FTC To Examine Microtransactions In Free-To-Play Games and Apps 125
A post at GamePolitics points out that the Federal Trade Commission will be looking into free-to-play mobile games that rely on internal microtransactions as a business model. Many such games are marketed for children, and there have been a spate of cases where kids racked up huge bills without their parents' knowledge or explicit consent.
"The in-app purchases have also catapulted children's games such as Smurfs' Village and Tap Zoo, by San Francisco-based Pocket Gems, into the ranks of the highest-grossing apps on iPods, iPhones and iPads. But the practice is troubling parents and public interest groups, who say $99 for a wagon of Smurfberries or $19 for a bucket of snowflakes doesn't have any business in a children's game. Though a password is needed to make a purchase, critics say that the safeguards aren't strong enough and that there are loopholes. 'Parents need to know that the promotion of games and the delivery mechanism for them are deceptively cheap,' said Jim Styer, president of Common Sense Media, a public advocacy group for online content for children. 'But basically people are trying to make money off these apps, which is a huge problem, and only going to get bigger because mobile apps are the new platform for kids.'"
Price (Score:2)
'Parents need to know that the promotion of games and the delivery mechanism for them are deceptively cheap,'
Why? Delivery mechanism and its costs hardly matter, it's the content. In fact seller should be allowed to give their services any price they want.
Re:Price (Score:5, Interesting)
Children can't be held to a contract. If a child is playing a game, and they make a purchase within that game, can they be held to it? This is an issue for adults as well, generally purchases are subject to a return period, does that apply to online transactions? If not, why not? Shouldn't I be able to return that $99 cartload of Smurfberries that my 11 year old clicked on?
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can children go into a brick store and make a purchase? can they be held to it?
a business is not required to accept returns. many do, and most that don't will offer replacement or exchange for store credit.
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In the civilized world children (age varies by country, here it's 15 years) are not held to purchases above trivial sums without the parents consent.
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I don't get it. That's a peculiar turn of phrase. Is there some point which is not in the "civilized world" which you are concerned about?
(And if you're a European using the phrase to imply that the USA is not civilized, which 95% of uses of that phrase seem to be, the US does indeed have such laws.)
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Read in the context of the P and GP.
Just trying to poke holes in the "truth by rhetorical question" technique the AC uses.
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This is implying that you live in a place where the rule of law prevails instead of thuggery and oppression of a strong bully who simply bashes your head in because he hates the way you smell or got turned down for sex from his wife last night. "Civilized world" does not happen for all people in all places, and unfortunately even in places like America it can be a problem where life is less than civilized. Some times even police officers are little better than semi-organized gang bangers who largely get a
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It's unreasonable for anybody except a lawyer, and to just about anybody except a lawyer. There are more laws than you could read if you didn't do anything but read laws. And I'm not even requiring understanding. I've seen a specialized collection of state laws covering one aspect of the legal system, and it encompassed two floor to ceiling bookcases, each more than six feet wide (and about 10-12 feet tall). But this covered only the aspect of contract law pertaining to governmental agencies contracting
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I was merely pointing out that ignorance of the law is not a valid defense in a court room. Yes, I happen to agree with you that it is absurd that any given individual actually have memorized the entire legal code and all judicial rulings (especially in a "common law" country or region) that pertain to a particular situation.
On the other hand, if I ever get a ticket or have to go into a court room, nearly the first thing I have done in order to prepare a defense is to read the actual legal code and as many
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Is there a nuanced joke in there that I'm not getting? Isn't the definition of a first world country "The USA and its allies in the cold war." (Second world being the USSR and its allies, with third world being unaligned countries.)
Hence the use of the term civilized world (with a far more open meaning) to exclude the USA, rather than risk looking foolish.
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OK, to a certain extent I agree with you, but if your kid guesses or shoulder-surfs your password, is that the same as giving them "unsupervised access to your credit card"? That's what happened in this case - but, as the article says, they did get refunds from Apple.
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But the parent is the owner of the credit card and they most certainly can be held to contract. Take your kid to a restaurant and have him order whatever he wants. You, the parent, will be billed for it. Unless of course you go to one of these eateries that claims "kids under (age) eat free!". You cannot duck parental responsibility in this way. If you give your kid unsupervised access to your credit card this is an opportunity to actually BE a parent and establish consequences and boundaries. Not complain to the damned FTC...
