Apple Sticks it to the Little Guy

[kilowattradio]

http://washingtonexaminer.com/news/.../kids-go-expensive-buying-sprees-iphone-games



"The Smurfs' Village," a game for the iPhone and other Apple gadgets,
was released a month ago and quickly became the highest-grossing
application in the iTunes store. Yet it's free to download.

So where does the money come from? Kelly Rummelhart of Gridley, Calif.,
has part of the answer. Her 4-year-old son was using her iPad to play
the game and racked up $66.88 in charges on her credit card without
knowing what he was doing.

Rummelhart had no idea that it was possible to buy things — buy them
with real money — inside the game. In this case, her son bought one
bushel and 11 buckets of "Smurfberries," tokens that speed up gameplay.

{SNIP}

 

[pknz]

How is that 'Apple sticking it to the little guy'?

 

[SidewaysTakumi]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

It's called a freemium game and there is another thread on the issue. You can use parental controls to turn off in app purchases to prevent such issues.

Apple doesn't make the game and provides a way to stop the problem. The parent was apparently not knowledgeable enough to do what was needed to prevent it.

Def not an Apple issue.

 

[Counterfit]

Apple defends its system. Spokeswoman Trudy Muller says the password system is adequate and points out that parents can restrict in-app purchases. The parents contacted for the story received refunds from Apple after complaining, and praised the company's responsiveness.

Thread should be named "CAPCOM (and others, but not Apple) sticks it to the little guy."

 

[yourwiseguy]

The lady calls the app a scam saying that they make it ridiculously hard to play so that you'll have to buy the in app powerups. Um, last time I checked Smurf Village isn't a hard game by any stretch of the imagination. It just takes a lot of time for you to progress. Do better and activate parental controls. Admit you made a mistake and stop bothering people who are trying to make a living.

 

[samiwas]

Do better and activate parental controls. Admit you made a mistake and stop bothering people who are trying to make a living.

This. Basically saying "I did not do what I should have done, so you should compensate me." Yet another parent not taking responsibility.

 

[maflynn]

How is apple sticking it to people when they are not responsible in how people choose to use their products.

 

[ComputersaysNo]

Man, smurfberrieprices are skyhigh. I bet that Gargamel is buying up all stock to manipulate prices.

 

[Don't panic]

i agree that the parents share some of the responsibility, but a hot purchase button in a smurfs game is designed to scam the little kids and their parents.

and while in this apple is not responsible, the in-game purchases should come with a request of the password every time by default.
then you can provide tools to bypass such request, but it is obvious that these companies feed on people being unaware of what they are doing, which is indeed a form of scam