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Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

  >mostly meant to exploit the easy clicking of kids with the default "no barrier" purchase mechanism.

How do you define a "scummy in-app purchase that's a scourge meant to exploit kids" from a non-scummy in app purchase?

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If there's a $1.99 "20 additional game levels" after you finish the first 20, that's not scummy. If there's a $99 in-app purchase (Basket of Smurfberries), that's scummy.

Sadly, that is just people responding to the market conditions. Most people want things near to free, so the initial price must be low or else you'll get ignored. Then, you need some whales to actually generate revenue. Surely there is some CEO you'll happily pay $99 bucks to shut his kids up.

Market conditions can be constrained by regulations such as Apple's prohibition against pornography. Eighteenth century USA excused slavery as the price of doing business before government regulations altered those market conditions. Prior to such changes the practice was no less scummy. In-App kid-chiseling falls squarely in the category of scummy.

Your entire post reads as a cheap appeal to emotion, rather than a balanced view of app purchase methods on mobile devices.

Let's turn this around for a second. Why are parents letting children use their very expensive and unlimited purchasing power mobile devices without supervision? If the kids have their own phones, why are they linked to their parent's account for purchases, instead of using the (very cool) allowance feature that is built into the store?

There are a number of solutions to this problem, but arbitrarily deciding how many clicks away a purchase has to be or somesuch is near the bottom of the list.

If you were capable of actually reading my post and not what you wanted to read into it, you would see that I was referring to chiseling children out of large sums re the post I was answering. Selling a child $99 worth of cartoon pony feed is mere cretinous larceny. This type of behavior actually happens. This is what we are condemning. I was not criticizing in-app up-selling, which I presume you mean to defend, but maybe I presume too much. Perhaps you are in the cretin camp.

  >Selling a child $99 worth of cartoon pony feed is mere cretinous larceny

Who's to say the person using the app isn't an adult? See for example Farmville, or Smurfland (whatever that goofy app is called). Are you seriously suggesting that the majority of purchases made there were from kids who don't know any better?

I find it very funny that you chose cartoon ponies as your example, when the internet at large currently has an obsession with the My Little Pony franchise. All ages, mind, not just "children".

I am discussing the tendency of some developers of apps for children to deliberately swindle their naive audience. You are, by account of your latest post, talking to hear your own head rattle. Good day.

If it's designed for young kids, and the in-app purchase is reachable in 1 or 2 taps, it is scummy.

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