I fully agree with your point, but your analogy is incorrect.
At a restaurant you are sitting there and you have the option to tell the waiter they want the chicken tenders, not the fillet. These kids were unsupervised and pushing buttons to spend real cash. A correct analogy is more along the lines of a card being taken from the wallet and used to buy a game on Steam, Amazon or whatever. The difference is there is malicious intent in physically removing the card.
As a parent I would have them toiling in the
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Then you may have read the part that says you are responsible for all fradulent charges made on your credit card UNLESS you report the theft/unauthorized use to the bank/issuing company immediately.
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$99 for a wagon of Smurfberries
OMG. I should start selling those.
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Re:Price (Score:4, Insightful)
If it is an on-line game that allows you to sign up via a common web browser and the kid somehow finds your credit card while you are sleeping, should you be required to honor those charges? Clearly your kid was "stealing your identity" when the contract was signed in a situation like that, but I say the problem is also that "on-line identity" is a difficult problem without some sort of biometric feedback.
I consider "biometric" identity to be the only real proof, be that a signature scribbled by pen, a finger print, retinal scan, or DNA sample. The problem with "identity theft" is when "proof of identity" has not been properly established. Knowing the maiden name of somebody's mother is not "proof of identity", nor is knowledge of bank account numbers or government issued certificate numbers. If you can't really prove who really entered into the contract, it is a joke that the contract actually means something.
I agree with your point, however, that you shouldn't open yourself up to potential dangers by setting up some system where a child can rack up charges on an unlimited basis, be that micro transactions in a game or text messages on a cell phone. For cell phones, I buy the pre-paid cell phones for my kids, and when they use up all of the minutes, I simply say "tough luck" as they have to wait until I can afford to put some more air-time on the phone. If I would permit my kids to play an on-line game, it would have to be in a similar situation where I would assign some trivial amount of money to an account and when it hit the limit, I would not feel obliged to be paying any more.
BTW, I got into a similar tiff with a mail-order book publisher where my kid signed up for a "monthly subscription" when he purchased a book through his elementary school teacher (one of those semi-annoying fliers that teachers often send home with the kids from book publishers) and then a series of other things started to arrive at our home with his name on it. He purchased the book with his allowance money (it was about $10 or so) and filled out his name and stuff without even running it by me. After about six months, I got this annoying bill collector who got on my case demanding payment of about $100 for this extra stuff. I basically told the idiot "I'll see you in court if you care" as the contract was signed by a minor and that the merchandise was unsolicited mail. The guy on the phone said he would ruin my credit rating, and then I responded "How?". It never showed up on my credit report (I did check) and I never got a subpoena to appear in court. Essentially, the company took the loss and ignored me, as I've ignored them.
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You should a) not honor the charges and report your child to the authorities for credit card fraud/theft, be a witness against the child at the trial, etc or b) actually be the parent and discipline the child, and pay the damned bill.
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In this case, nothing of real value would have been sold. Certainly the owners wouldn't be losing anything other than potential revenue.
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The issue here isn't access to a bunch of cash. I know full well where my wallet is most of the time, although I know it is the same thing with a credit card. Presumably if I had a huge pile of cash, I'd keep it at a bank or in a safe that my kids wouldn't know the combination.
The issue here is should I be bound to honor a contract that promises payment for services I didn't agree to in the first place, and to which that contract wasn't signed by me. Moreover, if the contract was knowingly and willingly
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If your kid was to take a bunch of cash from home and spend it at the resturant/ movies,etc. do you have a right to ask for it back from the business owners?? Or would you discipline the child?
It depends on the etc.
If whatever was bought was consumable, then you don't have a right to get it back (in this case, a concert/movie is consumable, a souvenir of such is not). However, if it was not consumable (I would put electronic purchase in this category), then you should be able to get a refund. Especially in the case of a high-end purchase by a minor (say an amount that would bump from misdemeanor to felony).
However, this would depend on whether there was any wear/tear on the product (which s
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I consider "biometric" identity to be the only real proof, be that a signature scribbled by pen, a finger print, retinal scan, or DNA sample. The problem with "identity theft" is when "proof of identity" has not been properly established.
