When Martin Crawford received a $780 bill for games from Apple iTunes, his eyes almost popped out of his head. ?This has got to be a mistake,? he thought. Crawford, a computer-graphics expert in Toronto, looked at the details and realized that his 10-year-old son had bought ?bags of gems? while playing DragonVale?a popular free app?on his iPod Touch, and also racked up charges with several other games. ?The apps tricked my son by prompting him to buy things while he was in the game,? Crawford says. How" While playing, his son had purchased one bag of gems with his dad?s permission. This required use of a password. After that, he kept buying gems, but because the game didn?t prompt him for a password, he didn?t realize he was spending real money. Tricky in-app traps are the norm in most games, an exploding industry fuelled by Apple, Google and Amazon?the ?Big Three? of app distributors. After a child downloads a free game and starts playing, the app prompts her to buy other things while in the game. These in-app purchases give kids advantages during the game or additional fun components to use, but app developers purposely make the purchasing element vague. Globally, revenue from online and mobile games exploded from approximately $12 billion in 2007 to $30 billion in 2013, and it?s projected to grow to $83 billion by 2016. The Big Three get a cut of this?30 percent in Apple?s case.
One tactic involves allowing you to buy one thing requiring a password, but then provi...