12 ms·

Dad horrified at £4,642 gaming app bill

42 points by pmoriarty 6y ago

michaelmrose 6y ago
Maybe require all apps to have a built in spending limit and an affirmative act per app to raise it with a mandatory password prompt and click on an emailed link to verify. Make it up to $50 one time or greater than $100 in one calendar month. Given how people actually spend 99% of people will never see such a prompt and virtually everyone that hits it will be one of these people who is being scammed out of their money inadvertently by their kids. While we are at it we could simply ban all games designed to appeal to the scratch ticket mentality and nothing of value will have been lost.
- CaptainZapp 6y ago
  While that's a good idea it will never happen, since it's diametral to the interest of the app stores, which is to make as much money as possible. Of course, if the abuse gets too bad there will be regulatory backlash.
  - apsanz 6y ago
    Which of course is the same reason why android and ios will never show you data on how often you use your phone and allow you to send less time on your phone... They don't want kids sending thousands of dollars. It is bad PR for pocket change for them. They already have options in the OS to prevent this. They just need to change the defaults and a few additional features.
    - occamschainsaw 6y ago
      Both iOS(Screen Time)[1] and Android(Digital Wellbeing)[2] show how much you use your phone and let you set limits for smartphone usage. 1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208982 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208982 2. https://wellbeing.google/ https://wellbeing.google/
      - michaelmrose 6y ago
        Is a reasonable spending limit set by default?
  - benologist 6y ago
    It's not just the app stores. Facebook used to call it "friendly fraud" when they billed someone thousands because an obfuscated transaction occurred each time a kid pressed a button. > One deposition shows Facebook employees were reluctant to reduce this "friendly fraud" because it would likely also reduce the company's overall revenue. https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2019/01/25/facebook-turned-a-blind-eye-to-friendly-fraud-as-kids-racked-up-thousands-on-games/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2019/01/25/facebook-tu...
kevin_b_er 6y ago
> But he says he's amazed that in a game designed to be played by children it would even be possible to spend thousands of pounds across a thousand transactions over the course of just a few weeks. These games are designed around this. The dark patterns are intentional. > "We encourage parents to review their payment settings on third-party services, such as Google Play, as they typically have an option to require a password for each purchase made and/or to prevent any information from being saved in browser settings that could allow them to be reused." Then you blame the parents for being scammed.
- anothermoron 6y ago
  How is that not the parent fault ?
- balladeer 6y ago
  A friend, who worked at a famous mobile/Fb gaming company, once told me his company would, sometimes, assign an engineer for an individual user or just few users. High spending users.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - lapsed_pacifist 6y ago
    "whales" is the free-to-p(l)ay/ freemium games industry term for this sort of power user, who will spend vastly more than the average user and carries the lions share of the profit for the developer.
    - Haga 6y ago
      Usually lonely people who try to impress strangers online
- Sarah_Giggs 6y ago
notwhereyouare 6y ago
It’s not the app stores fault, but I think the App Store could start throwing up notifications if you go from spending 0 to 500 in a small period of time. That is crazy how the girl managed to spend THAT much in a period of a month.
- celticninja 6y ago
  Happens on xbox/ps too. The best way to handle it is to explain to your children how it works and educate them. I allow mine to spend money on Fortnite skins because they know what they are getting and what it is costing. Their cousin, I recently found out, spent £400 on Roblox tat after taking their parents credit card. Now the excuse can never be I didn't know, which is what their cousin said, even though she had taken the card and used the details, as opposed to it already being registered and the child just clicking 'buy' with no awareness.
- libertine 6y ago
  >That is crazy how the girl managed to spend THAT much in a period of a month. If you think about it, it's not that hard if she keeps getting queues to spend more without any track of how much she spent. Hell when I was a kid and internet was paid by the hour, we got a lot of months with spending out of control and big bills for our standards, because you lose track of time/spend. I bet the game doesn't tell "You've spent X so far!". Such apps are designed precisely for that. Hopefully some EU country will label such behaviors as gaming addiction, and make stores have triggers to control such behavior.
- wilde 6y ago
  Don’t let the app stores off the hook. They collect 30% and dictate tons of less meaningful design choices. They could make this go away. But then Apple would have to explain to it’s shareholders how a majority of it’s services revenue is actually generated by gambling addicts and children.
