.)
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
WHO demanded fee-to-play (they certainly aren't free) games? Nobody I know fucking did, and most I know hate it.
First they took local LAN play, so you could only play when online.
FTP is basically just a scam to hide the real cost of a game, be it free install or otherwise.
On tablets etc, games didn't *require* paying of course, unless your actually wanted to progress beyond a certain point.
Meanwhile on PC/console, we got unlockable "achievements", which was kinda cool until those became necessary to unlock items in the game.
Then off course, came the ability to "pay" for unlocks, so you had the ability to play 10,000h for a sniper scope or pay in order to compete with the fucking rich kids who bought them at $50
Back to tablet, oh now we're not charging you money, you get game "credits" (which of course your can purchase) to obfuscate the cost of things further.
Lastly, let us not forget DLC. What used to be legitimate add-ons a year or so after release became 0-day nickel-and-dime cash grabs to get a full game.
Tell me, when did we ask for this shit? Because it seems to me that as soon as the industry see dollar signs, every fucking game went there. EA was the biggest sell-out, but with them and other big names buying out any game studio that produces a decent product, your choices are pretty much limited to whose dick you want to take up your ass, and with how much lube (lube available in micropayments of $5/application).
As a firearms owner and carrier (30+ years of EDC) I would never, ever want a fingerprint reader or interlock on any of my firearms. When I pull the trigger, I want it to go bang, period.
Going a bit off topic, but if your gun was instead in the hands of your son or daughter pointing it at themselves or others I bet you'd like it to not go bang. Gun suicide and misuse using family owned guns is a much bigger problem than self defense unless you live in an unusually dangerous neighborhood, and before you say they can commit suicide another way studies in the UK after it switched from poisonous coal gas to safe natural gas shows the overall suicide rate falls if you take away an easy suicide method (no more "sticking your head in the oven")
Can you imagine a gunman breaking into your house
No. Thank god i don't live in America.