I don't understand why we as a society allow such ridiculous amounts of money to be asked for in mobile phone app. The first political entity that wants to ban microtransactions has my vote.
> The first political entity that wants to ban microtransactions has my vote.
From the article: “China has long held a dim view of video games, calling them "electronic drugs" a few years ago. It only allows those under 18 to play online games for one hour, between 8 pm and 9 pm local time, on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays.”
Maybe that totalitarian regime is onto something? A broken clock can be right… etc.
It should not fall to the state to regulate it, but to the parents to teach and raise the child. How did the grandparents do it when electronics hadn't existed back then?
> allow such ridiculous amounts of money to be asked for in mobile phone app.
that is just shifting the blame to some external entity for "allowing" this to be possible - a slippery slope to the idea of a nanny state.
The parent's responsibility is to raise the child to behave properly. This includes examining their actions, and consider the consequences. Free use of a mobile phone is not good parenting.
I'm not talking about children at all. Adults are just as susceptible. A "nanny" state is a good thing to a degree. All civilized countries place constraints on what the people and companies in it are allowed to do. Simply because leaving it unconstrained will lead to society no one wants to live in.
parents vs. gigantic mega corps with more money than god and the ability to spam all forms of media with ads.
and they have to, eventually, bring in dark patterns because them stock prices have to go up. it's really just a countdown until the blatantly questionable behavior.
if parents did their jobs perfectly all the time there wouldn't be school shootings, childhood obesity, or plenty of other social ills impacting young people. these are systemic issues, and need to be handled on a system-level.
What an absurd statement. By that same sentiment drugs, weapons, organs etc. should be freely available in the market. Which they obviously aren't for good reasons.
Basically every modern society recognizes that people need to be protected from themselves in some capacity. For the same reason we don't have true capitalism.
Because they are predatory and have ruined the experience of using apps. Apps are trash now, it’s all just gambling and attempts to milk money out of you. People have gone back and changed old apps to add predatory features.
Should bans or price caps be extended to other things? Should they only apply to B2C or also in B2B products? Which fields should they apply to? Who gets to decided what is reasonable ban or price cap for specific item?
I would say that many things shouldn't cost that much money. Or not allowed to be served at that high price...
It should simply be disallowed to allow purchases within an app, product or service. I'm not against high prices, simply against practices that have been optimized to attack weaknesses in the human psyche to extract maximum money.
I would be more inclined to make it so that it is possible for people to buy apps without forcing them to link credit cards or other uncontrolled money withdrawals. I know this would ban those "credit card required for free trial" scams - and I consider every single one of those to be outright fraud. People should not have to spend all of their attention defending themselves from predators.
I'm strongly in favor of banning secondary currencies with varying conversion factors in games.If you want money, price your goods in €/$ etc.
Alternatively a 1:1 conversion rate to strengthen the connection between price and "value".
Another idea might be to require a "cart" -> check out workflow with mandatory price information (again in real currency). Anything that increases friction is good if you ask me.
I'm fine with starting with games and adding other type of apps as we go.
From the article: “China has long held a dim view of video games, calling them "electronic drugs" a few years ago. It only allows those under 18 to play online games for one hour, between 8 pm and 9 pm local time, on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays.”
Maybe that totalitarian regime is onto something? A broken clock can be right… etc.