App Store games

[Aractus]

There's already been one settled class-action lawsuit against apple pertaining to this . Of course that was only in the USA, you didn't see apple offering to give anyone else a refund.

In this case an 8-year old spent $6,131 on in-app purchases, and there are many other examples. The EU are looking into taking action against apple , and here at home the ACCC is not happy at all and looking into this , and to quote the ACCC:

"Mobile apps are often available to download free in an online store but sometimes require significant in-app purchases to maximise the experience of the app. In-app purchases may include paying to use an ad-free version of the app, buying extra lives in a game, or paying to access extra content.

Not all apps sufficiently disclose at what point the user is making an in-app purchase. In particular, children using their parent’s device may not realise the in-app purchases are spending their parent’s money in the real world."

It took over two years of pressure from the ACCC just to get Apple to obey the consumer guarantees law here's an excellent example: - Apple rorted that customer for over 2 years refusing to obey by the consumer law! Essentially this is how that rort worked: all goods and services are guaranteed by a set of consumer guarantees, and kind of statutory warranty if you will. All products sold under $40,000 must be guaranteed by the manufacturer (as well as the retailer) against manufacturing faults for the expected life of the product, the product must be fit for the intended purpose, must and that guarantee pertains to providing repair, replacement, or depreciated refunds for the goods. Companies can charge a reasonable service fee, but most do not. Apple refused to honour consumer rights and insisted that if you did not purchase a warranty they would not guarantee their goods. Of course this is totally against the law, apple didn't care. So in the case above, the consumer purchased an iphone on a 24 month plan and within that time it developed a bonafide manufacturing fault - confirmed by Apple. When the consumer invoked his rights, apple refused to honour them claiming that all their products are guaranteed for 1 year. The consumer then informed apple that the law states that a product must not develop a manufacturing fault for the expected life of the product, and that since it was sold on a 24-month contract it is reasonable to expect the product life to be at least 24 months. Apple refused. And the rest you can read at the Whirlpool link.

Apple knows what they're doing with these in-app purchase games - it's a complete rort.

Now I know you don't believe me, so I'll tell you how Apple's business model works:

1. They don't pay any taxes in Australia.
2. In order to dispel Nokia and become the dominant mobile phone manufacturer, Apple came up with a way to make consumers keep on paying them: apps!

Now on a Microsoft device like say a PC, you can get as much freeware as you want and you can purchase many different programs. With Apple however, Apple must "approve" apps and they don't allow apps that compete with their own apps (i.e. anti-competition), and thus you can't just publish freeware straight to Apple - well unless of course you jailbreak your device first. Apple wants to control it all so that they get a cut of every app published.

Now think about it; does Microsoft take a cut of the money with another company write a program or a game for Windows? No, of course not.

3. Apple was still not satisfied with getting paid both for their device, and then for all the apps that 3rd party developers write, so they came up with another revenue-source: in-app purchases, so that now certain apps can keep on paying apple as well! Think of it like a ponzi scheme.


Now you keep saying "I don't purchase the upgrades in the game" - so what? I already told you that you aren't the one being targeted with those in-app purchases, Apple is targeting people who are vulnerable to addictive behaviour. And the biggest problem of all is that these games are marketed towards children. I can show you peer-review literature that shows that the long-term damage that similar styled addictive interactive games can do to children.

You keep saying that this has nothing to do with how poker machines work, but you failed to realise that it is exactly the same. No one is ever forced to put money into a poker machine; and if you play a 1c machine at 1c per spin you can sit at a machine for quite a long time - an hour or two - and only end up spending a few dollars. But the machines shape you towards spending more, and more. And if you don't believe that then you have to explain to me why 1/6th of regular EGM players in Australia - 95,000 people - are problem gamblers (have trouble resisting the temptation to gamble and spend more money then they can afford)? No one forces them to spend any money, and if they stuck to 1c a spin they'd never ever have a problem...