Google To Stop Describing Games With In-App Purchases As 'Free' 139
An anonymous reader writes After a series of investigations, lawsuits, and fines over how in-app purchases are advertised and communicated to users, Google has agreed to stop labeling games that use in-app purchases as "Free." This change is the result of a request by the European Commission to stop misleading customers about the costs involved with using certain apps. "Games should not contain direct exhortation to children to buy items in a game or to persuade an adult to buy items for them; Consumers should be adequately informed about the payment arrangements for purchases and should not be debited through default settings without consumers' explicit consent." The EC notes that Apple has not yet done anything to address these concerns.
Re:Really people? (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, no. Those aren't free. They're free for you the end user. But somebody pays for them. Just because it's not you doesn't make it automatically free.
In most cases, those people are called donors. Donors can be someone unaffilliated with the organization, or they could be the very same people providing the service. Likewise, donations can come in numerous forms like time, resources, goodwill, even money.
Sometimes, society pays, i.e. everybody pays. And when everybody pays so that only a few people benefit, that's when there are problems. Fortunately, none of those on your list fall into that category.
So no, those things you listed aren't free. To claim that they are free is to ignore the people who've paid for them so that they can be free for you.