<rant> Last week my daughter was playing a game called "My Emma" on the iPad. Aside from being full of endless pop-ups and nag screens, I was ultra-pissed upon seeing the game pestering her to pay £7.99 to unlock the whole game (bit steep, but fair do's) and below that, an option to buy a chest full of gems for a bargain price of £79.99. Yes, you read that right. To put it into perspective, £79.99 translates to roughly $120. My daughter is 7 years old. It is utterly, utterly WRONG to target children with this sort of expensive, non-tangible crap. Most children have NO concept of the value of money and most would not even realise they were being asked to spend real money. Today she asked me to find her a cat game on the iPad, and I came across one called "Daily Kitten". It did state that there were IAPs but you never really know the severity of that until you download it. All was going well - no popups or nag screens, and she played with the kitten until it got tired and went to sleep. So she clicked on a thing to wake it up now, rather than waiting for hours, and up pops this: "ASK YOUR PARENTS: 2 + 4 = ??" Seriously? This developer thinks a kid will be able to read "ask your parents" and NOT know what two plus four is??! Again, my daughter is 7 years old. She's known the answer to this since she was about three. Any child over toddler age is going to know this. Fortunately I haven't bought anything off of the App Store in years, and any credit card I've ever had on there has expired long ago. Plus I have my account set to ask for a password every time. Had I not, she would have been unwittingly spending real money. So, if you work for Honiku Games who made this awful cash-grab, or if you're any other developer who partakes in this sort of shameless greed and think it's perfectly acceptable to target children with IAPs, then **** YOU. **** your parents for putting you on this earth, and **** and anybody who looks like you. Yes, developers have to make money, but it's ****ing disgusting that so many choose to do it like this. </rant> [edit] Oh, and **** Apple for allowing it, as well.
I hear ya... my 5 and 3 year old are constantly getting berated by popups, some of which have imagery that kids that age shouldn't see. Luckily, I've carefully trained them to click anything with an X on it and avoid anything with a lock or $ on it BTW, sorry, but I had to bleep out some of your choice words
Yup, totally with you on this. I have a 6, (nearly)4 and a 2 year old, all of which like to play on the iPad and I constantly worry about what they see when playing. I much prefer the kids games where it's the IAP is a DLC pack rather than consumables but I too have been training them to click on the X and avoid anything with the $ sign on it. I always set the password option to Always Require and wouldn't dream of letting them have the password (some parents do and I find it hard to believe!) Must admit though, extra content is a useful reward for good behaviour sometimes ;-)
I watch her like a hawk when she's on the iPad. I've even seen ads in children's games for dating apps. It's bang out of order. Yeah, apologies for the potty-mouth. It comes from a seething hatred of unscrupulous game developers who are destroying the market.