Even then, once it's digitized it's not really proof of identity. For example, if I know how your retina scanner represents your eye on the wire, what's to stop me from sending the bitstream that corresponds to "teancum's left retina" when challenged?
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While this is getting very much off-topic from the main point of the thread, I think the problem here is the difference between confirming identity and establishing identity.
Establishment of identity needs to be done in person, where that established identity is then certified in some manner with strong crypto-security such as a public/private encryption method. I'm talking something much stronger than a 512-bit or better yet a 4096-bit hash (SHA-2 or equivalent) that is algorithmicly difficult to perform.
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The challenge includes a randomly-generated one-use public key and the response is encrypted with it. I know I created this key for this session, I verify the response by decrypting it with the private key and then discard all that. There is no MitM attack for this.
I also invented the one-way no-acid chip for this purpose. The chip is immune to all chemical decay attacks (that's not to say the chemicals don't work; I designed it so that you can't get into the chip that way without destroying it. You w
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In-App purchases from Apple in iOS are incredibly convenient, but they are definitely the fault here. The same password that you have to give your kid to install free apps is the same password needed to authorize the in-app purchase.
Another win for selfish, irresponsible loudmouths (Score:1)
Don't offend me. [slashdot.org]
Whatever happened to my kids, I had absolutely nothing to do with.
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In all honesty, they are two completely different issues. I have a problem with any app that relies microtransactions and gameplay that exploit well known weaknesses inherant to humans neural network to turn a massive profit.
I'd place these social games up there with gambling and alcohol.
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It would be interesting if everyone got a chance to try out their pet sociological/political theories, but I think we're probably better off without some of those theories being put to the test. Not that it wouldn't be fun saying, "I told you so!", but the loss of human life would be quite regrettable.
Perhaps the answer is (Score:2)
That said, apps that encourage kids to spend real money for shit like costumes etc. are treading on moral thin ice. The better ones would separate the concepts
Re:Perhaps the answer is (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, apps that encourage kids to spend real money for shit like costumes etc. are treading on moral thin ice..
How is this any different than the collectable card series that were highly prevelent throughout my childhood - football, baseball, TMNT, Battlestar Galactica, and then on to the collectable card games like Spellfire, Magic etc etc. Not to mention the crap that came along with the interest in Warhammer 40K (what a scam! I occassionally pop into my local store to see what they are doing, and the prices are even more ludicrous today!) and the various AD&D packs.
Kids have been encouraged to buy tat for decades, this isn't new and it isn't any different than back in my youth.
Besides, what kind of a parent links a credit card to a childs iTunes account? Where are these kids getting $99 to spend on crap?
Re:Perhaps the answer is (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this any different than the collectable card series that were highly prevelent throughout my childhood - football, baseball, TMNT, Battlestar Galactica, and then on to the collectable card games like Spellfire, Magic etc etc. Not to mention the crap that came along with the interest in Warhammer 40K (what a scam! I occassionally pop into my local store to see what they are doing, and the prices are even more ludicrous today!) and the various AD&D packs.
Kids have been encouraged to buy tat for decades, this isn't new and it isn't any different than back in my youth.
Besides, what kind of a parent links a credit card to a childs iTunes account? Where are these kids getting $99 to spend on crap?
I think you know how it's different. Chances are that your parents directly supervised you when you bought your cards. Or if you were older and allowed to buy stuff by yourself you did so with an allowance. Either way there was direct control over how much you bought. And if you had raided their wallets to buy more they would almost certainly have noticed the missing money far more quickly. They might also notice the suspicious number of empty game wrappers & stacks of cards floating around the house. They might even have received a call from the local store or the school about the suspiciously about the number of cards you were purchasing. Aside from all that you as a kid bought your cards with hard cash, not smurfberries or some other ethereal point system designed to cause you to disassociate the worth of the item.
The point is that all this human interaction and control needs to have as good a counterpart in the digital world. Parents need to be able to control kids spending and expect reasonable protections to be offered by the system. Responsible kid games and infrastructures should impose spending / credit hard limits as a failsafe and account holders should have tools to further limit spending and receive delivery notifications / reports of spending habits. All transactions should also be conducted in a real currency not "smurfberries" or whatever so the kid themselves has a handle on what they're spending.
