Cash transactions on video games is out of control and its time for everyone to get on board and put an end to this. Setting up restrictions on games then saying well you can spend money to have these restrictions removed is super shady and a very poor standard for customer service.
So many of these kids today do not realize just how cheap paying a subscription fee is compared to free to play games with microtransactions.
But the BIg problem here that most people do not see is that throughout history you will notice one thing, Companies make smalls moves towards a big goal. ie. it starts with microtranscations then it turns into now you have to pay subscription and microtransactions. Companies will push the envelope as far as they can to get as much money as they can. It's how the world works.
And this is bad if people willing pay it? The world is full of levels of wealth and influence you think games will be different. The only thing you can do is stop playing/paying and hope others due to, but to force people that actually like that style to stop by law is bascially a smack in the face to a free society.
Cash transactions on video games is out of control and its time for everyone to get on board and put an end to this. Setting up restrictions on games then saying well you can spend money to have these restrictions removed is super shady and a very poor standard for customer service.
So many of these kids today do not realize just how cheap paying a subscription fee is compared to free to play games with microtransactions.
But the BIg problem here that most people do not see is that throughout history you will notice one thing, Companies make smalls moves towards a big goal. ie. it starts with microtranscations then it turns into now you have to pay subscription and microtransactions. Companies will push the envelope as far as they can to get as much money as they can. It's how the world works.
And this is bad if people willing pay it? The world is full of levels of wealth and influence you think games will be different. The only thing you can do is stop playing/paying and hope others due to, but to force people that actually like that style to stop by law is bascially a smack in the face to a free society.
In what world do you live? "Free Society?" When has this ever been a "free society?" Sounds like the thoughts of a naive college kid who read a book or someone who hasn't traveled.
And yea it is bad if people are willing to pay it. People need to be told what to do they are simply just cattle.
Paying too much money for a video game is no different then a friend you have who has a gambling problem. Do you just sit back and let it happen or did someone say one day, "lets have an intervention!"
Sounds more like parents should not let their kids play the games if they get burned once. If after it happen to them once and they let their kids still play...well I believe in Natural Selection and the stupid animals tend to die out or in this case feed the monster and frankly they deserve it.
It only takes once to get burned.. And im sure they will uninstall those games when that does happen... but when the burn can be so severe... clearly there should be some warning or barrier put in place.
Life is hard...they need a helmet. Then they should sue Apple so it seems about the setup. Not attack a game. Once again go after the facilitator. I paid money at a fair to see a Cupachabra..it was a dog with a goat head sown on....i got burned I will not pay again. I did not ask the government to step in. I told every person outside what I saw inside and told them it was not worth it. How many exactly have been burned for outrageous amounts of money that justify the government's heavy hand? What justifies a "burn" and not just a "hard lesson on life"?
There are burns and then there are burns..
So you paid "5 bucks" to see the Cupachrabra.. Did you really think it would be real or even a well done fraud? And then you take it upon yourself to spoil/warn others.. Wow.. that makes you both a dick and an idiot..
But back to burns..
So you have a coffee cup thats a little thin and you go ooh thats a bit hot on the fingers.. dont think I will have coffee in that cup again.. That is a mild burn
But then you have unlicensed electrical work short circuit and burn your house down with or without you in it... Thats a severe burn.
As far as micro transaftions in free to play games. It isnt really a big issue in most PC games. In my experience you have to enter a code or atleast go to a vastly different looking checkout page to buy anything. Plus they are usually not played by 5-10 year olds. And the prices are often reasonable. So it is difficult to get burned hard.
But with these free apps, combined with less than helpful app store, allow you to spend as much as you have with very little effort.. Very nice if you are buying music for a road trip or something.. but very problematic when a child cant tell the difference between a game and a store, because the store is part of the game. They will call you over when you need to enter a password. You will look and then decide wether you want to pay.. You would say no if it was 100$ ofcourse, but we are talking micro transactions so it will probably be a lot less... but if you allow it and havent changed the standard settings... BOOM you could be on the hook for thousands. That is quite a severe burn...
What they are investigating, is the fact that some of the most popular free apps are infact purpose built to trick parents into letting their children pay massive amounts for boost ingame.
The standard setting on Itunes is to require a password to open for transactions for 15 minutess (+15 minutes every time you buy.)
So if parents enter their password once to allow for a 1$ transaction it is now open for unlimited use, as long as they buy more than once every 15 minutes.
Some of what they can buy is priced so outrageously and it can be dificult for children to destiguish the game from the shop.
On top of that Apple makes it very hard to find a customer support number to call to get a refund.. and they make damn sure to tell you that its extraordinary that you do get a refund.
Having games that allow you to spend thousands on micro transactions within minutes or hours, aimed at children is disgusting.
All that being said.. if you have an Ipad and you let your children use it. Make sure to change the Appstore settings to immediate and not 15 mins. That way you have to enter your password for every transaction.
If you have a system where approving one charge by default lets someone else who has neither your credit card number nor your password approve other charges to your credit card, then yeah, that's basically fraud. So I can see why they'd go after that.
