Just a week after we heard about the instance where a Zombie game lead to a £1700 bill for a couple in Bristol due to their 5 year old’s involuntary in-app purchases we are here at it again. EA games famous game The Sims and its burger purchase in-app program lead to nearly £1000 bill for an 8 year old’s burger spree. The kids parents were shocked to know about it and only got the news once they realised that they had insufficient funds in their bank because of the £960 bill for an iOS game. Theo Rowland-Fry’s might be just one of the few cases we hear about but there might be many more.
The new era of games are relying on the now famous freemium model that most developers are following. In this model the games are given out free of cost but the developers try to earn money by selling various enhancements in the game like a pack of guns, a pack of burgers, a stack of coins etc,. Most of the times when a user logs into the iOS device to purchase an app or other content the in-app purchase is opened up in the 15 minute time frame where the the app does not ask for password to purchase the content. There is really good chance that kids unknowingly purchase the content due to not being aware of the monetary value attached to the content.
Theo Rowland-Fry’s parents said “I appreciate children are their target audience but it is not right and there needs to be specific controls in place to stop this from happening.”
It is high time mobile OSes including iOS and Android do something to secure the in-app purchase transactions and avoid such high amount billings that come as a shocker to many.