Garen Meguerian and a team of lawyers are taking Apple to task for "inducing" children to spend hundreds of dollars of their parents' money on in-app game purchases. Meguerian filed a class-action lawsuit this week in California acknowledging that Apple has already addressed the problem, but saying that the company continues to unfairly profit from sales of virtual "smurfberries" and "fish bucks."
The issue at hand is related to games that rely on a "freemium" business model, giving away the game for free on the App Store and relying on in-app purchases of virtual currency, extra levels, or other add-ons as a revenue stream. Parents ran into problems with this model when some games, ostensibly geared toward kids (such as Smurfs' Village or Tap Fish), relied on in-app purchases of in-game virtual currency to do many tasks. For instance, players in Smurfs' Village can buy bundles of "smurfberries"—a whole wagon-full runs $99.99—to trade for plants to farm or materials to build a Smurf hut. Tap Fish players can buy "fish bucks" to buy new exotic fish, food, or other virtual aquarium accoutrements.
Read the comments on this post
ipod touch fans ipod touch apps ipod touch update ipod touch
No comments:
Post a Comment