But is that what the investigation is limited to? The article doesn't even mention what you describe at all. From the article:
"In its investigation, the OFT wants to find out if the games are "misleading, commercially aggressive or otherwise unfair" when they give people the chance to buy extras."
"otherwise unfair" could mean just about anything. Fairness is a very slippery concept that is so vague and subjective as to barely mean anything at all. That's why politicians who want to do something that would surely be unpopular on its own merits will sometimes say that they really just want to make things more fair, and not give much details of how. Writing fairness into a law and giving bureaucrats the power to enforce it basically gives them a license to do whatever they feel like doing.
Nice strawman about poison, which has nothing to do with the government in this instance. Poison food effects way more people and the health of a Nation vs. some parents that are bad parents.
The question is where does the government stop and where does my personal responsiblity start. As to taxes...I would rather pay more to local government and less to national gov. I personal do not like paying my money to the gov because parents are lazy, ill-informed, or just bad. I like to pay taxes to take care of National issues not select family issues.
I happen to think it has everything to do with government. And that companies that bait people into buying stuff without telling them the real cost is just as widespread... Sure, it wont kill you. But should it be allowed to continue unchecked?
Im all for taking personal responsibility, and reintroducing the poison food argument again, I can atleast make a decision based on nutrition, rather than, will it kill me or not. I think that is a fair division.
It's about the level where you make your informed decisions. I get that you dont want the government making laws for every little detail about your life. But I think that we greatly benefit from having laws to allow consumers to skip the poison/not poison part and get straight to the actual value of the product and decide from there.
If you have a system where approving one charge by default lets someone else who has neither your credit card number nor your password approve other charges to your credit card, then yeah, that's basically fraud. So I can see why they'd go after that.
But is that what the investigation is limited to? The article doesn't even mention what you describe at all. From the article:
"In its investigation, the OFT wants to find out if the games are "misleading, commercially aggressive or otherwise unfair" when they give people the chance to buy extras."
"otherwise unfair" could mean just about anything. Fairness is a very slippery concept that is so vague and subjective as to barely mean anything at all. That's why politicians who want to do something that would surely be unpopular on its own merits will sometimes say that they really just want to make things more fair, and not give much details of how. Writing fairness into a law and giving bureaucrats the power to enforce it basically gives them a license to do whatever they feel like doing.
This is where it does, in fact, mention it. Although in lesser detail that I described.
"The investigation comes alongside media reports about children spending large sums on virtual items for smartphone and web games.
In March, five-year-old schoolboy Danny Kitchen, from Bristol, managed to rack up charges of more than £1,700 while playing the Zombies versus Ninjas game on his parents' iPad. The money has since been refunded by Apple."
As I see it, it's about presenting the product and price honestly. Charging people $1000 for something stupid is okay so long as you're clear up front that the price tag really is $1000 and don't misrepresent what the product is. See RyanAir's business model, for example.
What's not okay is promising that something is $1, and then getting a $100 charge on your credit card bill because you managed to sneak in some loophole in the fine print that would allow many additional charges that you didn't directly authorize.
If you have a system where approving one charge by default lets someone else who has neither your credit card number nor your password approve other charges to your credit card, then yeah, that's basically fraud. So I can see why they'd go after that.
But is that what the investigation is limited to? The article doesn't even mention what you describe at all. From the article:
"In its investigation, the OFT wants to find out if the games are "misleading, commercially aggressive or otherwise unfair" when they give people the chance to buy extras."
"otherwise unfair" could mean just about anything. Fairness is a very slippery concept that is so vague and subjective as to barely mean anything at all. That's why politicians who want to do something that would surely be unpopular on its own merits will sometimes say that they really just want to make things more fair, and not give much details of how. Writing fairness into a law and giving bureaucrats the power to enforce it basically gives them a license to do whatever they feel like doing.
This is where it does, in fact, mention it. Although in lesser detail that I described.
"The investigation comes alongside media reports about children spending large sums on virtual items for smartphone and web games.
In March, five-year-old schoolboy Danny Kitchen, from Bristol, managed to rack up charges of more than £1,700 while playing the Zombies versus Ninjas game on his parents' iPad. The money has since been refunded by Apple."
"In March" over the whole month or just at one time? If over a month then you got some parents that need to monitor their accounts.
And if it is over a month then I fall back to the reality of the world...P.T. Barnum..."A sucker is born every minute." Always will be. You can not protect against a fool because they always exist.
As I see it, it's about presenting the product and price honestly. Charging people $1000 for something stupid is okay so long as you're clear up front that the price tag really is $1000 and don't misrepresent what the product is. See RyanAir's business model, for example.
What's not okay is promising that something is $1, and then getting a $100 charge on your credit card bill because you managed to sneak in some loophole in the fine print that would allow many additional charges that you didn't directly authorize.
If you tell someone $1 and charge $100 that is fraud flat out and should be prosecuted. We already have laws for that. If your Skinner Box reaction keeps you hitting the $1 box 100 times then the problem is the person.
