There is an ongoing debate at the moment about “In App Purchases”. Essentially these are to be found in free to play games which you can download for free but are then charged for small extra features. As a basic example, imagine a free game where you play as a knight. As you play you earn coins, and you can use these coins to buy better equipment. An hours playing time might net you about 500 coins, but a better sword costs you 10000, so instead of having to play for hours and hours, you can use real money to buy more coins.

Do I agree with this sort of thing? No, but then I wouldn’t really play that sort of thing anyway. My issue with it is the parents of children who have racked up huge bills because they’ve bought a load of in app purchases.

Pretty much all of these outraged parents only have themselves to blame. There’s been a lot of quotes from various ones stating that it’s the fault of whoever made the game, and anyone else they think they can point the finger at other than themselves. Here, I’ll try to give you the average quote as I’ve read and understood it.

“My child has cost me a fortune by buying stuff in his games on my iPad. I didn’t bother setting up any form of parental settings which are easy to do and mean I have to authorise any purchases before they go through. I didn’t take any notice in what he was playing, even though he’s very young, and didn’t try the games first so I was aware of the nature of how most apps work nowadays. I didn’t ask why he kept asking me for my password, or check to see what he was using it for. I didn’t think maybe I should ask to see what he’s buying or how much he’s paying before giving him my password. I didn’t think to basically take any interest in what my child is saying to me, he never shuts up, so I just ignore everything. If I’d paid attention he probably told me exactly what they were buying. I have been wronged.” Any single one of those would have prevented any purchases that the weren’t happy about.

All tech devices of any nature, consoles or tablets, have a series of things in place to stop this sort of thing happening. These parents aren’t taking the time tot set them up, or are just giving their children their passwords for everything because they don’t want to be pestered. How about, instead of blaming everything else, you try blaming yourself and take 5 minutes out of your day to understand what your children are doing on your iPad or their games consoles. Morons.