Parents Suing Apple Over In-Game Purchasing Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 | |
But where does this "good parenting" end? Can we let our kids play in the park without fearing they might be raped? Can we let them stay over at a friend's house? Can they climb up a tree? Can they use a swing unsupervised? I understand there are negligent parents but I don't want to bring up kids that are incapable of doing anything without someone's certified approval. And seriously, I know my videogames, but some of the things you might find in the Apple app store nobody would see coming. And maybe it is pointless to sue but I still think someone has to take action to put a stop to this. These games should come with disclaimers and point out that they are not appropiate for kids. | |
For the record, I'm pretty sure it's still easy as piss to buy anything in the app store. Also, am I the only one that finds the wording "leave their children unsupervised playing games" to be sort of jarring? I mean, if you can't leave your kids unsupervised while playing, when can you? | |
Pro tip: Buy a DS, stop complaining and do alittle research first. If I ever gave my kid something expensive, I'd make damn sure it didn't give them access to my bank account. And don't let them use your username on anything...period | |
I wouldn't know (don't have an iphone) but I'm happy to take your word that Apple haven't exactly been thorough. Sorry if my phrasing came across as jarring. I only meant what it literally says! My parents left me playing unsupervised all the time when I was little. Video games shouldn't be any different. Which is exactly why parental controls are so important. My parents were happy to leave me unsupervised watching the cable TV because they knew I couldn't buy films (or worse, porn) without knowing the PIN (which they refused to tell me until I reached my mid teens). | |
Parents fail at parenting, gaming industry gets given a hard time. This seems familiar. | |
I think I can answer this one fairly concisely actually. You no longer need to supervise your child when your child has developed enough in a facet of maturity so that you may trust them to act responsibly when given the freedom to do so. Until then, it is your job as a parent to look after them and guide them down the path to eventual autonomy. Should parents smother their kids to the point that they no longer get the ability to strike out on their own? No. Should kids be trusted with the ability to strike out on their own when they are forming abstractions for previously concrete concepts? No. According to Piaget, kids are not formally capable of being entirely aware as to the affects of their actions outside themselves until approximately the age of seven. As a rule of thumb, i would say wait until then to introduce kids to any sort of real responsibility, and even then keeping an eye on how they develop would be wise. But this is beside the point. My main argument is: It is not the responsibility of Apple to parent your kids. There is no social obligation implicit or otherwise for Apple to determine what is appropriate or inappropriate for your kid. You, as a parent, can decide to trust or distrust organizations (church, ESRB, etc.) to make those sort of judgments for you but it is not part of your rights to force them to do so and repremend them legally for failing to meet your standards or act as a proxy for your will. Beside that fundamental point, it is not as if Apple has not taken reasonable steps to address the issue. The iPhone/iPad/iPod is not primarily a children's toy. It is not reasonable to expect them to wrap the thing in foam in every aspect just because you choose to use it as such. Personally, i find the 15 minute window a very convenient feature. I pop into the app store, buy a new game and notice that i have updates. Instead of having to re-establish my identity to the App store, i just continue with the updates. Is this feature implicitly designed to make buying things easier? Yes. Why? Because we (consumers) want it to be easy to buy things. As it stands i feel we have given enough ground to the demands of parents to make it harder for kids to do things without their oversight at the sacrifice of the convenience of the general user, and i feel slighted in the fact that i am expected to put up with increasingly less convenience to compensate for the inattentiveness of those who hand their devices off to their kids without any/much thought as to the possible consequences. But those are just my thoughts on the subject. | |
If they were so damn worried about their kids spendings then why didn't they just take away the damn phone in the first place. It is not Apples problem that the kid is incapable of evaluating the situation at hand. If the kid is old enough to need a phone then he/she is already old enough to earn his/her own savings by having a weekend job. Let me guess, these moronic parents are from USA or somesuch right? back here in Denmark shit like that wouldn't fly anywhere. | |
And I hope you know that we use them in an education setting and that they can be set up using multiple iTunes accounts very easily so that kids don't have direct access to their parents credit cards. Ignorance is no excuse. | |
Groin spawn! Genius! | |
Subliminal messages are illegal to use. No game in existance is capable of creating an addiction in a perfectly normal human being. The person playing a game can however become addicted to the drugs that the brain itself releases. | |