As I see it, it's about presenting the product and price honestly. Charging people $1000 for something stupid is okay so long as you're clear up front that the price tag really is $1000 and don't misrepresent what the product is. See RyanAir's business model, for example.
What's not okay is promising that something is $1, and then getting a $100 charge on your credit card bill because you managed to sneak in some loophole in the fine print that would allow many additional charges that you didn't directly authorize.
If you tell someone $1 and charge $100 that is fraud flat out and should be prosecuted. We already have laws for that. If your Skinner Box reaction keeps you hitting the $1 box 100 times then the problem is the person.
If you approve each of 100 separate $1 charges, then sure, you owe $100. What WW4BW is claiming is that you can approve one charge, and then by default anyone else using the system can approve more charges, even without your credit card number or password. I'd see that as problematic, but if that were the focus of the investigation, I'd think that the agency would want to be very specific about it and not just say that they're investigation "free to play" games in general.
Originally posted by Quizzical Don't be too eager for bureaucrats to meddle in the details of games that they don't understand. All costs of doing business are inevitably passed on to consumers one way or another. Clear anti-fraud laws are one thing, but if a game developer could easily face crippling sanctions on a whim due to some bureaucrat's subjective notion of what is fair, a lot of cool games that would have otherwise been created won't be.
Well Quizz, I have been around these forums a while, and I generally value your opinion, because you are well read and often intelligent.
But just for the giggle of it, could you name one, just one cool game that had this law been in place would not have been made?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is where it does, in fact, mention it. Although in lesser detail that I described.
"The investigation comes alongside media reports about children spending large sums on virtual items for smartphone and web games.
In March, five-year-old schoolboy Danny Kitchen, from Bristol, managed to rack up charges of more than £1,700 while playing the Zombies versus Ninjas game on his parents' iPad. The money has since been refunded by Apple."
"In March" over the whole month or just at one time? If over a month then you got some parents that need to monitor their accounts.
And if it is over a month then I fall back to the reality of the world...P.T. Barnum..."A sucker is born every minute." Always will be. You can not protect against a fool because they always exist.
I do believe that what was meant was when the story broke.. And not referring to the time span of the spending spree.
Though if it did in fact occur over the duration of a whole month, then it definatly speaks volumes about how little the parents pay attention to their kid and their bank account. But I dont think that is the case here.
As I see it, it's about presenting the product and price honestly. Charging people $1000 for something stupid is okay so long as you're clear up front that the price tag really is $1000 and don't misrepresent what the product is. See RyanAir's business model, for example.
What's not okay is promising that something is $1, and then getting a $100 charge on your credit card bill because you managed to sneak in some loophole in the fine print that would allow many additional charges that you didn't directly authorize.
If you tell someone $1 and charge $100 that is fraud flat out and should be prosecuted. We already have laws for that. If your Skinner Box reaction keeps you hitting the $1 box 100 times then the problem is the person.
If you approve each of 100 separate $1 charges, then sure, you owe $100. What WW4BW is claiming is that you can approve one charge, and then by default anyone else using the system can approve more charges, even without your credit card number or password. I'd see that as problematic, but if that were the focus of the investigation, I'd think that the agency would want to be very specific about it and not just say that they're investigation "free to play" games in general.
Then the problem is exactly who is allowing the multiple transactions...the game or the service? I personal still see it as a problem with the person. A civil issue and not a criminal issue that the government should be involved.
This is where it does, in fact, mention it. Although in lesser detail that I described.
"The investigation comes alongside media reports about children spending large sums on virtual items for smartphone and web games.
In March, five-year-old schoolboy Danny Kitchen, from Bristol, managed to rack up charges of more than £1,700 while playing the Zombies versus Ninjas game on his parents' iPad. The money has since been refunded by Apple."
"In March" over the whole month or just at one time? If over a month then you got some parents that need to monitor their accounts.
And if it is over a month then I fall back to the reality of the world...P.T. Barnum..."A sucker is born every minute." Always will be. You can not protect against a fool because they always exist.
I do believe that what was meant was when the story broke.. And not referring to the time span of the spending spree.
Though if it did in fact occur over the duration of a whole month, then it definatly speaks volumes about how little the parents pay attention to their kid and their bank account. But I dont think that is the case here.
If someone can lose that much money over a month and not notice they are ripe for ID theft and fraud.
And, that is my question...what is the price of an apple? If we consider the time spent on making a premium shop item, inserting it into the game, and hosting it's resource costs...are we paying even close to a fair price for it? to the best of my knowledge gaming companies do not have to and typically don't disclose their content creation and hosting costs. At least not to me. So the price of our figurative apple is what ever they tell me it is.
There should be some standards. Something that says a polygon is worth no more then X amount in resale value....
You do realize, I hope, that it's a fairly trivial matter to add trillions of polygons to a game in some out-of-the-way place where they'll be completely inert.
More generally, there is no coherent notion of a "fair" price apart from supply and demand. There's no reason intrinsic to the nature of the universe why gold should be more valuable than sand; after all, valuable computer chips are mostly made out of the latter. Often the trade value of something spikes far upward as a new use is found, or downward as a better substitute comes into use. Uranium-235 wasn't terribly valuable 200 years ago, for example, even though it was physically and chemically identical to what it is today.
