UK Gov To Investigate 'Aggressive' In-app Purchases 152
hypnosec writes "The UK Government will be examining whether free to download apps are putting unfair pressure on kids to pay up for additional content within the game through in-app purchases. Office of Fair Trading (OFT), UK, will be carrying out the investigation of games that include 'commercially aggressive' in-app purchases after a number of cases have been reported whereby parents have incurred huge bills after their kids have spent huge amounts on in-app purchases."
A little late for that... (Score:5, Interesting)
... the gaming industry has turned into a crime syndicate over the last 6-7 years. It's been discusting with the rise of F2P and charging for virtual items in MMO's with both WoW and diablo 3 being among the biggest offenders.
Reality is we need to crack down on software you can never own and can be "turned off" whenever a company says so. So many older apps/games functionality is fubar because of current anti-customer industry practices. The bad thing is kids and stupid adults feed these companies money year after year.
Turning it off is no option? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a lot of nasty software out there that is specifically targeted at kids and charges huge amounts for ingame items. My kids are at a young age and they simply do not understand the difference between real cash and virtual ingame cash, to them it's all the same. So if an app says 'do you want to buy this for 99,99 euros', they just tap 'yes'.
What I don't understand is why a parent would give an iPad/Nexus/whatever with a fully accessible master account to a child. On my iPad I just disabled in-app purchases and set password to 'every time' instead of 'once every 15 minutes'. And no app buying or removing either.
Re:Your kid, spending your money . . . (Score:2, Interesting)
The real problem is after hundreds of years of trying to make a civilized world/society where you don't have to keep watching for predators all the time, you still get assholes who ruin things for everyone.
Not saying we should turn the world into a safe theme park but these people know exactly what they are doing - preying on the weak. Some may say who cares about the weak, but us humans have got where we are not by being the strongest badass creature in the world. Or even the smartest. Yes we're smart but it's not what makes a country great. We've got where we are by working together and not backstabbing each other at every opportunity.
A country full of smart people backstabbing each other doesn't get very far. A lot of those nice places to live in are nice because they're not full of swindlers, thieves and backstabbers. And so making life harder for such people is not something I'd lose sleep over. Give them half a chance and they might "progress" to investment banking...