MSE News: 'Immoral' My Little Pony game tempts kids to spend £70 on 'virtual gems'

gadgetmind

I wonder how much overlap there is between the people getting caught out by this and those who signed up for PPI without reading the paperwork?

grintricha

good for you MSE, I agree everyone involved in selling that pony game should be ashamed of themselves, what can I do to join in the fight?

and what makes me slightly nervous is that on my ipad I have a pin, it asks me when I go to make a purchase, but after that purchase there seems to be a session when other purchases can be made from the app store without further inputting of the password, can I tighten that up further so that all purchases require a pin?

rockin_plumber

grintricha wrote: »

good for you MSE, I agree everyone involved in selling that pony game should be ashamed of themselves, what can I do to join in the fight?

and what makes me slightly nervous is that on my ipad I have a pin, it asks me when I go to make a purchase, but after that purchase there seems to be a session when other purchases can be made from the app store without further inputting of the password, can I tighten that up further so that all purchases require a pin?

Setting... Generall... Restrictions.. Require password... Change to immediately.

As for the fight... The only thing that needs doing is educating these irresponsible parents!

sillygoose

I ABSOLUTELY agree that its the parents responsibility as they control access and I would have made them pay up!!!...but you have to question the ethics of a company charging £70 for virtually nothing in a game aimed at 6 year olds, how many 6 year olds have £70 to blow? To me its clearly designed to catch out people in this situation and yes they only have themselves to blame.

But how many of us have always known the in's and out's of something enough not to be caught out?.. if you look at the prolific rise in scamming for a living these days a great many of us it seems. We all think we are too street wiise to get caught out but we don't look so clever when we do.

_Andy_

"MoneySavingExpert.com is declaring war"


oooooh scary!!

im-lost

sillygoose wrote: »

I ABSOLUTELY agree that its the parents responsibility as they control access and I would have made them pay up!!!...but you have to question the ethics of a company charging £70 for virtually nothing in a game aimed at 6 year olds, how many 6 year olds have £70 to blow? To me its clearly designed to catch out people in this situation and yes they only have themselves to blame.
.

How many 6 year olds have smartphones capable of playing such games?

sillygoose

im-lost wrote: »

How many 6 year olds have smartphones capable of playing such games?

Although a phone in this case, the same applies to ipods or ipads on wifi doesn't it? I see plenty of parents around here dishing them out to 6+ year olds. The usual excuse is they don't want the kids left behind in using technology. The real reason is they don't want the Jones or Smiths to look better off because their kids have one, the competitive 'race' is getting younger all the time.

Many of them have no idea about parental controls and its their kids that are usually the ones spreading around the other kids knowledge of 'things' they shouldn't know about yet, due to unrestricted access to the web. Give an 8 year old a device with no control and ipod becomes iperv pretty soon.

AAAAA

sillygoose wrote: »

I ABSOLUTELY agree that its the parents responsibility as they control access and I would have made them pay up!!!...but you have to question the ethics of a company charging £70 for virtually nothing in a game aimed at 6 year olds, how many 6 year olds have £70 to blow? To me its clearly designed to catch out people in this situation and yes they only have themselves to blame.

But how many of us have always known the in's and out's of something enough not to be caught out?.. if you look at the prolific rise in scamming for a living these days a great many of us it seems. We all think we are too street wiise to get caught out but we don't look so clever when we do.

In this case I don't think there is a need to qustion the ethics with the company they have done nothing wrong.All they are doing is offering a sevice, x amount of money for x amount of virtual goods.

I also have a problem with the phrase amied at.Lets say your right and the game IS aimed at 6 year olds.Just because something is aimed at someone doesn't mean JUST those people play the game.Just for an example lets assume 99% who play are 6 year olds and 1% are adults.Why should the developer be deprived of the opertunaty to make money selling in app purchases just because somepeople are irresponsible enough to let there children buy in app purchases?

wantmemoney

There appear to be some not very nice people on this thread who would like to go back to the days of selling snake oil potions.

I was brought up in the belief that it was our duty to warn and help protect people from wasting money or being ripped off. I was never told only people of a certain age or IQ should be helped.

rockin_plumber

wantmemoney wrote: »

.............I was brought up in the belief that it was our duty to warn and help protect people from wasting money or being ripped off...........

First off the owner of the device should be aware of the settings that can be changed so this can't happen.

...But it pops up a message saying what the in-app purchase is going to cost...

And gives you the option CANCEL or BUY

If the child is too young to understand this then maybe shouldn't be using the device...

If the child is old enough to know better then stop them using the device permanently...

To go crying to Apple for refunds because you don't understand how to set up the device is ludicrus

......I bet all these people wanting refunds, agree with these immigrants wanting compensation due to the stress of being caught and imprisoned for trying sneak to into our country...

I was making a cup of tea in my van earlier and spilt it on my lap it was rather hot..
Who do I blame???
The cup manufacturer??
The kettle manufacturer??
Thermos for making the flask keep the water too hot??
Luckily no injuries but if there was who do I claim from??
It sure as hell wasn't my fault


Its turning into a nanny state :mad:
And this culture of trying to find someone to blame, the world has gone crazy :mad:

This Little Pony Story was even on the BBC news earlier!!!!!!!!!
I nearly choked on my tea!!!!!!!
Lucky for the BBC I didn't!!!