I realise that some games and stores may be close to that already. But given that we hear reports of abuses I don't think it would be wrong to issue code of conduct guidelines and possibly changes to the ratings system to ensure games abide by them.
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I think you know how it's different. Chances are that your parents directly supervised you when you bought your cards. Or if you were older and allowed to buy stuff by yourself you did so with an allowance. Either way there was direct control over how much you bought. And if you had raided their wallets to buy more they would almost certainly have noticed the missing money far more quickly. They might also notice the suspicious number of empty game wrappers & stacks of cards floating around the house. They might even have received a call from the local store or the school about the suspiciously about the number of cards you were purchasing. Aside from all that you as a kid bought your cards with hard cash, not smurfberries or some other ethereal point system designed to cause you to disassociate the worth of the item.
I still don't see how its different - kids are buying stuff marketed directly to them.
I do find it quite interesting that you bring up parental supervision and adult intervention, when that is precisely what is missing in the first place from the issues in this article - the parents are allowing it to happen. And thats still no different to my experiences in childhood...
No, my parents were not there when I bought my trading cards - yes I had an allowance beyond which it was impossible to go, but why is that not the case with these online games? As I said in my original post, which idiot is linking their credit card to their childs iTunes account and letting them go wild? How can that even be considered good parenting? And if you must link your card to their iTunes account, why are you not denying them the passwords?
No, there were no empty game wrappers to be seen - practically everyone I knew had the wrappers off and either on the floor or in the bin before they were out of the shop door because you wanted to see what cards you had. And again no, the shop keepers didn't care if you were buying $10 worth of cards in one go, or were coming back time and again. And yet again no, school teachers didn't care that kids were bringing in shoeboxes full of cards every day. It was all done very openly in the playground or wherever, and no one batted an eyelid.
My parents didn't care either that I had lots of cards, and that cards came and went. Never raised an eyebrow, even when my collection in one game came to well over 8,000 cards. But it wasn't an issue for me - I used my allowance and I did chores to earn those cards, I'm guessing the whole point of this story is that kids are resorting to stealing credit card details or money from their parents, or pushing their parents to top up their balances or what not. Again, more of a problem with the parenting than anything else.
Why isn't there direct control from the parent in this case? Wheres the parenting?!
The point is that all this human interaction and control needs to have as good a counterpart in the digital world. Parents need to be able to control kids spending and expect reasonable protections to be offered by the system. Responsible kid games and infrastructures should impose spending / credit hard limits as a failsafe and account holders should have tools to further limit spending and receive delivery notifications / reports of spending habits. All transactions should also be conducted in a real currency not "smurfberries" or whatever so the kid themselves has a handle on what they're spending.
There should already be an easy way to cap the amount a kid can spend - don't give them access to the funds. Problem solved - these games aren't going to extend kids credit to collect at a later date (they can't, it would be unenforceable), so where is the money coming from ultimately?
Its all coming back to the parents I think. And they need someone to blame other than themselves...
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You have to tie a credit card to the iTunes account to install a 99 cent game. A password is required to install a free game. In-App purchases use the same password (as do paid apps).
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And in any case, why do these kids have access to the password?
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Well you can expect less technically minded parents to put in a credit card for a 99 cent game. And then expect to have the password protect against unauthorized purchases. Problem with iOS is that if the parent enters the password to install a free game like this Smurf game, the password is cached for some time. If the kid immediately plays the game, they can make in-app purchases *without* the password.
The problem isn't credit card paranoia. Good for your wife that she doesn't have to tie a
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Actually, it's easy enough to create the same sort of situation. Many U.S. banks have offered limited fund debit cards for years. Just set one up for a kid and load it up once a month as part of their allowance. If a kid maxes it out buying online toys, how is that any different from when I used to spend my entire allowance on Spiderman and Batman comic books?
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I looked into that for my teenage son. It's a great concept, smothered by fees. Some of those cards charge several dollars each time you add more money to the account. A $2.50/deposit transaction fee is ridiculous when I'm depositing $5 at a time. Other charges for checking the balance, ATM withdrawals, and so forth pretty much nickel and dime the account to dea
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You can do it with iTunes as well - your iTunes account can be funded with iTunes gift cards easily. And I'm seeing discounted iTunes cards for retail
part of it is that password is needed for free app (Score:2)
part of it is that password is needed for free apps and it after that you don't need the pass word for up to 15 min after that so maybe it free apps did not need a password it would make so it's not so easy to pay for stuff in app.