Computer software in particular--including but not limited to games--has the issue that there are large costs to make the first copy of a program, but then trivial costs to make each additional copy. If you can only charge for a copy a little more than it costs to actually make an additional copy, then there's no way to recoup the investment of developing the software in the first place.
Let's suppose that there is some specialized program that would costs $1 million to develop. There are only 10 companies in the world that have any plausible use for it, but they absolutely need it, and if they couldn't buy it, they'd spend the $1 million that it costs to develop it themselves, because they absolutely have to have it. And let's suppose that you run a company that has developed that program. How much should should you charge for it? It should be pretty obvious that you need to charge more than $100k per copy or else you'll lose money on it.
Meanwhile, if the costs of developing a program can be spread among enough users, then it can be a fairly trivial cost per user. That's what allows the major web browsers to be completely free to consumers, as a bit of advertising revenue from nudging customers toward certain web sites (e.g., Google search is the default in Opera because Google pays Opera for it to be the default) multiplied by tens of millions of customers adds up to more than enough to pay for development and distribution of the software.
With games, there's the further problem that you really don't know how many people are going to play your game. Did anyone early on really expect Minecraft to sell 20 million copies? Meanwhile, some games can cost a fortune to develop, and launch to virtually no players.
Adding new items to an item mall costs a fairly trivial amount in development costs. But developing the game to which the item mall can be added has much greater costs, and companies don't directly get paid for that.
Originally posted by Quizzical Don't be too eager for bureaucrats to meddle in the details of games that they don't understand. All costs of doing business are inevitably passed on to consumers one way or another. Clear anti-fraud laws are one thing, but if a game developer could easily face crippling sanctions on a whim due to some bureaucrat's subjective notion of what is fair, a lot of cool games that would have otherwise been created won't be.
I told you long ago that if the game industry didn't start regulating itself then others would step in.
Originally posted by Quizzical Don't be too eager for bureaucrats to meddle in the details of games that they don't understand. All costs of doing business are inevitably passed on to consumers one way or another. Clear anti-fraud laws are one thing, but if a game developer could easily face crippling sanctions on a whim due to some bureaucrat's subjective notion of what is fair, a lot of cool games that would have otherwise been created won't be.
Well Quizz, I have been around these forums a while, and I generally value your opinion, because you are well read and often intelligent.
But just for the giggle of it, could you name one, just one cool game that had this law been in place would not have been made?
Decisions are made at the margin, and we don't know what numbers various executives were looking at when they decided to approve a game. If you expect a game that costs $10 million to develop to bring in $10.5 million in revenue (adjusting for inflation, interest, etc.; there are ways to do that properly but let's gloss over that for simplicity) and you don't see an alternative that would bring in more, then you approve the project. If regulations stick you with an extra $1 million in development costs so that you expect to lose money on the game, then you don't develop the game at all.
You don't necessarily have to know the minute details to know about some information in the aggregate. I can't track down any particular nitrogen molecule that was part of Hurricane Sandy last fall, but that doesn't mean that there weren't any.
My understanding is that it's not a new law being debated. It's a bureaucracy investigating something or other, and I'm not really sure what they're doing. But if there were great regulatory costs imposed on the entire gaming industry, then yes, it would mean that some games that would otherwise have been developed wouldn't be.
As I see it, it's about presenting the product and price honestly. Charging people $1000 for something stupid is okay so long as you're clear up front that the price tag really is $1000 and don't misrepresent what the product is. See RyanAir's business model, for example.
What's not okay is promising that something is $1, and then getting a $100 charge on your credit card bill because you managed to sneak in some loophole in the fine print that would allow many additional charges that you didn't directly authorize.
If you tell someone $1 and charge $100 that is fraud flat out and should be prosecuted. We already have laws for that. If your Skinner Box reaction keeps you hitting the $1 box 100 times then the problem is the person.
If you approve each of 100 separate $1 charges, then sure, you owe $100. What WW4BW is claiming is that you can approve one charge, and then by default anyone else using the system can approve more charges, even without your credit card number or password. I'd see that as problematic, but if that were the focus of the investigation, I'd think that the agency would want to be very specific about it and not just say that they're investigation "free to play" games in general.
Then the problem is exactly who is allowing the multiple transactions...the game or the service? I personal still see it as a problem with the person. A civil issue and not a criminal issue that the government should be involved.
If you're told up front that it costs $1, and buried far in the EULA is a brief, ambiguous mention that anyone with access to your computer could make whatever additional charges they want, do you really expect people to be responsible for reading the pages of legalese before making what they where told was a $1 expenditure? Do you really want a world in which we have to carry magnifying glasses around and inspect price tags very carefully because there could be a microscopic line somewhere that says that by buying this product, you authorize a charge for 10 times the listed price later? At some point, you have to say, if a reasonable person would believe that when making the payment that it was going to be this price and no more, then the company can't find creative excuses to charge more than that.
