Eight-year old British girl Lily Neale loves her dad's iPad. She plays games on it all day: My Horse, Campus Life and Smurfs' Village are among her favourites. She loves these games so much she happily racked up a real-world bill of more than £4,000 in in-game purchases (more than $6,000), tapping away at prompts to buy more jewels, coins and upgrades. Her father is somewhat less of a fan.
NZGamer:
Free-to-play games and microtransactions have brewed a storm of controversy in the gaming world. While most of the press on this topic focuses on the business side, I decided to explore how different freemium systems impact the experience of gameplay.
Most casinos pump oxygen into their halls while offering free drinks to their patrons in an effort to keep gamblers both tipsy and alert, the ideal mental state for gambling or rather losing money. Pay to win games employs a similar sleight of hand in the way they price and implement virtual currencies that is every bit as lucrative and manipulative.
Do these parents give their credit cards and let them run loose at Toys R US as well ?
Didn't think so.
Don't let kids use your card.
But yea it is still kind of shady.
Please do sign the boycott petition applet, included at the bottom of the article.
agree and disagree.
allowing your kids to have access to spending money on ipads and tablets is stupid. just imagine giving a girl a platinum credit card for her shopping.
all i am saying is that some people need to be responsible for restricting their account somthat a password is needed for every expenditure..
also you need to teach kids the concept of money, though digital money to virtual money to virtual stamina/gems can be a really hard concept. not as easy to teach as it was to tteach them how much an apple cost.
I agree with everything you said, but I still think it's an awful manipulative scheme that these company's should be ashamed of. Yes parents should wise up and be more responsible but the company's doing this should have a bit more pride about themselves instead of using these tactics to rip people off.
Dumb parents are only the problem if you live in the dumb parents' household. For the rest of us, the IAPs that caused them to get ripped are ruining the games they are in. And that's just one of many issues. That's why signing the boycott makes sense.
This, if people controlled their children better this wouldn't even be a thing.
A lot of parents these days just don't give a f***.
Part of the problem is a lot of the parents don't understand the concept them selves until they see a massive credit card bill and the end of the month.
Acquisitions, new games and starting studios from scratch. CEO Torsten Reil is hungry for it all
NaturalMotion is one of the few companies in the mobile market that is in it for the long-term - to build a business that's more of just a handful of hit games squeezing consumer wallets until it's time to sell up or shut down.
I wouldnt refund him anything. Idiot should've either put a lock on downloads or not given it to her in the first place.
all these games should come with password transactions just like the store.
Apple has a heart? MINDBLOWN!!!
This story just keeps on repeating itself.
Parents need to realise that iPads are not toys and if they are going to let their kids play with them, then they need to watch what they're doing.
two things.
The article says £2k
and the game developer refuneded him, not apple