It's like the directv system free VOD does not need you say yes to buy this for XXX but PPV VOD has a on screen pop up saying do you want to buy X for X.XX yes / no?
Make so no password is needed for free apps but any payed or in app buy for real money has a SYSTEM POP saying do wa
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Besides, what kind of a parent links a credit card to a childs iTunes account? Where are these kids getting $99 to spend on crap?
Most children in the target audience for the Smufts use their parents phone / ipad, not their own.
We're talking 3-6 year old kids, and a GUI that deliberately obfuscates buy process to hide the fact that it involves real money.
The entire business model is "tricking children".
If there ever was anything the walled garden of Apple should protect the iPeople from, it's fraud like this.
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Its not a straight "click here - oooh look we just debited your account a hundred bucks", there are already road blocks in place.
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Well, to do in-app purchases on the iPhone or iPad, you need to confirm your iTunes password - why do the kids have that? And if the apps are doing purchases directly (which is against Apples rules...) then they need to input card details - why do the kids have those?
Wrong.
iOS caches the password from marketplace purchases, and is used in-game without any dialogs until the cache timeout is reached.
Its not a straight "click here - oooh look we just debited your account a hundred bucks", there are already road blocks in place.
Whatever roadblocks are in place, they are not sufficient. There's been examples of in-game purchases for over $1000 with cached passwords.
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Stop trying to exonerate the parents from blame.
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That caching is very short - I know that Im typing my password in once or twice a day on my iPad! So why is the parent typing in their password constantly?
Now you're just being stupid.
For the fraud to work the kids just have to have access to the device with a cached password once, there is no "typing in their password constantly ".
For the record the cache time is 15 minutes. So if the kids happen to play within 15 minutes of the parents buying anything, there's a high probability of hundreds or thousands of $ being charged to the account. This only needs to happen for a very small percentage of users to become very profitable.
Stop trying to exonerate the parents from blame.
Stop trying to exonerate Apple f
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Why are the parents typing in the password in the first place? Why does that iTunes account have a credit card linked to it? WHERE IS THE PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY IN ALL OF THIS?!
Oh, wait, if the parent can blame someone else, then they don't have to shoulder the shame of being a poor parent. Seems to be the way of the world these days.
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The parents never intend to give the kids access to the password or the credit card, the broken iOS design does that for them.
IF the owner has bought ANYTHING from the marketplace the past 15 minutes before the kid starts Smurfville: Poof the money is gone.
Non-technical people will not understand that the default options for password caching can cause this.
There is no poor parenting involved here at all, just broken design (from Apple), fraud (creators of Smurfville) and poor technical skills in the general
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You seem to be being deliberately obtuse in this matter.
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Whenever I am considering a purchase from the App store I read other users comments. There are endless complaints about apps that have micro payment systems installed, and about apps that are listed as free but require an in-app purchase to activate and use (that I consider most misleading and refuse to buy them just on principle).
Re:Perhaps the answer is (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this any different than the collectable card series that were highly prevelent throughout my childhood - football, baseball, TMNT, Battlestar Galactica, and then on to the collectable card games like Spellfire, Magic etc etc. Not to mention the crap that came along with the interest in Warhammer 40K (what a scam! I occassionally pop into my local store to see what they are doing, and the prices are even more ludicrous today!) and the various AD&D packs.
Because when you were a kid, you had to bring actual physical cash to the comic book store to buy that stuff.
The transactions the FTC is looking at don't even require a credit card (at least, not in the child's possession) - just touch some smurfberries on your iPhone and you've bought $100 of worthless virtual crap.
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Because when you were a kid, you had to bring actual physical cash to the comic book store to buy that stuff.
Yes, that and the fact that you have a physical comic book that you can keep for a lifetime and/or sell.
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That said, apps that encourage kids to spend real money for shit like costumes etc. are treading on moral thin ice.
So I have to ask...
