Since the introduction of microtransactions in video games, there have been numerous cases over the years of kids spending absurd amounts of money on them. The latest example of this saw a six year old in Connecticut spend more than $16,000, mainly from buying microtransactions for the mobile game Sonic Forces: Speed Battle, a racing spin-off of the Sonic Forces console game that launched in 2017.
The six year old's mother, Jessica Johnson, first noticed the charges on July 9, which had totaled over $2,500 at that point, according to a report by the New York Post. Comparing Sonic Forces: Speed Battle's microtransactions to "lines of cocaine," Johnson said that her son was buying the expensive $99.99 gold ring bundles for the game. However, Johnson didn't realize that these charges were from a video game at first, due to the way they were appearing on her credit card statements. So instead of thinking that her six year old was spending thousands of dollars on a video game, she assumed that there was some kind of fraud going on.
The charges eventually reached a staggering $16,293.10, but finally Johnson's credit card company, Chase, told her she needed to contact Apple. After working it out with Apple customer support, Johnson figured out that her son was the one that spent all that money. According to Johnson, Apple was not sympathetic to her situation, even after she said she would not be able to pay her mortgage due to the charges.
Had Johnson called within 60 days of the charges, there would be some possible recourse, but due to the time elapsed, the company couldn't do anything about it. However, Johnson says that the reason why she didn't call within 60 days was because her credit card company had told her it was most likely fraud, not legitimate transactions that someone was making with her account. The Apple customer service agent reportedly told Johnson that there was a setting she could have activated to prevent this from happening. "Obviously, if I had known there was a setting for that, I wouldn't have allowed my 6-year-old to run up nearly $20,000 in charges for virtual gold rings," Johnson told the New York Post.
Johnson criticized the Sonic Forces: Speed Battle microtransactions as being "predatory" and also placed some blame on Apple. She said that her son did not understand that the money being spent was real. She said she was "appalled" that Apple devices weren't pre-set to make sure something like this doesn't happen.
Kids games having microtransactions has been a hot topic of debate for some time, and situations like this keep happening on a semi-regular basis. Similarly to how politicians have attacked loot boxes, it wouldn't be all that surprising to see this practice done away with or at least be more heavily regulated in future.
Source: New York Post