The actual issue is "Often consumers are not fully aware that they are spending money because their credit cards get charged by default." - so it's not an issue of people disliking paywalls in free games, it's an issue of people not realizing they're handing over real cash in games which are marked free.
The EU also has't said they want Free/IAP games to not be marked as free, but what they said is 'Games advertised as “free” should not mislead consumers about the true costs involved' (i.e IAP should be made more explicit).
I wholeheartedly agree with this. The point for me isn't so much "protection" against unforseen expenses it's just that I want to know up front what costs money and what doesn't.
When I browse for a free app I don't want to see the crippled in-app-unlockable app next to the truly free app.
Strict rules for prices in marketing is a prerequisite for a functioning market, my other pet peeve is the contract phone. Not only do I think telcos should be required to market the total cost (which they are already at least here) , I want to take it one step further and completely ban the marketing of the small upfront cost as the price.
Unlike the US, the EU has strong legislation against deceptive advertising. Saying that a game is "free" when it's designed for profit is intentionally deceptive. It's really as simple as that.
Unfortunately, most people aren't even that sophisticated. The average user isn't going to be able to differentiate between a free game and one designed to pry their wallets open.
I don't know if the solution to that is regulation, but it can't be reliance on the uninformed to know what's good for them. The exploitative industry moves faster than any but the most well-informed and most jaded.
Sure you avoid the games, but they're clearly making tons of money. People find things that "work" -- they earn tons of money. They repeat. Other people see that it works. They copy. Suddenly the world is full of games that have artificial limitations that can be passed by waiting N hours or by paying $N.
I say we boycott applications that do this. But if it's easier to legislate, then by all means.
Apple added all this only after losing a massive class action on IAP.
So, you're right that we probably don't need legislation now to avoid being ripped off, but it would have been preferable to have it when people were being ripped off. That does require consumer legislation to keep up with technology, though.
I think it'd be a good thing to do. You have a process in place, and enough self discipline to avoid installing such apps. But not everyone is like that. I'm guessing majority of the users go like this: "ah, it's a free app, great, I'll get it. <10 mins in the game, when they run out of gems, bullets, whatnot> Oh, what do I do now? £0.99 is not too bad, I'll just get another pack of <blah>, so I don't have to wait 30 mins".
Can people self-regulate and avoid behaving like that? Yes. Do they? I doubt it.
> If the in-app purchases are "x00 Special In-Game Currency Units" then I don't install the game.
That's sensible to false-positives though, a number of games are perfectly playable (with no roadblock) without getting special currency units, e.g. jetpack joyride (a fairly standard infinite runner) or Solomon's Boneyard. The currency units are mostly there for developer support and if you can't be arsed to play the game (for some reason).
I'm glad I'm not the only one there. Although some apps a quick search will show that it's worth it (Paper by 53 comes to mind).
Which is something I find interesting: people talk about "discovery" and reviews of apps being difficult. You're on a device that's sole purpose is internet connectivity! Use the browser, Luke!
Personally I would like to see iAP to be considered like advertising and for it to be more heavily regulated at child audiences. Tired of my 4 year old crying because I won't let him spend another $4 to unlock another widget.
When I was 4, I threw a tantrum in the middle of a mall because my mom wouldn't buy me a toy. In exasperation, she sat down at a bench and let me embarrass myself for a half hour. Kid's gotta learn eventually he can't get his way by being a brat, eh?
And my parents were tired of me asking for sugary cereals. And yet both they and I survived, and I probably got to eat that cereal three total times in my childhood. Not getting things is an important lesson, especially in a world that will only increase the pressure to buy things in the future (legislation won't stop his peers from telling him to buy cool shoes). And if you disagree with that statement (perfectly reasonable to do so), then it's still not really someone else's responsibility to hide him from it, you should feel free to do so.
This is one of the areas where I wish EU would punish Apple for.
Their free app of the week is often so-called free games but they almost always have in-app purchases that's required to take full advantage of the game.
As a father, thank you. Games with in-app purchases are NOT free -- the reason of the intervention is that in a lot of cases, especially children, people were charged without noticing.
These game should not be mingled with free games and parents should have an option to forbid them.
It would be interesting if one could differentiate between playable games, and in game purchases are "fun", versus games that are unplayable in the 'free' mode without purchasing additional tokens. Its the latter that people really hate.
It often depends on your skill level, whether you take breaks from the game, and how much of a completionist you are. In some games these factors interact in complicated ways.
From a regulatory perspective, I'm afraid the best we can do is:
* Ban tying game mechanics to time outside the game, whether it's "wait 8 hours unless you pay" or "this reward is only available for 4 hours" or an insidious combination of the two.