Isn't this something the App Store was supposed to protect you with? At least according to Apple, who've generally tried to ban porn, you'd think they'd also ban apps which deliberately exploit children. I'm not saying I want Apple to ban anything, but they are pretty damned capricious about what they choose to ban or not.
Maybe I'm not being cynical enough. Maybe the difference is the amount of money these bring in...
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But if you don't buy your kids smart phones now, how will they ever grow up to become self absorbed yuppie scum?
"Micro-transaction"? (Score:5, Insightful)
$19, let alone $99, is not a bloody "micro-transaction". The original micro-transaction idea was talking about sub-dollar amounts (eg 5 cents to view a web page). Now days idiot games/web journalists apply the term to mean "online trading of money for in game goods and services".
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Yeah, these big amounts (in the context of a 99 cent game) are ridiculous.
I love the concept of true micropayments, and think it's got a huge market. (Hell, AppStores etc. are proof of that - look at Angry Birds taking more than $1m per day over the Christmas Season) But this add-one stuff that's maybe 200% or 2000% of the original app purchase is just insane.
(Note : I feel the same about add-on packs for cars etc., where you end up spending [significant percentage of car's original price] on upgrades, spo
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Can we start calling them "Cyber-transactions"? Please? I love it when we put cyber in front of a word to make a new word!
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I see it abused so often that I didn't even check the articles (*shock*). Also some places don't have any physical currency like a single cent any more. Australia went to 5 cent coins as the lowest denomination a long time ago. The micro-transaction idea originally was about alternative payment systems for purchases so small that it wouldn't be worth it to pull a credit card out. Sub-cent prices are possible but the guys interested in it generally were thinking higher.
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Typical credit card acceptance costs 15-30 cents per transaction. Micro transactions are a different way of handling debits to allow you to be profitable for sales under $1.00 (or whatever price point makes taking credit cards unfeasible or instantly unprofitable in the particular industry). You can't charge 30 cents for a service directly via credit card and expect to make a reasonable profit without making changes to the card processing fees themselves.
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Those prices... (Score:2)
Surely no parent would ever "ok" a purchase like that from their kids (and these do sound like child-oriented games). I sounds at least plausible therefore (though I can't say more than that without evidence) that some of these games are making it
Personal Finance (Score:1)
Where's the parental oversight? He kid could just as easily be making calls to Cambodia and frequenting 1-900 numbers. If they're old enough to make virtual transactions it's a good time to start teaching them about personal finance. If a parent signs a contract with a company and then hands the device that's signed for to his child, the parent is STILL ultimately responsible.
Buying smurfberries with someone else's money after you run out is very common in real life. It's called "raising taxes to fill a bud
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Exactly what I was going to say; "Where is the parenting". Too many people don't think through things at all. Giving a young child a smart phone and unlimited access to a credit card and then turning the consequences on the companies providing you services just means you're a dumb parent.
Most common phrase over the last 20 years? "It wasn't my fault! They're responsible! *pointing finger somewhere else*"
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Totally agree - this seems to be another case of "Well, no-one was protecting my child!" - do it your damn self.
"mobile apps are the new platform for kids."
I wonder if it's more that mobile apps are the new childminder for kids. Yes, some play games on an iDevice for fun, but it's like TV, I suspect a lot of parents say "Just play on this, little Billy", and let them do that instead of actually spending time with the child.
[/cynicism]
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Fine, no problem, because to you there is no such thing as a scam targeting children, only the parent can be responsible.
The world has been full of scams targeting children for decades at least; when I was young it was cartoons which encouraged kids to demand the latest action figures from their parents, because so many parents are unable to say 'no'.
The difference is that in those days parents weren't giving kids instant access to their credit cards or phone bills to pay for it.
99 dollars for a wagon full of smurfberries (Score:1)
That sounds pretty reasonable until you realize that it's a smurf-sized wagon.
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And that a real wagon full of berries is probably about the same price or cheaper.
Surprise Surprise.. (Score:1)
$99 for a wagon of smurfberries? (Score:1)
I don't see the problem here, thats a smurfin' great deal, especially when you consider how long it would take to smurf all those berries manually.
iOS - a time-wasting and money-wasting platform (Score:1)
See, that's where my general sense of unease with all iOS devices comes from: This is a walled garden which is primarily designed to take your time and money (both precious resources by my standards) and generate a nice profit for Apple. Spending money is made so easy it happens almost without you noticing - that is, until you get the bill. Want to power up your device? Press a button? Please register your credit card first. This is like a phishing website turned into hardware.
