Christmas and birthdays are always the perfect time to offer the latest computer game (or games!!) to your offspring – and they certainly cost you less than the $520 million Epic Games, the creator of the popular online video game ‘Fortnite’ has to pay to the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to settle allegations that it collected personal data from children without first obtaining the consent of their parent or guardian. Epic is also accused of exposing children and teenagers to bullying, threats, harassment and dangerous and psychologically traumatizing issues such as suicide while using Fortnite through the game’s default live voice and text function. And that’s not all: Players of all ages were tricked into buying online credits via what the FTC called “counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing” button configuration, a phenomenon known as “dark patterns” that allegedly earned Epic hundreds of millions of dollars in unauthorized charges to consumers (or in the kiddies’ case their unsuspecting parents).
Microtransactions started as a way for free video games to garner revenue from players who want shortcuts. But for many, they have turned into an addiction and are often used in free-to-play games to provide a revenue source for the developers. You pay a small fee for a power-up here and another for a shortcut there, and it all adds quickly up to potentially quite substantial amounts: A father in the UK reported in the summer of 2019 that his son had spent more than £3’100 over a period of 3 months earlier that year on such in-game purchases.
It’s hard to get a total figure for how much revenue microtransactions have brought the video game industry, but the headlines are staggering: Revenues from PC game microtransactions have doubled between 2012 and 2019, racking up $22 billion in 2017 (against just $8 billion in actual game sales). Microtransactions and other downloadable content brought in $203 million in the first half of 2017 for juggernaut studio Ubisoft – representing 51 percent of the company’s entire revenue in that time. Take-Two Interactive, another game developer, did even better, reporting that microtransactions composed 66 percent of the $388 million it generated in the first fiscal quarter of 2019. Clearly these are not the latest figures, but with most people stuck at home during the pandemic, I dare assume that the situation has even worsened – at least until the economies reopened again in 2022.
Another ‘cost’ to gamers and the wider society is addiction: Addicts are unable to set limits on how much time is spent gaming, they perform poorly in school, at work and neglect household responsibilities as a result of their preoccupation with gaming. Statistics show that more than 2 billion people play video games globally, 150 million in the United States. According to a study by the American Psychiatric Association, 0.3% to 1% of the general population fit the criteria for a video game addiction diagnosis in the US, UK, Canada, and Germany. In South Korea the government has introduced a law banning access for children under 16 from online games between midnight and 06:00 and declared video game addiction a public health crisis since more than 600,000 children struggle with it. 8.4% of kids and teenagers worldwide are addicted to gaming.
In order to curb gaming and its negative consequences, China has set a new regulation prohibiting youngsters from playing video games for more than 90 minutes on weekdays. But that’s not all — on weekends and holidays, they are not allowed to play for more than three hours. As drastic as this may seem, I suspect the measure probably works – at least to some extent. In the western world gaming addiction is treated with cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), a talking therapy which is often used to treat many types of addiction, as it looks to proactively address the underlying reasons for why a person might be stuck in a pattern of excessively playing video games. Self-help- , group- and family therapy are other means to help gaming addicts.
Such treatments don’t come cheap, and with The National Centre for Gaming Disorders, the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK has even its own specialist treatment facility. Many, particularly in Britain where the NHS is taxpayer funded, might therefore wonder whether it makes sense for such help to be provided free of charge to the addicts, using funds which are missing in the provision of timely treatment of life threatening illnesses.
Gaming is not going to disappear soon, and so the problem of addiction is equally likely to stay. It is therefore important, that the game developers are held to the highest possible ethical standards, and that any fines collected go towards the cost of treating and helping the affected gamers.
The grumpy older man 
For the first part of your post, I don’t wish to defend the companies, but let’s not forget that for any of these revenues to happen, a grown-up is giving their credit card details to a child. That seems incredibly dumb. So muych so that if a child spends money on their behalf, I tend towards “serves them right”.
But yes, these games are an addiction, just like drugs, alcohol or gambling etc. It’s just A. N. Other thing to beware of.
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I agree! What I used to do when my son was that age and wanted a game for his console, I would download it for him, but straight away again delete the card information in the profile…. seems common sense to me….
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I’m lucky, really, that this happened after my time. In my twenties I could lose a week, if I was not careful, playing a computer game, but this was pre-internet so no cash involved.
We bought games for my daughter but were never asked to add card details. I remember The Sims was popular. Dunno if that’s because it didn’t ask for money, or because she had sense enough not to ask.
We’d buy her “credits” or somesuch for apps, but they were, like, voucher things we’d buy from Tesco. Like iTunes vouchers.
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Life was somehow easier then, and there were less temptations to spend silly amounts of money on in-game things…. I mean look at these numbers: these game developers are minting it on the back of the kids….
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You’d think that a sensible way to legislate might be for whoever enters the card details to also be able to set a limit. Otherwise the jusisdiction might im pose a limit of $5, say. That’d help people from being stung.
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I agree, but that might be difficult to implement: Would you set a limit per transaction per site? But nothing stops the kids then to do x number of small purchases per day – which could still add up to a considerable amount. Or maybe a limit per payee per day/week/month? Food for thought…. Either way, the game developer lobby would hate it…
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It would be difficult to implement (as in more costly). Each game would need the concept of two different users. One who plays, and one who pays. And therefore some level of security to prevent the player from defrauding the payer.
As regards what you menrtion, they are largely just business rules. The lawmakers jump one way or another, and it is up to the industry to implement them. Implementation costs would be largely the same, whatever.
But your last pooint is valid. It goes to who is uppermost in the lawmakers’ minds. Unwary consumers or games companies, whose profits trickle back into the economy?
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