> But he says he's amazed that in a game designed to be played by children it would even be possible to spend thousands of pounds across a thousand transactions over the course of just a few weeks.

These games are designed around this. The dark patterns are intentional.

> "We encourage parents to review their payment settings on third-party services, such as Google Play, as they typically have an option to require a password for each purchase made and/or to prevent any information from being saved in browser settings that could allow them to be reused."

Then you blame the parents for being scammed.