And there, you've hit at the core of it. Television commercials target kids, but (in general) televisions are in common rooms so that parents can easily monitor it. Computer games are often in off-common rooms, and are on smaller, more private screens. Supervising every single minute at the computer is just a bit tougher -- and believe me, as a teacher, I'm extremely tough on parents about supervision, so it's no small thing for me to admit it's harder to do here. The problem is that companies know that. I don't have a problem with marketing that is meant to appeal to kids. I do have a problem with directly marketing to kids. Would you want an advertising executive or a lawyer to be able to call your child on a cell phone, or meet them on the playground, to discuss things? No. Because those people have no business engaging in financial dealings with children (who are easily misled by adults). Now, Facebook games? They may be kid-friendly, but Facebook makes it pretty clear that kids shouldn't have Facebooks. The fact that so many parents ignore that is on them. But true "kid games" should not have real-money options waving in the face of kids. There's already a ton of ways marketing exploits the gullibility of children. Cartoons are blatant commercials for toy lines. Commercials show toys doing things they can't actually do, and they put the tiny disclaimer at the bottom to cover their butts. Cereals have cartoon mascots to push an appeal that has nothing to do with whole grains. I'm not saying this kind of stuff needs to be illegal, but we all know exactly what they're doing. By "we," I mean adults. It's natural for the marketing folks to put a spin on the product, but kids are far more susceptible to spin than adults. It would be irresponsible of us to allow them to target our kids unchecked. | |
Normally I'd disagree and say that the parents are over reacting, but the free to play, pay to win games dominating the app store are beyond a joke and are clearly aimed at those who are easier to manipulate. Apple should not be taking the brunt of this, but those who are creating the games in the already over saturated market. | |
If you have kids don't click the "save credit card info" box, in fact just don't click that box at all. | |
In game purchases with real money is predatory and manipulative and that practice should be illegal. They don't even need to go after the individual developers to enforce it. Just go after the publishers like the apple store, android markets and companies like facebook that allow these games on their network. Buyer beware is one thing but actual proven predatory commercial practice is morally, ethically and in some cases already illegal - as it should be. | |
I've been of the opinion for a while that microtransactions should be banned all together. Video games and digital products should be all inclusive, for one price... period. It's too open for abuse otherwise, and we're seeing that here with these kids. Not to mention the way psycology can be manipulated through them. Creating a deliberatly addictice game, in order to get people to spend money constantly, smacks very similar of earlier attempts to use things like subliminals and hypnosis in ads which were stopped (or at least we believe they were). A new way of acheiving the same thing in a more subtle fashion, is still the same thing. That said, if this DOES ever happen, it's not likely to happen in the near future, and a lot depends on little suits snowballing at this point because we've already seen this entrenched in business. To put it into perspective, when you have companies like Zynga more or less admitting they carefully construct their games to be addictive, and they are driven by microtransactions, I think there is a problem there. What's more when it comes to psychological addiction, which I am guessing is a problem with this "Smurfs" game since it's still going on after the whole "wagons of smurfberries" incident, addicts by their very nature are going to go to extreme lengths to get their fix, including of legal things like cigarettes and alcohol. "Protections" of the sort mentioned here which can be circumvented mean absolutly nothing. | |
GOOD These sorts of non-games that rely on microtransactions are a terrible thing for gaming, and are a morally reprehensible thing in the first place. I know, I know, with corporations, they are either morally bankrupt or financially bankrupt. But we should hold them to higher standards. I am always out for a profit for myself, but I wont go out of my way just to screw you over. I can't believe it, but i'm on the side of the overreacting, moronic unfit parents this time around | |
Dude, relax! You asked why Apple were being sued, I told you. I didn't say I agree with it! The most important part of my post was the amount of cash Apple have in the bank.... | |
I hope Apple counter sues these idiots. | |
Gods, I don't know who to hate more in this one: Negligent parents, creators of dubious "micro"transactions or Apple. I think I'll just hate everyone. That said, with every other e-commerce site on the Internet asking my password every time I so much as try to glance at my past orders, Apple was stupid for not having similar controls in place. (From what I heard when the smurfberry incident occurred, if you bought a song on iTunes and then handed the device over to your kid, the iTunes authorization carried over. THAT is insane.) The only lesson I take away from this is that even the harmless icons of my childhood can be made into frontmen and shills for amoral profiteers. It ain't just rule 34 that's destroying my childhood anymore. | |
There was a similar case in Norway, they talked about it on TV earlier this year. Same game and on an iPad, the kid spent more than 15,000 Norwegian krone, which would be equal to about $2,650. This kid was 5 or 6 years old, and I got to agree when they argue that microtransactions don't belong in a game for kids.