And all that mostly just for m
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I did my 2010 taxes 2 weeks ago using TurboTax Snaptax for iOS. It took me literally 15 minutes to enter all my info and that's only because I don't have an iPhone 4 with a camera (or I could take a picture of my W2). The app itself was free. After I saw the amount of my tax refund, I made an in-app purchase of $14.99 to actually file my taxes. It all happened so fast, that I didn't even think twice about the cost - well worth it.
Gambling (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Gambling (Score:4, Informative)
Even if you can buy "gold" for money, can you sell "gold" and get dollars/euros/etc. back out? I think the problem with the gambling laws is getting cash money for winning the game of chance - if it all stays in the game ecosystem, I don't think it counts. I know Entropia has this mechanic, and they seem to have skirted the law, but I don't know how. If you can sell EQ2 in-game money for real money, this is the first I've heard of it.
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They *skirted* the law by setting up shop in a sensible country, rather than in the US ;-)
Whilst the enormous and very willing US market makes it very attractive for these ventures, the legal and political shenanigans represents a risk.
In my view this is a complete non-issue surrounding transactions that have taken place for decades before the rise of cell phones and facebook.
Methinks someone just wants their cut and is using children to attempt to legislate a mechanism of control.
If these companies were to
Re:Gambling (Score:4, Informative)
This is a storm that's been brewing for years now. On EQ2 servers they sold in-game money for real money, then once you were in the gave there was a goblin that was basically a slot machine...
Unless they let you cash in the game money for real money, it would not be the same as slot machine. If you could sell your jackpot of game money winnings to other players, but not to the house, would it be counted as "cashing in the winnings"? Anyway as long as the real money goes only one way, it could be dumb, it could be lame, but it is not gambling.
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Does that count
Problem? (Score:2)
But basically people are trying to make money off these apps, which is a huge problem...
People are trying to make money off their work? Those bastards!!
Ok, I understand the point he was trying to make and I agree with it - Smurf's Village takes advantage of children to make much more money than is considered "the norm" for the industry but to complain that people are trying to make money off of an app is an utterly stupid complaint.
Intentional Poor UI Design (Score:2)
Devs are intentionally using poor UI design to trap you in to using up the precious 'gems' that you paid real money for.
Team Lava and Strom8 are notorious for this. Team Lava for its new Farmville clone and other themes do not give any confirmation when you accidentally tap the wrong part of the screen. Their policies are to never refund anything.
I hope the FTC throws the book at them.
No excuse for dumb parents... (Score:3, Informative)
Settings->Restrictions->In-App Purchases and turn it Off. Problem solved with no parental excuses. While there are there might as well setup any other restrictions that are needed.
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Settings->Restrictions->In-App Purchases and turn it Off. Problem solved with no parental excuses. While there are there might as well setup any other restrictions that are needed.
Reading TFA:
Madison's mother let her download Smurfberries with the help of her older sister, who knew the family's iTunes password. From there, Madison went on a Smurfberry binge on the family iPad.
Getting the password is a much higher barrier than changing a setting, so while changing the setting may have prevented this, I think the older sister would have been able to change that pretty easily. I'd say the real problem is giving your kids access to your credit card indirectly.
That said, charging 15 to 99 dollars for things in a kids game is absurd. I'm not saying we need legislation to protect the kids here, but that's extremely shady on pocket gems' part.
Rather large micro transactions. (Score:1)
This will be interesting. (Score:2)
Having the FTC look at these games is the last thing some of these games want. For those who aren't aware a lot of them are thinly disguised online gambling.
Usually once you've played a while the best way to power yourself up is to buy some sort of box or item that has a rare chance to really power you up.
People spend thousands trying to get "lucky".
Technically speaking... (Score:1)
Disappointed again (Score:2)
When I first started reading the title, I thought it was going to say "FTC to examine Microtrading"
But that would make too much sense :-(
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I can't really agree, partly because it really looks like Steve Jobs isn't controlling these applications.