Now, if you're told that it costs $1 and authorize it, and told that something else costs $1 and authorize it, and do that 100 times over the course of a month and don't realize it until the bill arrives because you can't count to 100, then yes, you should be liable for that.
As I see it, it's about presenting the product and price honestly. Charging people $1000 for something stupid is okay so long as you're clear up front that the price tag really is $1000 and don't misrepresent what the product is. See RyanAir's business model, for example.
What's not okay is promising that something is $1, and then getting a $100 charge on your credit card bill because you managed to sneak in some loophole in the fine print that would allow many additional charges that you didn't directly authorize.
If you tell someone $1 and charge $100 that is fraud flat out and should be prosecuted. We already have laws for that. If your Skinner Box reaction keeps you hitting the $1 box 100 times then the problem is the person.
If you approve each of 100 separate $1 charges, then sure, you owe $100. What WW4BW is claiming is that you can approve one charge, and then by default anyone else using the system can approve more charges, even without your credit card number or password. I'd see that as problematic, but if that were the focus of the investigation, I'd think that the agency would want to be very specific about it and not just say that they're investigation "free to play" games in general.
Then the problem is exactly who is allowing the multiple transactions...the game or the service? I personal still see it as a problem with the person. A civil issue and not a criminal issue that the government should be involved.
If you're told up front that it costs $1, and buried far in the EULA is a brief, ambiguous mention that anyone with access to your computer could make whatever additional charges they want, do you really expect people to be responsible for reading the pages of legalese before making what they where told was a $1 expenditure? Do you really want a world in which we have to carry magnifying glasses around and inspect price tags very carefully because there could be a microscopic line somewhere that says that by buying this product, you authorize a charge for 10 times the listed price later? At some point, you have to say, if a reasonable person would believe that when making the payment that it was going to be this price and no more, then the company can't find creative excuses to charge more than that.
Now, if you're told that it costs $1 and authorize it, and told that something else costs $1 and authorize it, and do that 100 times over the course of a month and don't realize it until the bill arrives because you can't count to 100, then yes, you should be liable for that.
"that anyone with access to your computer" Why do people I am not watching have access to my computer or account. That is like letting my kid in a candy store with my credit card. He would buy the whole store if I was not watching him.
As to reading the fine print before buy....YES. People that do not read the fine print before buying are suckers. They deserve to be suckers. And frankly I want some of their cash. Now if the fine print is that I put $1 on the tag but you get charged $100 then sue. There is actually protection against this sort of thing. If it is that you could click the $1 button 100 time and be charged. I am fine with that. I have no sympathy for stupidity. The old fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me. If that kid in the original story racked that up over a month then it is bad parenting, if it was one day then the people should protest as odviously the parents did because they got their cash back and this story was written. I just fail to see the need for the government to step in.
This is something that effects a very small percentage of the community is seems or it would be all over the place with complaints. The nightly news would be talking about it. I just do not see the need for laws to regulate something people should be self regulating.
As I see it, it's about presenting the product and price honestly. Charging people $1000 for something stupid is okay so long as you're clear up front that the price tag really is $1000 and don't misrepresent what the product is. See RyanAir's business model, for example.
What's not okay is promising that something is $1, and then getting a $100 charge on your credit card bill because you managed to sneak in some loophole in the fine print that would allow many additional charges that you didn't directly authorize.
If you tell someone $1 and charge $100 that is fraud flat out and should be prosecuted. We already have laws for that. If your Skinner Box reaction keeps you hitting the $1 box 100 times then the problem is the person.
If you approve each of 100 separate $1 charges, then sure, you owe $100. What WW4BW is claiming is that you can approve one charge, and then by default anyone else using the system can approve more charges, even without your credit card number or password. I'd see that as problematic, but if that were the focus of the investigation, I'd think that the agency would want to be very specific about it and not just say that they're investigation "free to play" games in general.
Then the problem is exactly who is allowing the multiple transactions...the game or the service? I personal still see it as a problem with the person. A civil issue and not a criminal issue that the government should be involved.
If you're told up front that it costs $1, and buried far in the EULA is a brief, ambiguous mention that anyone with access to your computer could make whatever additional charges they want, do you really expect people to be responsible for reading the pages of legalese before making what they where told was a $1 expenditure? Do you really want a world in which we have to carry magnifying glasses around and inspect price tags very carefully because there could be a microscopic line somewhere that says that by buying this product, you authorize a charge for 10 times the listed price later? At some point, you have to say, if a reasonable person would believe that when making the payment that it was going to be this price and no more, then the company can't find creative excuses to charge more than that.
Now, if you're told that it costs $1 and authorize it, and told that something else costs $1 and authorize it, and do that 100 times over the course of a month and don't realize it until the bill arrives because you can't count to 100, then yes, you should be liable for that.
"that anyone with access to your computer" Why do people I am not watching have access to my computer or account. That is like letting my kid in a candy store with my credit card. He would buy the whole store if I was not watching him.
