'My son spent £3,160 in one game' (BBC article looking at exploitative MTXs)

[Deleted member 8196]

When you are freely shitting on the parents and you have nothing to say in devs/publishers who implement such predatory practices? Yes, you are clear as water.

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We've been talking about the predactory practices for YEARS what do you want me to add? I'm going to repeat the same words that several posters wrote here and in other threads.

And criticizing parents for lack of attention =/= shitting on them, you and a lot of posters fail to understand this basic concept

 

[Zarckoh]

I wonder what will be the effect of all these kids growing up with games that shove down microtransactions on their face.

 

[Deleted member 1589]

We've been talking about the predactory practices for YEARS what do you want me to add? I'm going to repeat the same words that several posters wrote here and in other threads.

And criticizing parents for lack of attention =/= shitting on them, you and a lot of posters fail to understand this basic concept

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Because it's not that simple as you say it is. That's all there is to it.

 

[cw_sasuke]

Except the options for kids to spend money are totally different from just 10 years ago. It's not just sneaking off with some spare change to the goddamn candystore anymore. There are storefronts hidden away in apps and games across multiple always accesible platforms. On the phone, ipad, computer and game console. Each tied to a separate billing system with their own optional parent control settings hidden away somewhere. And you are honestly stating that less tech-savvy parents should have the cognitive energy to keep track of all these different and often hidden stores, all the while maintaining their jobs, houshold responsibilities and actually, y'know, raising their kids.

I call bullshit. Stop defending these companies.

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Yes, im saying less tech savvy parents should educate themselves if they are worried about their kid spending all their saving on freaking games. Nor being tech-savvy is no excuse, since you can always ask someone for help and parents have to educate themselves on alot of shit for their Kids thats nothing new.

You dont have to be some tech guru to for your XBL/PSN/Nintendo/Apple/Google Play account requiring a password entry before being able to make purchases.

PS. Not defending companies - but parents have to step up their game as well when we had stories like this for the last 5 years.

 

[Doc Kelso]

You can advocate for regulation against predatory business practices, such as those that exist within mobile games, while also wondering how someone doesn't notice their child spending £1,000 over the course of 8 months, if it's coming out of the parent's bank account. While I understand being aghast at a sudden, massive transaction, I fail to understand how someone looks at their bank account and goes, "Gee, that's a charge for $20 I don't recognize. Oh well!". It's these smaller, constant transactions that put me on edge with regards to personal responsibility.

 

[oni-link]

I wonder what will be the effect of all these kids growing up with games that shove down microtransactions on their face.

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I dread to think how gaming will change in 30 years time when all the developers will have grown up with this shit

 

[Dougieflesh]

The lack of empathy is disgusting in this thread. These predatory practices can exploit/lead to gambling addiction. Some of you will hopefully learn empathy if you ever have to deal with a "whale" in these types of games.

 

[Strangelove_77]

It's apparently a thing now at least for Google.

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Ok then that's shit.

It's so weird.

There's a reason why we banned kids from smoking or taking alcohol at a young age, even when you know, they have parents or guardians to supervise them.

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Im all for banning microtransactions from being used by kids and teens, but how do you enforce that?
You find a way and I'll be onboard in a heartbeat.

Yeah we should let children gambling, smoke, drink and do drugs, then let "good parenting" protect them from that

If any other children get harmed, who cares, right? We can blame the parents

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Let me know when you find dead kids overdosed on microtransactions in alleys and street corners.

 

[Nephtes]

I don't really understand. I assume most parents these days are around my age plus or minus a few years and grew up in the dawn of the internet and were more technologically savvy than this.

My daughter isn't old enough to talk yet and the Xbox, PS4, Switch and every iOS and Android device in the house are locked down hard, and I get a handy email any time anything is purchased from any of those digital storefronts.

Please check back with me in 7 years to see if I've lost my mind and decided giving my 7 year old access to my phone or payment details was actually a good idea.

 

[oni-link]

Let me know when you find dead kids overdosed on microtransactions in alleys and street corners.

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So as long as it doesn't kill you, it's not harmful?

Wouldn't blowing all your families savings be harmful?

Weird to be mad at people wanting to stop that from happening, but you do you

 

[maximumzero]

This is an issue on both sides to me. Scummy companies should be shamed for flagrant microtransactions in modern videogames and parents also need to get their shit together on learning how parental controls work.

 

[apocat]

Yes, im saying less tech savvy parents should educate themselves if they are worried about their kid spending all their saving on freaking games. Nor being tech-savvy is no excuse, since you can always ask someone for help and parents have to educate themselves on alot of shit for their Kids thats nothing new.

You dont have to be some tech guru to for your XBL/PSN/Nintendo/Apple/Google Play account requiring a password entry before being able to make purchases.