deeblering4 6y ago
Do the app developers or store have any legal ground to stand on when charges are being made by an unauthorized minor?
- gizmo686 6y ago
  That no damage was done since they refunded the charges (or rather, that they have already granted the relief that would be sought in a hypothetical lawsuit case). They can do that do this because it doesn't actually cost them anything to provide the digital "goods" that are being purchased; and not every parent notices. Their defense in the cases where the parent doesn't notice is that the plaintiff must be be aware they were wronged in order to file suit.
econcon 6y ago
Dad can provide a minor credit card/debit card, they are very popular these days with spend limit. Many platforms allow you to set spend limit. It's also possible to turn on a heater and forget to turn it off by a minor and accure mega electricity bill and same is true if your data is being charged per unit data consumed by your internet provider. In none of those cases, refund would be provided.
- batiudrami 6y ago
  Typically if it is accidental and a one off you do get a refund on those in my experience. Utilities all have bill shock policies.
  - jaclaz 6y ago
    > Typically if it is accidental and a one off you do get a refund on those in my experience. Utilities all have bill shock policies. Sure, but the real money comes from the non-shocking (while still exorbitant) bills. I mean, let's say that you sign up your card for your daughter, expecting to be billed once 4.99. Next month you discover you were billed 49.99 instead, as after the initial 4.99 there are another 9 similar bills, one very three days or so. My guess is that you would call it a (modest) one-time loss, cancel whatever can be canceled, learn your lesson and get along. But there will be hundreds, thousands of dads falling in the same trap (as it is a trap) that will do the same. Anecdata (reversed), my mom a few years ago needed to get some hearing aids, they are a fairly recent model that can connect to the phone via bluetooth. Her phone at the time was not a smartphone, so we bought a new smartphone with the right bluetooth release/version. She had a pre-paid contract with a very low fee for calls but an exorbitant one for internet connection, to make it short, she usually got along with 50 Euros every two month or so. Surely it was an overlook by the telephone guys and by myself to not check the (several year old) contract at the light of the possible internet activity on the new phone. Needless to say, in two day she was out of credit, no problem, we made a new contract, for more or less the same monthy fee with a free 2 or 4 GB internet traffic allotment, and went away with a net loss of some 25/30 Euro.
- noodlesUK 6y ago
runawaybottle 6y ago
How can a game developer ethically justify a $4500 price tag for a game? Yes, we can put in limits on spending, but let’s say we didn’t, does that mean a game could be worth that much money? Ever?
- IntelMiner 6y ago
  The industry actually has a term for people who spend compulsively like that. They literally call them "Whales"
  - nix23 6y ago
    And it all started with a Horse Armor.
    - FloatArtifact 6y ago
      Yep the industry took an arrow to the knee.
      - bzb3 6y ago
        You were downvoted because you referenced the wrong game. ;P
        nix23 6y ago
        Maybe it passed into Oblivion ;)
  - Haga 6y ago
    Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Srsly, if you rip of loners for community status, that's Rock bottom as a game.. a slot machine dev
- econcon 6y ago
  No one putting gun to their head to cough up $4500. They are paying because of their own weakness or maybe because of market forces as they can't get their fix elsewhere. I can easily justify it ethically as "it's what my offering is valued by market". All my engineering education skills have not gone waste, those sleepless nights, missed dates - all paid off finally! Revs up Lamborghini bought on installment paid with $4500 check
1MachineElf 6y ago
Being a long time Elder Scrolls fan, I was disappointed yesterday upon trying out Elder Scrolls Online for the first time. The constant stream of reminders and up-front placement of things to spend money on is extremely immersion-breaking. I'm going to put more hours into it just to see if there really is a hidden kernel of fun in there, but so far it hasn't done anything to hide the fact that it's a brazen cash-grab wearing TES clothing. I really don't mind paying for quality games and DLCs, but in ESO, doing anything except for failing basically requires sending a stream of cash to Zenimax. :/
- BearOso 6y ago
  There won’t be any fun hidden in there. Once a game developer passes the barrier of accepting cash for progress it won’t be balanced in any way that makes it fun to play.
  - JackMorgan 6y ago
    Not always, due to shutdown I revived my old WoW account, and the latest content is far more engaging for me than the original content. But that's a game you're already expected to pay monthly.
- Shared404 6y ago
  Well, I had been looking at joining that. I was afraid it would be something like this though, thanks for the warning.