As to reading the fine print before buy....YES. People that do not read the fine print before buying are suckers. They deserve to be suckers. And frankly I want some of their cash. Now if the fine print is that I put $1 on the tag but you get charged $100 then sue. There is actually protection against this sort of thing. If it is that you could click the $1 button 100 time and be charged. I am fine with that. I have no sympathy for stupidity. The old fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me. If that kid in the original story racked that up over a month then it is bad parenting, if it was one day then the people should protest as odviously the parents did because they got their cash back and this story was written. I just fail to see the need for the government to step in.
This is something that effects a very small percentage of the community is seems or it would be all over the place with complaints. The nightly news would be talking about it. I just do not see the need for laws to regulate something people should be self regulating.
Never underestimate the power of lobbyists and PR companies hired by those with Deep pockets. Theres a lot that should be all over the news that isn't...
The way people talk about the companies that sell these games and the consumer reminds me a little bit of the relationship between a drug dealer and the addict. Although that's a rather clumsy and extreme comparison, I feel it fits in some extreme cases. There are people out there, for what ever reason, cannot seem to play games in moderation and accrue debts and destroy their own life.
I would be reluctant to place the blame on the companies. If they make it clear what their charges and the charges are fair I think the responsibility lays on the individual themselves to control their spending and the time they are investing on games. So long as companies and developers are upfront, there is no moral hazard.
In saying that, agencies like the OFT would be remiss in their duty to protect the consumer if they didn't investigate companies that were actively exploiting children and weak minded or ignorant individuals that play these games and spend too much money on them. Like it or not, there are people that cannot deal with life very well and kids do stupid things despite whatever warnings a parent will give them. Therefore it's up to the wider society to protect them, even though it goes against my beliefs that an individual should look after themselves and pay the price for their own choices.
The way people talk about the companies that sell these games and the consumer reminds me a little bit of the relationship between a drug dealer and the addict. Although that's a rather clumsy and extreme comparison, I feel it fits in some extreme cases. There are people out there, for what ever reason, cannot seem to play games in moderation and accrue debts and destroy their own life.
I would be reluctant to place the blame on the companies. If they make it clear what their charges and the charges are fair I think the responsibility lays on the individual themselves to control their spending and the time they are investing on games. So long as companies and developers are upfront, there is no moral hazard.
In saying that, agencies like the OFT would be remiss in their duty to protect the consumer if they didn't investigate companies that were actively exploiting children and weak minded or ignorant individuals that play these games and spend too much money on them. Like it or not, there are people that cannot deal with life very well and kids do stupid things despite whatever warnings a parent will give them. Therefore it's up to the wider society to protect them, even though it goes against my beliefs that an individual should look after themselves and pay the price for their own choices.
But should be OFT go after the company, the facilitator, or just make the issue public. Does a specific complicated law really have to be made?
The way people talk about the companies that sell these games and the consumer reminds me a little bit of the relationship between a drug dealer and the addict. Although that's a rather clumsy and extreme comparison, I feel it fits in some extreme cases. There are people out there, for what ever reason, cannot seem to play games in moderation and accrue debts and destroy their own life.
I would be reluctant to place the blame on the companies. If they make it clear what their charges and the charges are fair I think the responsibility lays on the individual themselves to control their spending and the time they are investing on games. So long as companies and developers are upfront, there is no moral hazard.
In saying that, agencies like the OFT would be remiss in their duty to protect the consumer if they didn't investigate companies that were actively exploiting children and weak minded or ignorant individuals that play these games and spend too much money on them. Like it or not, there are people that cannot deal with life very well and kids do stupid things despite whatever warnings a parent will give them. Therefore it's up to the wider society to protect them, even though it goes against my beliefs that an individual should look after themselves and pay the price for their own choices.
But should be OFT go after the company, the facilitator, or just make the issue public. Does a specific complicated law really have to be made?
I don't like making laws in cases like this, that will only benefit lawyers. I think they should make the public aware of what can happen and educate children and try and encourage good practice. I believe that any bad practice can be tackled using existing laws without harming companies that are being responsible.
Comments
And this is bad if people willing pay it? The world is full of levels of wealth and influence you think games will be different. The only thing you can do is stop playing/paying and hope others due to, but to force people that actually like that style to stop by law is bascially a smack in the face to a free society.
In what world do you live? "Free Society?" When has this ever been a "free society?" Sounds like the thoughts of a naive college kid who read a book or someone who hasn't traveled.
And yea it is bad if people are willing to pay it. People need to be told what to do they are simply just cattle.
Paying too much money for a video game is no different then a friend you have who has a gambling problem. Do you just sit back and let it happen or did someone say one day, "lets have an intervention!"
There are burns and then there are burns..
So you paid "5 bucks" to see the Cupachrabra.. Did you really think it would be real or even a well done fraud? And then you take it upon yourself to spoil/warn others.. Wow.. that makes you both a dick and an idiot..
But back to burns..
So you have a coffee cup thats a little thin and you go ooh thats a bit hot on the fingers.. dont think I will have coffee in that cup again.. That is a mild burn
But then you have unlicensed electrical work short circuit and burn your house down with or without you in it... Thats a severe burn.
