Boy Runs Up £900 FarmVille Tab
Microtransactions are a buzz word that keeps flitting about, particularly in the talks of MMO pay models between the East and West. However, they have been increasingly finding themselves on this side of the hemisphere, including in our social games, such as Zynga's Facebook phenomenon FarmVille.
It appears a twelve-year old boy in the UK managed to wrack up £900 of game purchases through the service--some of it his own savings, but the majority of it on his mother's card. As GameZebo is reporting, due to the circumstances, the mother of the boy cannot get the charges overturned, but has been told she can work at refunding it if she were to press charges against her son. The mother seems rather set against such a drastic measure, however.
Facebook has since suspended his account, quite likely because he does not meet the age requirement (Facebook requires a person to be at least thirteen). Asked why he did such a thing, he responded that they had just brought out stuff he had wanted.
Have you spent any money on FarmVille or other games on Facebook? While I have only casually glanced and played through some, I cannot say it ever occurred to me to buy something extra. However, I am the casual gamer in that realm, not dedicating much of my time to it at all. Inversely, this boy could very likely call himself much more hardcore than I, which does manage to bring a smile to my face; admittedly, I loathe the hardcore versus casual argument, so its flipping is what brings about most of my amusement.
VorpalBunny
Posted to Miscellany on 7 April 2010
· Comments (4)
Other stuff like this: facebook, farmville, microtransactions, not-so-free, pc, zynga
It doesn't make sense to me to pay money to buy in game items for a crappy game like Farmville. Apparently a lot of people do disagree since Zynga rakes in something like half a billion dollars a year.
i would NEVER pay money in any game on facebook, especially something as embarrassing as FarmVille. Ugh how i loathe the requests to join...
I've been playing Farmville to get my mindless Harvest Moon fix (as opposed to my serious Harvest Moon fix, for which I'm getting a new game boy micro soon - my old one was damaged beyond repair by family :( ). I've looked through the cash shop options, despite not playing it in any kind of hardcore way. The pricing on coins is absurd - I can make $50 of coins at their prices in a day or two, and I've barely got anything going in my small farm. The pricing on farm cash looks slightly more reasonable relative to the rate at which you get little bits for free... but that ends the moment you look at the prices of the stuff you're buying with it. It's pathetically, stupidly expensive. I've got 9 farm cash right now, having spent a bit here and there on shiny things, and I should have enough to extend my farm without bothering to get a horde more neighbours. There are one or two things I want to buy with it that I don't already have, but nothing remotely worth the real-world cost. Maybe if they quartered it things I'd send them $10 or so, but as it stands... no.
To make me buy coins, they'd have to stick at least two zeroes on the end of what you get for a dollar, and provide something cool enough and expensive enough that farming for a couple of days wouldn't buy you it anyway.
I have to admit that I've been converted. I hated the idea of playing a browser based game for the longest time. Not to long ago a lot of coworkers started to add me on facebook and the app gifts and invites were driving me nuts. Unfortunately my boss from work sent me help request on Farmville. I felt inclined to help her, if nothing elese to earn some extra brownie points at work. Of course one thing led to another and now I'm visiting her farm to do my "chores" on a daily basis. Once I started to understand how the game worked, I got into it a little more. I will admit I have paid real money to expand my farm, but thats where I draw the line. I haven't found any items in the game yet that I would spend cash for. Most of my neighbors came from searching facebook. I found a few "Gay Farmville" groups, which I have to admit has made the game even more interesting to me. I find myself making sure that I at least make the time to fertilize the cute guys crops before I leave for work in the morning. Anyhow $10-20 I can see spending when you first start to speed things up a bit, but I can't see making it a regular habit, and theres no way in hell I would ever spend $900 on any game!