* Increase transparency, e.g. by asking app stores to show graphs of (time played) vs (money spent).
"The use of the word "free" (or similar) may be tolerated for games which are not entirely free, if it is complemented by appropriate qualifications characterising upfront in a clear manner what elements are for free and which ones can be purchased. In such cases, the consumer should be able to access discrete parts of the game that stand alone without the need to make purchases. "Free" may not be used where the consumer cannot, without making in-app purchases, access content integral to gameplay or play the game in a way that he/she would reasonably expect. "
Essentially, the customer must know what parts are free and which have to be paid for prior download. There is going to be grey zone of course, but if you app have paywall, it shall not be called free.
On the other hand, you can sell custom avatars or additional levels and call your app free, as long as the description says something like: playing first five levels of the game is for free, but custom avatars and additional content have to be paid for.
The solution for this would be to change the purchase approval model where you have to enter your password to purchase anything. You can have to options: 1) authorize until closed, or 2) authorize just this purchase. This way kids could not run up charges using iAP.
However, if you an adult, and you have purchased $100s of iAP, and now you feel bad about it, I have 0 sympathy for you.
Overall, this is just EU being EU, nothing surprising.
> However, if you an adult, and you have purchased $100s of iAP, and now you feel bad about it, I have 0 sympathy for you.
So you understand that companies like King design their "free" games to be next-to-impossible if you don't give them money, while employing teams of psychologists to determine the best way to subvert your will through forced failure while simultaneously driving manipulative CTAs at you while you are at your (carefully cultivated) most vulnerable? And, understanding that and with that first and foremost in your mind, you have no sympathy for the people who end up on the business end of that psychological weapon?
Because I certainly do. There are economies of scale to the practice of subverting people's will and in this war one side's got all the guns. These games are designed--designed--to hit the same triggers as a fucking gambling addiction, man. I am so very not OK with abandoning those wired less effectively against it. (And as I get older I can see how insidious and easy it is for this shit to worm into me when I never would have noticed it, or thought it possible, a decade ago.)
Hm. I see the good intent of protection against 'unwitting purchases' BUT still do not welcome the government intervention here. Governments have a tendency to work on 'soft targets' like software / app development. I would like to see them work first on unwitting charges/terms-and-conditions imposed by credit card or insurance companies.
What about advertising? It consumes my time and attention, which is generally worth more (at least to me) than a few bucks. And advertising can have a powerful affect on susceptible minds. By this logic, all advertisement-supported games should be clearly marked as well.
And what about people who release free software with no in-app purchases or advertising, who simply want to learn programming or get enjoyment from having people use their software? These people are exploiting their users for personal gain too!
I don't mind "advertising" per se, e.g there's lego apps for kids that, like Saturday morning cartoons, could be viewed basically as advertisements, but are reasonable experiences in themselves.
On the other hand the apps that throw up full screen ads with tiny, hidden close buttons are annoying. Mostly they seem designed to provoke accidental clicks, which don't seem to offer any social value at all.
(Also, no one seems to note that fake free apps are undermining honest for pay apps, a model which people here seem to support).
"Consumers and in particular children need better protection against unexpected costs from in-app purchases."
What are unexpected costs? Are users ever charged without explicitly agreeing to it?
"The use of the word 'free' (or similar unequivocal terms) as such, and without any appropriate qualifications, should only be allowed for games which are indeed free in their entirety, or in other words which contain no possibility of making in-app purchases, not even on an optional basis."
What is the cost of someone downloading a 'free' game only to realize that they need to pay to get the experience that they expected? They can just uninstall the game. I've paid for and downloaded games that didn't deliver the experience I expected.
If the goal is protecting kids from making in-app purchases, maybe parents should learn how to use parental controls, or not attach credit cards to their children's devices. Does this really 'protect' anyone, or does it just change the language that game-makers use for this model, and nothing else?
The unexpected costs would be tied to game elements (like higher levels) that required IAP. If this wasn't made clear when the app was downloaded, it would be a deceptive means of marketing a paid app as free.
Banning the term "free-to-play" because there are optional features that cost money means you would also need to ban the term "free admission" when a venue charges for food and drinks. You'll also have to get rid of "buy one get one free" and, well, pretty much just strike the word "free" from the dictionary altogether since technically there is not a thing in the world that is entirely without consequence, tradeoff, opportunity cost, etc.
Requiring explicit authorization would be really nice. I recently discovered that even if you set Google Play to always require a password (which apparently isn't even necessarily the default(?)), you still don't require a password for 30 minutes after any purchase. That means that if I buy a game for my son to play with, any in-game purchases he randomly clicks on automatically get approved.