As far as micro transaftions in free to play games. It isnt really a big issue in most PC games. In my experience you have to enter a code or atleast go to a vastly different looking checkout page to buy anything. Plus they are usually not played by 5-10 year olds. And the prices are often reasonable. So it is difficult to get burned hard.
But with these free apps, combined with less than helpful app store, allow you to spend as much as you have with very little effort.. Very nice if you are buying music for a road trip or something.. but very problematic when a child cant tell the difference between a game and a store, because the store is part of the game. They will call you over when you need to enter a password. You will look and then decide wether you want to pay.. You would say no if it was 100$ ofcourse, but we are talking micro transactions so it will probably be a lot less... but if you allow it and havent changed the standard settings... BOOM you could be on the hook for thousands. That is quite a severe burn...
If you have a system where approving one charge by default lets someone else who has neither your credit card number nor your password approve other charges to your credit card, then yeah, that's basically fraud. So I can see why they'd go after that.
But is that what the investigation is limited to? The article doesn't even mention what you describe at all. From the article:
"In its investigation, the OFT wants to find out if the games are "misleading, commercially aggressive or otherwise unfair" when they give people the chance to buy extras."
"otherwise unfair" could mean just about anything. Fairness is a very slippery concept that is so vague and subjective as to barely mean anything at all. That's why politicians who want to do something that would surely be unpopular on its own merits will sometimes say that they really just want to make things more fair, and not give much details of how. Writing fairness into a law and giving bureaucrats the power to enforce it basically gives them a license to do whatever they feel like doing.
I happen to think it has everything to do with government. And that companies that bait people into buying stuff without telling them the real cost is just as widespread... Sure, it wont kill you. But should it be allowed to continue unchecked?
Im all for taking personal responsibility, and reintroducing the poison food argument again, I can atleast make a decision based on nutrition, rather than, will it kill me or not. I think that is a fair division.
It's about the level where you make your informed decisions. I get that you dont want the government making laws for every little detail about your life. But I think that we greatly benefit from having laws to allow consumers to skip the poison/not poison part and get straight to the actual value of the product and decide from there.
This is where it does, in fact, mention it. Although in lesser detail that I described.
"The investigation comes alongside media reports about children spending large sums on virtual items for smartphone and web games.
In March, five-year-old schoolboy Danny Kitchen, from Bristol, managed to rack up charges of more than £1,700 while playing the Zombies versus Ninjas game on his parents' iPad. The money has since been refunded by Apple."
As I see it, it's about presenting the product and price honestly. Charging people $1000 for something stupid is okay so long as you're clear up front that the price tag really is $1000 and don't misrepresent what the product is. See RyanAir's business model, for example.
What's not okay is promising that something is $1, and then getting a $100 charge on your credit card bill because you managed to sneak in some loophole in the fine print that would allow many additional charges that you didn't directly authorize.
"In March" over the whole month or just at one time? If over a month then you got some parents that need to monitor their accounts.
And if it is over a month then I fall back to the reality of the world...P.T. Barnum..."A sucker is born every minute." Always will be. You can not protect against a fool because they always exist.
If you tell someone $1 and charge $100 that is fraud flat out and should be prosecuted. We already have laws for that. If your Skinner Box reaction keeps you hitting the $1 box 100 times then the problem is the person.
If you approve each of 100 separate $1 charges, then sure, you owe $100. What WW4BW is claiming is that you can approve one charge, and then by default anyone else using the system can approve more charges, even without your credit card number or password. I'd see that as problematic, but if that were the focus of the investigation, I'd think that the agency would want to be very specific about it and not just say that they're investigation "free to play" games in general.
Well Quizz, I have been around these forums a while, and I generally value your opinion, because you are well read and often intelligent.
But just for the giggle of it, could you name one, just one cool game that had this law been in place would not have been made?
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Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
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I do believe that what was meant was when the story broke.. And not referring to the time span of the spending spree.
Though if it did in fact occur over the duration of a whole month, then it definatly speaks volumes about how little the parents pay attention to their kid and their bank account. But I dont think that is the case here.
Then the problem is exactly who is allowing the multiple transactions...the game or the service? I personal still see it as a problem with the person. A civil issue and not a criminal issue that the government should be involved.
If someone can lose that much money over a month and not notice they are ripe for ID theft and fraud.
You do realize, I hope, that it's a fairly trivial matter to add trillions of polygons to a game in some out-of-the-way place where they'll be completely inert.
More generally, there is no coherent notion of a "fair" price apart from supply and demand. There's no reason intrinsic to the nature of the universe why gold should be more valuable than sand; after all, valuable computer chips are mostly made out of the latter. Often the trade value of something spikes far upward as a new use is found, or downward as a better substitute comes into use. Uranium-235 wasn't terribly valuable 200 years ago, for example, even though it was physically and chemically identical to what it is today.
Computer software in particular--including but not limited to games--has the issue that there are large costs to make the first copy of a program, but then trivial costs to make each additional copy. If you can only charge for a copy a little more than it costs to actually make an additional copy, then there's no way to recoup the investment of developing the software in the first place.