42 points by pmoriarty 6y ago

Maybe require all apps to have a built in spending limit and an affirmative act per app to raise it with a mandatory password prompt and click on an emailed link to verify. Make it up to $50 one time or greater than $100 in one calendar month. Given how people actually spend 99% of people will never see such a prompt and virtually everyone that hits it will be one of these people who is being scammed out of their money inadvertently by their kids. While we are at it we could simply ban all games designed to appeal to the scratch ticket mentality and nothing of value will have been lost.

CaptainZapp 6y ago
While that's a good idea it will never happen, since it's diametral to the interest of the app stores, which is to make as much money as possible. Of course, if the abuse gets too bad there will be regulatory backlash.
- apsanz 6y ago
  Which of course is the same reason why android and ios will never show you data on how often you use your phone and allow you to send less time on your phone... They don't want kids sending thousands of dollars. It is bad PR for pocket change for them. They already have options in the OS to prevent this. They just need to change the defaults and a few additional features.
  - occamschainsaw 6y ago
    Both iOS(Screen Time)[1] and Android(Digital Wellbeing)[2] show how much you use your phone and let you set limits for smartphone usage. 1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208982 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208982 2. https://wellbeing.google/ https://wellbeing.google/
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      Is a reasonable spending limit set by default?
- benologist 6y ago
  It's not just the app stores. Facebook used to call it "friendly fraud" when they billed someone thousands because an obfuscated transaction occurred each time a kid pressed a button. > One deposition shows Facebook employees were reluctant to reduce this "friendly fraud" because it would likely also reduce the company's overall revenue. https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2019/01/25/facebook-turned-a-blind-eye-to-friendly-fraud-as-kids-racked-up-thousands-on-games/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2019/01/25/facebook-tu...

kevin_b_er 6y ago

> But he says he's amazed that in a game designed to be played by children it would even be possible to spend thousands of pounds across a thousand transactions over the course of just a few weeks. These games are designed around this. The dark patterns are intentional. > "We encourage parents to review their payment settings on third-party services, such as Google Play, as they typically have an option to require a password for each purchase made and/or to prevent any information from being saved in browser settings that could allow them to be reused." Then you blame the parents for being scammed.

anothermoron 6y ago
How is that not the parent fault ?
balladeer 6y ago
A friend, who worked at a famous mobile/Fb gaming company, once told me his company would, sometimes, assign an engineer for an individual user or just few users. High spending users.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lapsed_pacifist 6y ago
  "whales" is the free-to-p(l)ay/ freemium games industry term for this sort of power user, who will spend vastly more than the average user and carries the lions share of the profit for the developer.
  - Haga 6y ago
    Usually lonely people who try to impress strangers online
Sarah_Giggs 6y ago

notwhereyouare 6y ago

It’s not the app stores fault, but I think the App Store could start throwing up notifications if you go from spending 0 to 500 in a small period of time. That is crazy how the girl managed to spend THAT much in a period of a month.

celticninja 6y ago
Happens on xbox/ps too. The best way to handle it is to explain to your children how it works and educate them. I allow mine to spend money on Fortnite skins because they know what they are getting and what it is costing. Their cousin, I recently found out, spent £400 on Roblox tat after taking their parents credit card. Now the excuse can never be I didn't know, which is what their cousin said, even though she had taken the card and used the details, as opposed to it already being registered and the child just clicking 'buy' with no awareness.
libertine 6y ago
>That is crazy how the girl managed to spend THAT much in a period of a month. If you think about it, it's not that hard if she keeps getting queues to spend more without any track of how much she spent. Hell when I was a kid and internet was paid by the hour, we got a lot of months with spending out of control and big bills for our standards, because you lose track of time/spend. I bet the game doesn't tell "You've spent X so far!". Such apps are designed precisely for that. Hopefully some EU country will label such behaviors as gaming addiction, and make stores have triggers to control such behavior.
wilde 6y ago
Don’t let the app stores off the hook. They collect 30% and dictate tons of less meaningful design choices. They could make this go away. But then Apple would have to explain to it’s shareholders how a majority of it’s services revenue is actually generated by gambling addicts and children.

deeblering4 6y ago

Do the app developers or store have any legal ground to stand on when charges are being made by an unauthorized minor?

