Poll of the Day > Christmas is CANCELLED for Family cause 6 y/o spent $16,000+ on SONIC FORCES!!!

(+) Yeah! (+)

Imagine defending Apple for this.

The app store is basically set up to trick parents who aren't aware of what microtransactions are, to hand the phone over to their kid while the account is still logged in after downloading the app. Most parents don't know to disable ingame purchases because they don't know it's a thing.

Should be legit illegal to put transactions like that in games targeted at children.

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So if you get 17,500 rings for $100, what can you buy in the game for 280,000 rings?

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If you suspect your credit card was used fraudulently, don't just contact the bank, but contact the companies where your card was used. Someone stole my credit card info and used it to make purchases through Paypal. I first called my bank to contest the charges, then Paypal (who game me information about the thief), then the county Sheriff's department.

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captpackrat posted...

So if you get 17,500 rings for $100, what can you buy in the game for 280,000 rings?

Probably some super special character, or a character pack or something. Or upgrades. I'd have to play the game to know...
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@Metalsonic66

You should have a password or something if your kid is playing on a phone or device with your card info in there

I have no cards on my phone, every parental control enabled, options to disable purchases all checked.

My Autistic 7 year old, found this weird ass backwards way to make his phone primary account holder than charge my bill plan.

Google refunded me because I had every setting possibly enabled via Play Store and T-mobile but he still managed to charge me (the sneaky shit only charged like $20 to, hoping I wouldn't notice)

oh I also had "Samsung Kids" mode enabled, which also prevents purchases.

He subbed to a month of Roblox btw

Apple should refund the money but they are a shitty company so makes sense.

Full Throttle posted...

said her child's behaviour is like a DRUG ADDICT and called these games PREDATORY

This is true.

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Zeus posted...

...so what you're saying is that maybe she should reach out to Sega instead of Apple?

If you buy some chicken from the grocery store that turns out to be spoiled when you open it, do you find the processing plant that sold the chicken to the store and ask them for a refund, or do you return it to the store from which you bought it?

Apple's the one handling the transactions, so Apple's the one to contact for a refund. Apple would likely then, in turn, seek that refund back from Sega (or 70% of it, given the cut Apple takes of sales). Middlemen act as a liaison between customers and producers. There's no reason to expect that to change just because the money's flowing the other way.

Zeus posted...

...it wasn't just that she failed to secure her credit card, she didn't notice the charges for OVER SIXTY DAYS, according to your highlighted selection earlier. Did she not read her credit card statements?

If you actually read duckbear's post, she did notice the unusual charges when they happened back in July, it just took her bank until October to confirm that the charges were legitimate and she had to contact Apple, by which point Apple's 60-day window for contesting charges had passed. It was very much not a matter of her not noticing the charges for two months. If anything, it sounds like Chase dragging their heels is the main reason she can't get a refund.

Zeus posted...

Otherwise the risks here are the same risks with any other unsupervised use. If you don't monitor your kid with your credit card info, they can run up massive bills doing literally anything.

Sure, but that's why you teach your kids not to go on spending sprees in online stores, which is pretty easy. A 6-year-old isn't likely to make the same connection to virtual purchases inside a game (which is what happened here), though, thanks largely to the fact that these games very deliberately obfuscate the fact that you're spending real money to as much of an extent as they can legally get away with. Most other things they can spend enormous amounts on are also going to be tangible goods that can potentially be returned, not virtual consumable items, which has substantially less potential for harm.

Zeus posted...

Not to mention everything else the kid could have done while being unmonitored.

You seem to want to paint this as "nobody paid any attention to what this kid was doing at all," but there's no reason to believe that. Taking a look at the iPad periodically to see what the kid's doing and saying "Oh, he's playing a game. Doesn't look too violent. This seems okay" is a perfectly reasonable, non-negligent amount of supervision, yet the odds of catching the kid in the act of buying microtransactions with that level of supervision are very low. These systems are designed to make it very easy to spend money very quickly, often with interfaces that don't look any different from other in-game menus such that a casual glance isn't necessarily going to identify them as a purchase screen even if the parent does happen to check on them at the right time.

