We've all downloaded a free app and fiddled around for a few days until we got tired of it. We saw the optional in-app purchases, but who's actually buying them? These kids, apparently. The following children and teens spent thousands of dollars of their parents' money on upgrades in apps and video games, and their parents didn't realize it until it was too late. What kinds of upgrades can you buy in FarmVille with $1,400, anyway?
From the 7-year-old who spared no expense in the Jurassic World app to the teen who burned through nearly $50,000 in Game of War: Fire Age, here are some times that kids wasted thousands of dollars on gaming.
From the 7-year-old who spared no expense in the Jurassic World app to the teen who burned through nearly $50,000 in Game of War: Fire Age, here are some times that kids wasted thousands of dollars on gaming.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Nothing in life is free, and believe it or not, most free games are just too good to
00:04be true.
00:05Once you've been hooked by an enticing free app, look out — you'll be charged for just
00:09about everything else, from free passes to get around difficult levels, to a fancy new
00:14version of Captain Picard.
00:15You might be a sucker for it as an adult, but you know who really loves that stuff?
00:20Kids with access to their parents' credit cards.
00:22Here are a few times that the combination of kids and freemium games went very, very
00:27wrong.
00:28Jurassic Woops
00:29It took seven-year-old Faisal Shuga less than a week to charge up an impressive $6,000 on
00:34his dad's credit card in 2015.
00:36The little gamer from Crawley, England, spent the money buying upgrades in Jurassic World
00:40The Game, upgrading dinosaurs, fortifying his park, and trying to fuse the legendary
00:45Indominus rex.
00:47His father only discovered the spending spree when he tried to use his credit card for business,
00:51and it was declined.
00:52Faisal's dad demanded a refund on the basis that Apple should have notified him of the
00:56purchases, and should have also questioned why a grown man would be so invested in dinosaurs
01:01— aside from the fact that they're totally awesome.
01:04Apple ultimately refunded the money, but he was still unhappy about how long it took,
01:08and went on to claim that Apple should have paid more attention to what his son was doing.
01:11Right.
01:12Apple should have been paying more attention to your son.
01:14"...Homer, it's really coming down.
01:16Could you check on the boys?"
01:22"...They're fine."
01:23Good call.
01:24Farmville felony
01:25In 2010, an unnamed 12-year-old in the U.K. ran through his personal savings buying add-ons
01:30in Farmville, before snatching his mom's credit card to continue his spending spree.
01:34Before the felonious farmer could be stopped, he'd racked up $1,400 worth of in-game purchases.
01:40When his mother asked why, he simply explained that there was good stuff that he wanted.
01:44Sometimes, kids are dumb.
01:45Her attempts failed to get either her bank or the game's developer Zynga to refund her
01:56son's spending spree.
01:57She was told that she'd need to report a crime in order to get a refund.
02:01Otherwise, she was the proud owner of a shiny, new, fake farm.
02:05While she did admit that it was entirely her son's fault, she also suggested fail-safes
02:09be put in place to keep it from happening again.
02:11She paid the total, and her son was never convicted of grand theft turnip.
02:15FIFA fees
02:17What is it about simulated soccer that gets kids to spend stupid amounts of cash?
02:21Is it just the sheer excitement of soccer?
02:23Boring!
02:24Like many responsible fathers, Lance Perkins gave his 17-year-old son a credit card in
02:37case of any emergencies.
02:38Great idea.
02:39Perkins' son defined emergency as needing more cash for imaginary soccer.
02:44When Perkins got the bill for the FIFA 16 purchases, it totaled almost $5,300.
02:50A spending spree that his son claimed, of course, was an accident, and unless he wanted
02:54to charge his son with fraud, the purchases would stand.
02:57How many soccer stadiums do you have to mow to earn $5,300?
03:01Asking for a friend.
03:02The Hillman family found themselves in the same boat when their son spent $4,500 on buying
03:07extras for his copy of FIFA.
03:09And just as proof that this can happen to anyone, Washington, D.C.-based Jeremy Hillman
03:13is the World Bank's director of corporate communications.
03:16According to Hillman, his son had tried to purchase a player pack for $100, and it hadn't
03:21worked so he tried a couple more times.
03:23It apparently went through each time, all 45 times.
03:27How stupid are you?
03:30Because Hillman is pulling down that World Bank money, he simply paid the bill after
03:33saying the same thing every other parent has said about how it was an accident, and someone
03:38should have been watching their kid.
03:40The $6,000 Smurf
03:41Lily Neal sounds like a pretty normal 8-year-old girl.
03:44According to her father Lee, she likes to play apps like My Horse and Smurf's Village,
03:48which is a whole lot more appropriate than, say, Surgeon Simulator.
03:52Less normal is how she managed to charge $6,000 in around five months.
03:56Seventy-four of those charges came in a single six-day span, and if we know our games, there
04:01was an amazing deal on digital horses that week.
04:08Pfft.
04:11That's the sound of horse.
04:14Her father, an aerospace engineer, had given her his iPad to play with, but he didn't realize
04:18she was hitting the purchase button, nor that she memorized his password just by watching
04:23him enter it.
04:24Apple initially refused to give them a refund, but after Lee told his story to the media,
04:28Apple caved, and Lily continued her career as some kind of spy kid.
04:32Fire Age Rage
04:34In a bizarre sequence of events that apparently checked out with all credit card fraud safeguards,
04:39it took a Belgian teenager just three months to charge $46,000 to his grandfather's credit
04:44cards, all from buying extras for Game of War Fire Age.
04:48There's nothing about this that isn't incredible, from the dollar amount to the fact that it
04:52took his parents months to catch on to the maniacal spending spree.
04:56According to the teenager's mother, she asked him to help her download e-books.
05:00That gave him access to a credit card number, which he then linked to his own iTunes account.
05:04The rest is history.
05:06The story first showed up in the Belgian news, where his mother claimed that the kid didn't
05:09understand just how much he was spending, since there was no cumulative total displayed.
05:14You know, like in real life.
05:16Every time you buy something.
05:18Welcome to the real world, kid.
05:19You're an idiot.