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.
Apple has 'done nothing'??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Free apps with in-app purchases show that fact right under the 'Buy' button. And a simple setting controls whether in-app purchases are allowed at all, require approval, or can go through automatically (default is require approval). And iOS 8 has the proxy stuff for family accounts (parental approval for everything if you want).
How is this Apple 'doing nothing'?
Good. Now what about ads? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good. Now what about ads? (Score:5, Insightful)
I Want a game of decent quality, with no add, no in app purchase, no attempt to try to get you to purchase a full version, no attempt to try to upsell an other service and all free.
Heck why limit it to game or software. I want all my products for free with no strings attached. However I want to be sure my employer pays me for my job of writing software.
Re:Good. Now what about ads? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want it all for free, but I think companies should be honest about their business model. I think they should distinguish between "Free" trial, "Free" with paid upgrades, "Free" ad-supported, etc.
Re:Really people? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing is free (Score:5, Insightful)
In terms of monentary cost, many useful things are. Free software also used to be less of a crapshoot (is it *really* safe, a virus/trojan, adware, or nagware)?
Apache: Free
OpenOffice/LibreOffice: Free
Java: Free
There were/are also a lot of free utilities that - while not pretty - were basically in the realm of "hey I made this to solve X for myself and thought somebody else might find it useful."
There may be some learning involved to *use* the product, and certainly many FOSS solutions involve community-provided updates, but in terms of personal cost it's free for me.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Really people? (Score:5, Insightful)
So you agree that they're free in the sense that everyone in the discussion has been using the word "free."
I'm confused. You admitted that they're free "for you." Who has been arguing that they are costless for all? Who has defined "free" as costless for all? How do you reconcile costless for all with "free for you?"
Actually, I'm not confused at all. You've constructed a pseudo-syllogism using a false proposition in an attempt to belittle the GP while making yourself feel authoritative and smart.
Free doesn't mean what you think it means [cornell.edu]. You're not even a pedant, you're simply wrong. Go away.