Again, this is not a surprise to Sega, nor would it be to EA, Activision, or anyone else publishing microtransaction-riddled games. They know exactly what they're doing when they design these games and their purchase systems and they very deliberately take it as far as they possibly can without being legally responsible to pay back their ill-gotten gains when somebody calls them out on it. That you're going to bat for the AAA game industry's scummy monetization practices after being so insistent in other topics that modern games are ripoffs is honestly kind of baffling.

wwinterj25 posted...

So she knows her kid has a addictive personality

Uhh, that's not what that sentence means at all, dude. That's a retrospective assessment of how her kid ended up behaving (and also a completely accurate description of the behaviours microtransaction systems aim to induce), not her acknowledging that he has always acted like a drug addict.

demonfang178 posted...

Which is why parents should invest just a little bit of time to learn about their child's hobbies.

That still wouldn't necessarily be enough. Parents should make an effort to research the harms of video gaming, but there's so much information out there on that subject that has nothing to do with predatory microtransactions that they still might not come across it. And that's without considering that, once enough parents become savvy to this particular avenue of exploitation, the industry will move on to some strategy that they're still ignorant to and exploit that until more people clue in.

Yes, parents should learn a bit about their kids' hobbies, but nonsense like this should not be a genuine risk in any activity that's popular among children. This is something you should have to be concerned about if your kid hangs around gambling websites, not if your kid likes Sonic the Hedgehog. That is is such a risk is - as I've said - nothing short of utterly despicable.

reason posted...

there should be some kind of limit on these transactions to prevent the amount of charges from becoming so high.

Yep. At the very least, anything past, say, $100 in less than a week should require the credit card information to be manually entered, and possibly automatically notify the credit card company of a suspicious transaction so the cardholder is made aware of what's happening. That would have the added bonus of forcing people whose addictive tendencies are driving them to overspend on microtransactions to pause and consider their actions, since so often "whales" are so profitable because they lose track of what they've spent.

Of course, that would mean vastly less money for companies that are rather enjoying making 50-60% of their revenue off of microtransactions, so I wouldn't expect to see it happen any time soon.

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The fact that it is even possible to spend 16k on a mobile game is the problem.

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Oh wow! I guess someone wasn't parenting him.

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ChimeraBlue posted...

The fact that it is even possible to spend 16k on a mobile game is the problem.

That's the same thing that popped in my head. What did he buy that cost $16,000? There can't be that many upgrades that total that amount of money.

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adjl posted...

Uhh, that's not what that sentence means at all, dude. That's a retrospective assessment of how her kid ended up behaving (and also a completely accurate description of the behaviours microtransaction systems aim to induce), not her acknowledging that he has always acted like a drug addict.

Fair. Although this will be a lesson for her to pay attention to her kid.

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BUMPED2002 posted...

That's the same thing that popped in my head. What did he buy that cost $16,000? There can't be that many upgrades that total that amount of money.

It seems like he kept buying ring packs...
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reason posted...

While I agree that the parents should have "turned on the child settings", there should be some kind of limit on these transactions to prevent the amount of charges from becoming so high. Of course, if my CC was suddenly being charged for things that I don't normally buy, my Bank calls me to check on it.

You say that but you seriously would be suprised the amount of adults that want this shit. A japanese business man literally spent 2.5 mil us on transformers mobile game. I received phone calls at work of people wanting their vwallet increased because they ran out of chattebate tokens.
Or remember tgose text keyword to ##### to get x service. People wanted to get free ringtones but ended up with a 9.99 sub after a month and alot of people wanted that content.

bottom line though she handed her kid her wallet in a candy store and got suprised when he bought something. Hell sitcoms have made fun of this story since credit cards went electronic. Kevin in home alone 2, bobby in king of the hill, trump with the wall. For her to say it want possible was a bit of lackluster parrenting. For her to not acknowledge this is utter bullshit as this has been news worthy since before that boy was concieved

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/07/are-you-responsible-for-purchases-your-kids-make-without-your-permission/index.htm

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OnlyTheTruth posted...

My Autistic 7 year old, found this weird ass backwards way to make his phone primary account holder than charge my bill plan.

Hax

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