Let's suppose that there is some specialized program that would costs $1 million to develop. There are only 10 companies in the world that have any plausible use for it, but they absolutely need it, and if they couldn't buy it, they'd spend the $1 million that it costs to develop it themselves, because they absolutely have to have it. And let's suppose that you run a company that has developed that program. How much should should you charge for it? It should be pretty obvious that you need to charge more than $100k per copy or else you'll lose money on it.
Meanwhile, if the costs of developing a program can be spread among enough users, then it can be a fairly trivial cost per user. That's what allows the major web browsers to be completely free to consumers, as a bit of advertising revenue from nudging customers toward certain web sites (e.g., Google search is the default in Opera because Google pays Opera for it to be the default) multiplied by tens of millions of customers adds up to more than enough to pay for development and distribution of the software.
With games, there's the further problem that you really don't know how many people are going to play your game. Did anyone early on really expect Minecraft to sell 20 million copies? Meanwhile, some games can cost a fortune to develop, and launch to virtually no players.
Adding new items to an item mall costs a fairly trivial amount in development costs. But developing the game to which the item mall can be added has much greater costs, and companies don't directly get paid for that.
I told you long ago that if the game industry didn't start regulating itself then others would step in.
Decisions are made at the margin, and we don't know what numbers various executives were looking at when they decided to approve a game. If you expect a game that costs $10 million to develop to bring in $10.5 million in revenue (adjusting for inflation, interest, etc.; there are ways to do that properly but let's gloss over that for simplicity) and you don't see an alternative that would bring in more, then you approve the project. If regulations stick you with an extra $1 million in development costs so that you expect to lose money on the game, then you don't develop the game at all.
You don't necessarily have to know the minute details to know about some information in the aggregate. I can't track down any particular nitrogen molecule that was part of Hurricane Sandy last fall, but that doesn't mean that there weren't any.
My understanding is that it's not a new law being debated. It's a bureaucracy investigating something or other, and I'm not really sure what they're doing. But if there were great regulatory costs imposed on the entire gaming industry, then yes, it would mean that some games that would otherwise have been developed wouldn't be.
If you're told up front that it costs $1, and buried far in the EULA is a brief, ambiguous mention that anyone with access to your computer could make whatever additional charges they want, do you really expect people to be responsible for reading the pages of legalese before making what they where told was a $1 expenditure? Do you really want a world in which we have to carry magnifying glasses around and inspect price tags very carefully because there could be a microscopic line somewhere that says that by buying this product, you authorize a charge for 10 times the listed price later? At some point, you have to say, if a reasonable person would believe that when making the payment that it was going to be this price and no more, then the company can't find creative excuses to charge more than that.
Now, if you're told that it costs $1 and authorize it, and told that something else costs $1 and authorize it, and do that 100 times over the course of a month and don't realize it until the bill arrives because you can't count to 100, then yes, you should be liable for that.
"that anyone with access to your computer" Why do people I am not watching have access to my computer or account. That is like letting my kid in a candy store with my credit card. He would buy the whole store if I was not watching him.
As to reading the fine print before buy....YES. People that do not read the fine print before buying are suckers. They deserve to be suckers. And frankly I want some of their cash. Now if the fine print is that I put $1 on the tag but you get charged $100 then sue. There is actually protection against this sort of thing. If it is that you could click the $1 button 100 time and be charged. I am fine with that. I have no sympathy for stupidity. The old fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me. If that kid in the original story racked that up over a month then it is bad parenting, if it was one day then the people should protest as odviously the parents did because they got their cash back and this story was written. I just fail to see the need for the government to step in.
This is something that effects a very small percentage of the community is seems or it would be all over the place with complaints. The nightly news would be talking about it. I just do not see the need for laws to regulate something people should be self regulating.
Never underestimate the power of lobbyists and PR companies hired by those with Deep pockets. Theres a lot that should be all over the news that isn't...
The way people talk about the companies that sell these games and the consumer reminds me a little bit of the relationship between a drug dealer and the addict. Although that's a rather clumsy and extreme comparison, I feel it fits in some extreme cases. There are people out there, for what ever reason, cannot seem to play games in moderation and accrue debts and destroy their own life.
I would be reluctant to place the blame on the companies. If they make it clear what their charges and the charges are fair I think the responsibility lays on the individual themselves to control their spending and the time they are investing on games. So long as companies and developers are upfront, there is no moral hazard.
In saying that, agencies like the OFT would be remiss in their duty to protect the consumer if they didn't investigate companies that were actively exploiting children and weak minded or ignorant individuals that play these games and spend too much money on them. Like it or not, there are people that cannot deal with life very well and kids do stupid things despite whatever warnings a parent will give them. Therefore it's up to the wider society to protect them, even though it goes against my beliefs that an individual should look after themselves and pay the price for their own choices.
But should be OFT go after the company, the facilitator, or just make the issue public. Does a specific complicated law really have to be made?
I don't like making laws in cases like this, that will only benefit lawyers. I think they should make the public aware of what can happen and educate children and try and encourage good practice. I believe that any bad practice can be tackled using existing laws without harming companies that are being responsible.