“I have a 22-year-old disabled son, who has cerebral palsy, complex epilepsy, autism, learning difficulties and the approximate cognitive ability of a seven-year-old child.
“He is unable to do any bilateral activities so relies heavily on his iPad and PlayStation for entertainment and educational activities.
“He has recently been playing a game on his iPad called Hidden Artifacts which involves finding various items and matching them to the description. He has been charged £3160.58 between 18 February and 30 May 2019, clearing out his entire savings.”
Worth noting most of the games are on Android…
MacDailyNews Take: Of course it’s about parental responsibility, but it’s also about ensuring accountability.
I’m a relatively heavy iOS gamer. MDN, your comment is off base. There are plenty of money sucking games on iOS. There are games that psychologically encourage you to ‘keep up’ by buying packs, only to move the needle out further when you do.
The fact that I have numerous team members who have buried thousands of dollars into a single iOS game is troubling. I see in-game comments like, “I got paid today, so I bought a pack.” Can they spend their money how they see fit…sure. But, if you’re making minimum wage and spending $100 every paycheck on a game, that’s troubling to me.
By bigger pet peeve: games that show amazing video and advertisements, but gameplay is nothing like what’s advertised and in fact blows.
” Can they spend their money how they see fit”
Bingo! If you blow half your paycheck on a mobile game every week than you have no one to blame but yourself. Mobile games are just the latest trend in professional victimhood culture. Parents need to step up and stop playing helpless victims to the evil video game companies and start paying attention to what their children are doing.
You are responsible for you and/or your children’s gaming and spending habits, not the government.
…. But, if you’re making minimum wage and spending $100 every paycheck on a game, that’s troubling to me.
It’s troubling in the fact that the people spending their money in these games have set their priorities such that the game is above their other responsibilities. You can’t blame the developers, because people have freedom of choice and they choose to blow their money on “stooopid” games.
If I could, I would love to develop a game like that.
Yes, MDN responses are a joke anymore. They exists ONLY to kiss Apples a—.
Ice known people that blow half their paycheck on:
Beer
Baseball cards
Makeup
Clothing
Video games
Music CDs
Old albulms
I could go on. Take responsibility for “your” fucking actions.
Just like you take responsibility for “ice known”
Would love to see an option with the App Store preferences to: 1) only allow completely free games to show up; and 2) filter out those with IAPs; so I don’t have to go through the pain of locking down the entire App Store which prevents automatic updates. This would really help parents of all children (mine of whom are also disabled).
What we did was remove the CC from the kids accounts and then use gift cards when needed. When they had a new game they wanted, we vetted it and then installed it. They were not able to.
Just like gambling, another addiction courtesy of Apple and its devs.
Take a good look at the start of the post:
“who has cerebral palsy, complex epilepsy, autism, learning difficulties and the approximate cognitive ability of a seven-year-old child.”
My wife has treated a lot of CP kids over her years as a Physical Therapist, many with a lot of other medical issues. This 22 year old man has the mental abilities of a 7 year old. Many CP kids are even less fortunate.
Apple has a need (responsibility) to establish means for parents/ guardians to limit the grabbing of funds from folks far less fortunate than their employees. There also needs to be recognition for those companies/individuals who develop apps that are free or reasonably priced that will address those who are less fortunate in their abilities.
As for the companies that are ripping off these customers:
“Take responsibility for “your” fucking actions.” and maybe Apple will kick them off the platforms.