Usually, the purchases require the owner of the device to enter his or her iTunes password. But there’s a loophole in the in-app purchase process that children stick their fingers through. It’s quite likely that most of the money pulled in by these games comes from addicted adults who want to quickly build their Smurf villages, bakeries, zoos and zombie farms. Capcom spokesman Michael Larson says “Smurfs” is no different from other games in this regard, and the bulk purchasing option is useful to adult “power players.” Also, the option to buy $59.99 worth of Smurfberries at a time remains. The warnings may alert parents, but it’s doubtful that they’d deter children who can’t read and don’t understand money. The game has retreated to being the fourth-highest-grossing app in the App Store. Two of them, “Tap Zoo” and “Bakery Story,” have buttons for in-app purchases of $100 in just two taps.Ĭapcom Entertainment Inc., the publisher of “The Smurfs’ Village,” says inadvertent purchases by children are “lamentable.” When it realized what was happening, it added a warning about the option of in-app purchases to the game’s description in the App Store, and it’s updating the game to include warnings inside it as well. Four of those are easy, child-friendly games. Of the 10 highest-grossing apps in the App Store, six are games that are free to download but allow in-app purchases. This year, developers have started to use the system in earnest as the main revenue stream for many games. The 17 highest-rated comments on “The Smurfs’ Village” in the App Store all complain about the high cost of the Smurfberries, and two commenters call it a “scam.”Īpple introduced “in-app purchases” last year, letting developers use the iTunes billing system to sell items and add-ons in their games and applications. Rummelhart joins a number of parents who have been horrified by purchases of Smurfberries and other virtual items in top App Store games. She counts herself lucky that her son didn’t start tapping on another purchase button, like the “wheelbarrow” of Smurfberries for $59.99. ![]() Never in my wildest dreams did I think they would be charging things on it,” the 36-year-old mother said. “Really, my biggest concern was them scratching the screen. In this case, her son bought one bushel and 11 buckets of “Smurfberries,” tokens that speed up gameplay. Rummelhart had no idea that it was possible to buy things - buy them with real money - inside the game. Her 4-year-old son was using her iPad to play the game and racked up $66.88 in charges on her credit card without knowing what he was doing. So where does the money come from? Kelly Rummelhart of Gridley, Calif., has part of the answer. NEW YORK - “The Smurfs’ Village,” a game for the iPhone and other Apple gadgets, was released a month ago and quickly became the highest-grossing application in the iTunes store.
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