Game Maker Says 40% of iTunes In-App Buys Are Fraud 114
chicksdaddy writes "Hong Kong-based Lakoo, maker of the Empire Online game, says that 4 in 10 in-application purchases by users of the iOS version of its MMORPG are fraudulent, and made through compromised iTunes accounts. But Apple has turned a deaf ear to its requests for help to stop the bogus activity."
If this were a systemic Problem, (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This ... (Score:3, Insightful)
We just released an app with in-app purchase. You'll be happy to know that we (developers) don't have direct access to your account. Apple handles all the authentication and transaction, and all we (developers) get is a digital receipt of the transaction.
They don't need to care (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If this were a systemic Problem, (Score:3, Insightful)
...and I realized after the fact that this article is about in-game purchases and fraudulent credit cards, not fraudulent programs. Whoops.
Re:If this were a systemic Problem, (Score:4, Insightful)
What incentive do they have to protect their customers? This isn't the 1970s any more.
Understand, it's not personal, it's just that the corporations have declared war on us. They're just doing what they were designed to do: profit no matter who gets hurt. Yet you still hear people say that there's "too much regulation". "Too much government". When corporations are the ones funding election campaigns, what do you expect lawmakers to do but whatever the donors say.
The corporation is a person that doesn't pay tax like a person.
As a developer using in app purchase ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck with your app, but for a lot of us, in-app purchases is a sign that maybe I really don't want your app very much to begin with.
As a developer using in app purchase I am honestly interested in what you would suggest.
... -- but was expandable using in app purchases. This allowed a person to pick and pay for only the additional functionality -- statistics, business and hex -- that they cared for. I suppose another option would have been to offer several medium priced apps, one each for statistics, business or hex but what if a person was interest in more than one? They would need multiple apps, that would be more costly. Also more inconvenient if they needed to move data from one calculator to the other.
I offer a technical product rather than a game. A single app that combines the functionality of various traditional handheld calculators, scientific, statistics, business, hex, etc. Perpenso Calc [perpenso.com]. Rather than have a single high priced app that probably included functionality a particular user would not care about I decided to have a modestly priced app that offered basic built-in functionality -- scientific, rpn, fractions, complex numbers,
In your opinion am I missing something? What alternatives would you suggest? Thanks in advance. Seriously, I am curious.