Yeah, you'll need to venture into my Steam account to find any kind of virtual property that has cost that kind of money. I don't know how much in-game content a "cart of smurfberries" buys at $99 a cart, but if anyone (adult or not) felt the need to rack up $1400 on the damn things it can't be good value for money... | |
I see the parents' side of the argument on this, and yeah, they shouldn't be enticing small children into these kinds of purchases. But apple fixed it and they're still complaining so I take back my sympathy. At some point you have to accept the fact it might just be your fault and you probably have to, ya know, raise your damn kids. | |
...this is why 3-7 year old kides don't need an f***ing iphone or ipad. For the love of god why are people so damn stupid, here have this escapist forums peace out. | |
If I remember right, they just speed up their crop and village growth, which is just ridiculous. But that's what a lot of these in app purchases just boil down to, being able to play the game faster. | |
Once again parenting failure means someone else is responsible. Now the method i like thats used in many mmos, is you have to buy "gold" or whatever OUT OF THE GAME, then you can use it ingame to buy those paid stuff. this way you cearly are aware you are paying real money for gold, thus such confussion never occurs (especially when you have ingame dollars and real dollars, lol) | |
This whole pay2win strategy IS somewhat distasteful. | |
Honestly they probably have a case regardless, they're still exploiting children for money. This is a kid's game and they're enticing kids to spend all of this money. The amount of money they're asking kids to spend is also over the top, no parent is going to pay 100 dollars for trivial DLC, the only way kids are getting those smurfberries or whatever is by abusing their parent's accounts. It's malicious and I hope they gets nailed for it. | |
Sorry if I came across as pissy. I didn't mean it that way (I was actually quite relaxed when I was typing that post). I was simply trying to state a counter argument to the first point in your post. Clearly, we're both in agreement that the only reason Apple alone is being target is cause they have the money. EDIT: added more verbiage for clarity. | |
Is it even legal to allow minors to purchase like that? Most countries have laws that either stop that if there's no explicit parental consent, or a way to undo it. If for instance that game is also available in the Netherlands, they fall under that jurisdiction and a law that states parents can disband any purchases or agreements by their kids, without stating a reason or without an expiration term, and are entitled to a full refund. Anyway, the parents are right, and if they file the suit outside of the US I'd give them good odds at winning. | |
I find it funny how many parents are worried about the radiation that children could get from the radio waves that phones use, and yet will just give these very phones to their kids. It's almost as if parents aren't actually paying attention to anything they are saying; more like they are just spouting out nonsense and hearsay without even thinking. | |
If there child stole something from a store are they going to sue the store for having so many things within their childs reach? Is the store to blame for selling things kids want and crave? No. Also you teach your kids not to steal regardless if they really want it. Same with this case, just because the kid wanted it doesnt mean he should steal from his parents. Also if the parents wernt idiots they wouldnt leave their credit card details around so the kid could use it. God forbid the parent would actually act like a parent instead of allowing there kid play games all day without supervision. Especially leaving cc details online. lol. | |
I guess there is only so much the law and companies can do. How can they prove their child made the purchases and had explicit parental consent? How can you achieve this online? All the passwords and security in the world are meaningless when the parents don't act responsibly with there card. After all its the adults card, they should be taking responsibility of what happens to it and the actions of their child. Its not the games companies problem. They are not responsible for the childs actions. We all know these games are addicting, if they wernt then no one would play them. When does parental responsibility end and company responsibility start? If the credit card is yours, it was you that stored it on the computer and it was your child that used the card behind your back and the parents lack of control that allowed the kid to do this. Why are they suing the company? Just sounds similar to the people suing McDonalds for making them fat. | |
i think is stupid that those parents are suing Apple. because i have to put a password before i can purchase an app or game (free or not). and those parents should have given their kids the password. or just tell don't buy anything with out my permission | |
I wouldn't say it's necessarily apple's fault, but that smurf game is ridiculous. Microtransactions are okay when they're a dollar, five dollars, but seriously? Stuff in that game can run up to 100 bucks. That's not okay for a kid's game. That is preying on kids. I would let my kids buy stuff, because for me, microtransaction = 1-5 bucks at most. I would never guess it would be quite that much... | |
It's a marketing strategy, video games release DLC, which is basically the same thing, all the time. Why should Apple be penalized for what the Call of Duty franchise made famous? Secondly, why would the parents give the kids their iTunes password anyways, if the only purpose it has is to validate purchases? Parents these days have gotten stupid.... no, beyond stupid. It's ridiculous. I think it is a foul marketing strategy, but should Apple be penalized for it? No. Instead, I think we should take a closer look at the parents and what they are doing wrong. And any politician or judge who thinks that this case is even worth reviewing is simply a leftist wishing to kick big corporations in the balls any way they can. | |
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Couldn't they just sue the people making the game? Personally, I'm suspicious of internet games that rely on real-world money to buy things...