Kids' iPad gaming binge costs parents thousands
Published: 7 Apr 11 13:22 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/33070/20110407/
Two Swedish children who got carried away playing the Smurfs' Village game on their iPads during a recent road trip ended up billing their parents tens of thousands of kronor.
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"I downloaded the Smurf game for each of them from the Appstore. It cost seven kronor. Maybe I didn't read the terms and conditions carefully enough, but I didn't think it would cost more than that," parent Maria Attvik told the TT news agency.
Attvik downloaded the Smurf Village game for her two sons before a family road trip from Stockholm to Gothenburg.
The game involves feeding and watering strawberries to make them grow. But what Attvik didn't know was that once they were playing the game, the kids could also make purchases without being asked for a password, Sveriges Radio (SR) reported.
Among items the kids were able to purchase as a part of the Smurfs' Village game were wheelbarrows containing virtual strawberries costing 749 kronor apiece.
As the kids busied themselves with their playing during the car ride, the Attvik's didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.
But after a time a flood of payment messages started to flow in from Apple's iTunes Store.
By the time the parents took a closer look, one son had managed to accumulate charges of 11,000 kronor, while the other's charges came to a whopping 40,000 kronor.
"It feels like they are just out to trick you," Attvik said of the game.
She has now contacted Apple in an effort to get her money back, but so far her requests have gone unanswered.
Smurfs' Village, which is sold by US-based Capcom, has also been criticised in the United States.
The game is ranked seventh among iStore apps which have generated the most income.
According to its description in Smurfs' Village is "free to play, but charges real money for additional in-app content".
It's also possible to lock out the purchasing function by adjusting the settings.
According to the description, users are also supposed to be required to enter a password every fifteen minutes to approve purchases.
What do you think? Leave your comment below.
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For that price they could have got 12kg of real strawberries.
How on earth can the justify 749 for a game widget?
And as for the comment "but so far her requests have gone unanswered", if they need something from you, they would tear your house apart to get it.
Apple, I don't have enough words for low life like you.
and have supposed to have made it so kids can not buy without a password
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2011/03/apple_changes_purchases_policy.html
True, but expect that to go as slow as possible and even slower by the time the rest of the world gets it.
Cr-Appl have a history of screwing over the buyers of their products, don't expect it to change anytime soon.
I'm surprised the CrAppl apologists have not already come here making excuses.
Byke is on his travels. Lucky for him he will have his iPad2 with him rather than leaving it at home for his kids to play with. If he had, he might have fallen out of love with Crapple
So if you bought Smurfs game, the kids have 15 minutes of free purchasing time without needing a password.
This game and the whole App Store purchasing has been in the news on Eurogamer.net and games sites after kids in other countries did the same thing.
If you choke them, or they get cold they must turn white.
Disgraceful.
The only way Capcom will get revenue from this game, beyond the initial $1/7kr cost, is to get kids buy things without understanding what they're really doing and for parents to make the assumption that the costs are reasonable. Capcom is just sleazy. Not a big fan of Apple either.
When you read the game's description, there's even a warning message saying that you can spend real money on Smurfberries (not "strawberries", by the way) and that each iDevice keeps you logged into your AppStore account for 15 min.
When my children start to play those games one day, I'll make sure I either wait 15 min after a purchase or - better even - I'll disable In-App-Purchases in the settings. I think everyone should take a few minutes to learn the basic functions of a new phone, especially the ones that can be expensive (In-App-Purchases, roaming, 3G data transfer, to name a few).
Anyway, in this case there might be a chance to get the money back as it should be obvious what has happened.
Makes Microsoft look like an Angel doesn't it.
As CM75 said, there are plenty of settings one can change to prevent this kind of thing. Simply put, it was the parent's fault for giving a toy to the kids and not paying attention to what goes on.
It was an expensive lesson that they should learn from. Still, better than a bunch of other things that could go wrong by not paying attention to what your kids are up to!
http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/02/24/0617228/FTC-To-Examine-Microtransactions-In-Free-To-Play-Games-and-Apps
This could happen just as easily on Android as Apple's platform - its the App writer (Capcom Interactive) who should carry the blame here.