Fortunately I get them refunded when I complain, but it's still a stupid policy.
It'd be interesting if they required games with IAPs to show an "average spend/user" number next to the big "FREE" label, so you know how much you can expect you'll get suckered in. Although I suspect it would be pretty meaningless since users would be split between "doesn't pay a cent" and "whales who spend lots".
This is silly. At the end of the day, game developers need to get paid for their effort and time spent. The days of $49 boxed games are over (on mobile). The iAP model is proven again and again across different platforms and the majority of the top grossing apps are following it.
It costs money to develop games and apps. A quality title might cost over a million dollars in development. What makes the consumer believe they deserve to get it for free?
iAPs are not necessarily evil - they are a great and perfect way of pricing things for different subsets of people. If you reduce iAP revenue, you make developers more driven toward ad revenue.
I don't think anybody was saying that games should be free or that iAPs are about to be illegal. But labeling something "free" that isn't really "free" is misleading customers. Games shouldn't be free since games aren't free to produce. But it's a reasonable expectation that games that are not free are not labeled as "free".
In app purchases are fine, but be HONEST about it.
Not being upfront about the costs of your game directly misleads the customer and, in my opinion, is a terrible and abusive way to earn revenue.
1. iAP are obviously not evil.
2. How the industry uses them probably is.
3. Your game isn't free if you have to pay to enjoy it.
4. "Developers gotta eat" doesn't have anything to do with it.
[+] [-] ig1|12 years ago|reply
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-187_en.htm?locale...
The actual issue is "Often consumers are not fully aware that they are spending money because their credit cards get charged by default." - so it's not an issue of people disliking paywalls in free games, it's an issue of people not realizing they're handing over real cash in games which are marked free.
The EU also has't said they want Free/IAP games to not be marked as free, but what they said is 'Games advertised as “free” should not mislead consumers about the true costs involved' (i.e IAP should be made more explicit).
[+] [-] jay_kyburz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pgopalan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alkonaut|12 years ago|reply
When I browse for a free app I don't want to see the crippled in-app-unlockable app next to the truly free app.
Strict rules for prices in marketing is a prerequisite for a functioning market, my other pet peeve is the contract phone. Not only do I think telcos should be required to market the total cost (which they are already at least here) , I want to take it one step further and completely ban the marketing of the small upfront cost as the price.
[+] [-] taspeotis|12 years ago|reply
If it does I look at the in-app purchases.
If the in-app purchases are "x00 Special In-Game Currency Units" then I don't install the game.
Not sure we need legislation to avoid being ripped off...
[+] [-] zik|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redthrowaway|12 years ago|reply
I don't know if the solution to that is regulation, but it can't be reliance on the uninformed to know what's good for them. The exploitative industry moves faster than any but the most well-informed and most jaded.
[+] [-] just2n|12 years ago|reply
I say we boycott applications that do this. But if it's easier to legislate, then by all means.
[+] [-] ctz|12 years ago|reply
So, you're right that we probably don't need legislation now to avoid being ripped off, but it would have been preferable to have it when people were being ripped off. That does require consumer legislation to keep up with technology, though.
[+] [-] rytis|12 years ago|reply
Can people self-regulate and avoid behaving like that? Yes. Do they? I doubt it.
[+] [-] masklinn|12 years ago|reply
That's sensible to false-positives though, a number of games are perfectly playable (with no roadblock) without getting special currency units, e.g. jetpack joyride (a fairly standard infinite runner) or Solomon's Boneyard. The currency units are mostly there for developer support and if you can't be arsed to play the game (for some reason).
[+] [-] girvo|12 years ago|reply
Which is something I find interesting: people talk about "discovery" and reviews of apps being difficult. You're on a device that's sole purpose is internet connectivity! Use the browser, Luke!
[+] [-] nnutter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brudgers|12 years ago|reply
They are only four once. It's right now or it doesn't happen. There's no second chance.
[+] [-] CatMtKing|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tolmasky|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wyager|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikhailt|12 years ago|reply
Their free app of the week is often so-called free games but they almost always have in-app purchases that's required to take full advantage of the game.
[+] [-] sklivvz1971|12 years ago|reply
These game should not be mingled with free games and parents should have an option to forbid them.
[+] [-] Kiro|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jruderman|12 years ago|reply
From a regulatory perspective, I'm afraid the best we can do is:
* Ban tying game mechanics to time outside the game, whether it's "wait 8 hours unless you pay" or "this reward is only available for 4 hours" or an insidious combination of the two.