gizmo686 6y ago
That no damage was done since they refunded the charges (or rather, that they have already granted the relief that would be sought in a hypothetical lawsuit case). They can do that do this because it doesn't actually cost them anything to provide the digital "goods" that are being purchased; and not every parent notices. Their defense in the cases where the parent doesn't notice is that the plaintiff must be be aware they were wronged in order to file suit.

econcon 6y ago

Dad can provide a minor credit card/debit card, they are very popular these days with spend limit. Many platforms allow you to set spend limit. It's also possible to turn on a heater and forget to turn it off by a minor and accure mega electricity bill and same is true if your data is being charged per unit data consumed by your internet provider. In none of those cases, refund would be provided.

batiudrami 6y ago
Typically if it is accidental and a one off you do get a refund on those in my experience. Utilities all have bill shock policies.
- jaclaz 6y ago
  > Typically if it is accidental and a one off you do get a refund on those in my experience. Utilities all have bill shock policies. Sure, but the real money comes from the non-shocking (while still exorbitant) bills. I mean, let's say that you sign up your card for your daughter, expecting to be billed once 4.99. Next month you discover you were billed 49.99 instead, as after the initial 4.99 there are another 9 similar bills, one very three days or so. My guess is that you would call it a (modest) one-time loss, cancel whatever can be canceled, learn your lesson and get along. But there will be hundreds, thousands of dads falling in the same trap (as it is a trap) that will do the same. Anecdata (reversed), my mom a few years ago needed to get some hearing aids, they are a fairly recent model that can connect to the phone via bluetooth. Her phone at the time was not a smartphone, so we bought a new smartphone with the right bluetooth release/version. She had a pre-paid contract with a very low fee for calls but an exorbitant one for internet connection, to make it short, she usually got along with 50 Euros every two month or so. Surely it was an overlook by the telephone guys and by myself to not check the (several year old) contract at the light of the possible internet activity on the new phone. Needless to say, in two day she was out of credit, no problem, we made a new contract, for more or less the same monthy fee with a free 2 or 4 GB internet traffic allotment, and went away with a net loss of some 25/30 Euro.
noodlesUK 6y ago

runawaybottle 6y ago

How can a game developer ethically justify a $4500 price tag for a game? Yes, we can put in limits on spending, but let’s say we didn’t, does that mean a game could be worth that much money? Ever?

IntelMiner 6y ago
The industry actually has a term for people who spend compulsively like that. They literally call them "Whales"
- nix23 6y ago
  And it all started with a Horse Armor.
  - FloatArtifact 6y ago
    Yep the industry took an arrow to the knee.
    - bzb3 6y ago
      You were downvoted because you referenced the wrong game. ;P
      - nix23 6y ago
        Maybe it passed into Oblivion ;)
- Haga 6y ago
  Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Srsly, if you rip of loners for community status, that's Rock bottom as a game.. a slot machine dev
econcon 6y ago
No one putting gun to their head to cough up $4500. They are paying because of their own weakness or maybe because of market forces as they can't get their fix elsewhere. I can easily justify it ethically as "it's what my offering is valued by market". All my engineering education skills have not gone waste, those sleepless nights, missed dates - all paid off finally! Revs up Lamborghini bought on installment paid with $4500 check

1MachineElf 6y ago

Being a long time Elder Scrolls fan, I was disappointed yesterday upon trying out Elder Scrolls Online for the first time. The constant stream of reminders and up-front placement of things to spend money on is extremely immersion-breaking. I'm going to put more hours into it just to see if there really is a hidden kernel of fun in there, but so far it hasn't done anything to hide the fact that it's a brazen cash-grab wearing TES clothing. I really don't mind paying for quality games and DLCs, but in ESO, doing anything except for failing basically requires sending a stream of cash to Zenimax. :/

BearOso 6y ago
There won’t be any fun hidden in there. Once a game developer passes the barrier of accepting cash for progress it won’t be balanced in any way that makes it fun to play.
- JackMorgan 6y ago
  Not always, due to shutdown I revived my old WoW account, and the latest content is far more engaging for me than the original content. But that's a game you're already expected to pay monthly.
Shared404 6y ago
Well, I had been looking at joining that. I was afraid it would be something like this though, thanks for the warning.