* Increase transparency, e.g. by asking app stores to show graphs of (time played) vs (money spent).
[+] [-] watwut|12 years ago|reply
"The use of the word "free" (or similar) may be tolerated for games which are not entirely free, if it is complemented by appropriate qualifications characterising upfront in a clear manner what elements are for free and which ones can be purchased. In such cases, the consumer should be able to access discrete parts of the game that stand alone without the need to make purchases. "Free" may not be used where the consumer cannot, without making in-app purchases, access content integral to gameplay or play the game in a way that he/she would reasonably expect. "
Essentially, the customer must know what parts are free and which have to be paid for prior download. There is going to be grey zone of course, but if you app have paywall, it shall not be called free.
On the other hand, you can sell custom avatars or additional levels and call your app free, as long as the description says something like: playing first five levels of the game is for free, but custom avatars and additional content have to be paid for.
[+] [-] JAFTEM|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x0054|12 years ago|reply
However, if you an adult, and you have purchased $100s of iAP, and now you feel bad about it, I have 0 sympathy for you.
Overall, this is just EU being EU, nothing surprising.
[+] [-] eropple|12 years ago|reply
So you understand that companies like King design their "free" games to be next-to-impossible if you don't give them money, while employing teams of psychologists to determine the best way to subvert your will through forced failure while simultaneously driving manipulative CTAs at you while you are at your (carefully cultivated) most vulnerable? And, understanding that and with that first and foremost in your mind, you have no sympathy for the people who end up on the business end of that psychological weapon?
Because I certainly do. There are economies of scale to the practice of subverting people's will and in this war one side's got all the guns. These games are designed--designed--to hit the same triggers as a fucking gambling addiction, man. I am so very not OK with abandoning those wired less effectively against it. (And as I get older I can see how insidious and easy it is for this shit to worm into me when I never would have noticed it, or thought it possible, a decade ago.)
[+] [-] zobzu|12 years ago|reply
It cares about setting proper expectations: you're going to have to pay to finish the game/really use the app.
I think that's not a bad idea to mark it clearly as such.
[+] [-] fnayr|12 years ago|reply
As a dev I have no control whether to call my app "Free" or "Free to download but contains IAP that are required to use the whole game."
Apple has two categories, "Free" and "Paid" and places your app in the category automatically depending on whether the download price is nonzero.
So really, if you want to blame anyone, blame the app store creators, not the app creators.
(Of course there's still the ability to blame companies who market their apps as "FREE" in advertisements in other apps).
EDIT: And of course Apple has already added the label "Includes In App Purchases" to free games with IAP. I think that's good enough.
[+] [-] smprk|12 years ago|reply
The order of priority just feels wrong.
[+] [-] vsviridov|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whiddershins|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baddox|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|12 years ago|reply
On the other hand the apps that throw up full screen ads with tiny, hidden close buttons are annoying. Mostly they seem designed to provoke accidental clicks, which don't seem to offer any social value at all.
(Also, no one seems to note that fake free apps are undermining honest for pay apps, a model which people here seem to support).
[+] [-] ericdykstra|12 years ago|reply
"Consumers and in particular children need better protection against unexpected costs from in-app purchases."
What are unexpected costs? Are users ever charged without explicitly agreeing to it?
"The use of the word 'free' (or similar unequivocal terms) as such, and without any appropriate qualifications, should only be allowed for games which are indeed free in their entirety, or in other words which contain no possibility of making in-app purchases, not even on an optional basis."
What is the cost of someone downloading a 'free' game only to realize that they need to pay to get the experience that they expected? They can just uninstall the game. I've paid for and downloaded games that didn't deliver the experience I expected.
If the goal is protecting kids from making in-app purchases, maybe parents should learn how to use parental controls, or not attach credit cards to their children's devices. Does this really 'protect' anyone, or does it just change the language that game-makers use for this model, and nothing else?
[+] [-] commander_ahab|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nnutter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wudf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PythonicAlpha|12 years ago|reply
Just a naming game ... no real progress, yet.
Clever companies will always find ways, to fool not so clever people. I also think, that most people know, that F2P is not really free.
[+] [-] napowitzu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcv|12 years ago|reply
Fortunately I get them refunded when I complain, but it's still a stupid policy.
[+] [-] kalleboo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diziet|12 years ago|reply
It costs money to develop games and apps. A quality title might cost over a million dollars in development. What makes the consumer believe they deserve to get it for free?
iAPs are not necessarily evil - they are a great and perfect way of pricing things for different subsets of people. If you reduce iAP revenue, you make developers more driven toward ad revenue.
[+] [-] jkrems|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Stealth-|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nnutter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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