PS. Not defending companies - but parents have to step up their game as well when we had stories like this for the last 5 years.

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You have unrealistic expectations on parents who might not be tech-savvy, perhaps not as educated as you or already burdened by issues far more immediate than some kind of vaguely defined in-app purchase hidden away in some game their kid plays sometimes. Some parents struggle with real life as it is, and you want them to on top of that constantly follow the evolving business models in an industry that changes so quickly the actual companies competing in the field don't always keep up.

I keep calling bullshit, cause that's what I see.

 

[Deleted member 1589]

Im all for banning microtransactions from being used by kids and teens, but how do you enforce that?
You find a way and I'll be onboard in a heartbeat.

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No idea, but it shouldn't stop us from criticising it.

There needs to be more pressure on these devs over some mtx practices, especially after the absolutely shit excuses Epic and EA gave over the griling at the UK parliament last month. They just don't fucking care.

 

[Ænima]

We've been talking about the predactory practices for YEARS what do you want me to add? I'm going to repeat the same words that several posters wrote here and in other threads.

And criticizing parents for lack of attention =/= shitting on them, you and a lot of posters fail to understand this basic concept

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Just because you understand what MTX are and know lots of games has them, you need to understand most parents are not aware of this. They buy a game like Fifa and they think thers no problems with the game. Most parents also are not aware of parentel control feautures the devices offer, so once they add a credit card for a purchase, they kid can go all in with MTX without the kid being aware what hes doing and the parents not aware.

Its called predatory tactics for a reason. Most ppl are not aware of this. And legal regulations need to be put in place to prevent videogames to use predatory tactics.

As someone said, any game with in-game purchases should be rated to adults only. Now if the parent buy a adult only game for they kid, then its on the parents.

 

[Eumi]

Im all for banning microtransactions from being used by kids and teens, but how do you enforce that?
You find a way and I'll be onboard in a heartbeat.

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Literally, the first, most basic, most trivial thing would be changing the rating system so any form of micro transaction means you incur whatever your country's equivalent of the 18 rating is.

 

[OnionPowder]

Ok then that's shit.


Im all for banning microtransactions from being used by kids and teens, but how do you enforce that?
You find a way and I'll be onboard in a heartbeat.

Let me know when you find dead kids overdosed on microtransactions in alleys and street corners.

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Cool so let kids in casinos then with your logic.

 

[Big_Erk]

EA: "Surpriseee!"

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I'm sorry. I just had to.

 

[Bito]

Literally, the first, most basic, most trivial thing would be changing the rating system so any form of micro transaction means you incur whatever your country's equivalent of the 18 rating is.

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That's a little extreme. Even if we did that what's stopping kids from just clicking the " I'm over 18 button"

 

[DigitalScars]

While i absolutely agree that microtransactions suck, children are vulnerable to them and they can be quite predatory, i'm still believe it's down to the parents. What parent in their right mind just assigns their bank details to an account of their children and doesn't fully understand it/do any reading in to it?

I say this as a parent btw, perhaps it's easy for me to say as i've grown up with games and still play so understand the situation, maybe there needs to be more information out there for non savvy parents but still, don't just give your kids your card details.

 

[cw_sasuke]

You have unrealistic expectations on parents who might not be tech-savvy, perhaps not as educated as you or already burdened by issues far more immediate than some kind of vaguely defined in-app purchase hidden away in some game their kid plays sometimes. Some parents struggle with real life as it is, and you want them to on top of that constantly follow the evolving business models in an industry that changes so quickly the actual companies competing in the field don't always keep up.

I keep calling bullshit, cause that's what I see.

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You act like parent have to be on ERA 24/7 to simply restrict the amount of moneya Kid can spend with his account on a digital store. Most of these stories resolve about there being no spending cap and the Kid having access to to an account with a linked credit card.

I dont know what parents you are talking about...my parents didnt knew much about tech, but at the same time they wouldnt have taken me or my sibling spending hundreds of dollars on digital BS as a minor annoyance but as a immediate call to action.

 

[Sheepinator]

You have unrealistic expectations on parents who might not be tech-savvy, perhaps not as educated as you or already burdened by issues far more immediate than some kind of vaguely defined in-app purchase hidden away in some game their kid plays sometimes. Some parents struggle with real life as it is, and you want them to on top of that constantly follow the evolving business models in an industry that changes so quickly the actual companies competing in the field don't always keep up.

I keep calling bullshit, cause that's what I see.

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OK if you want to talk about the general case, but how about the specific case in the topic title? That's a parent who is surely the financial power of attorney, and the spending happened over 15 months.

That you can spend money on an iPad since almost a decade ago isn't something that requires as much keeping up with tech trends as you're saying.

 

[Taker34]

My favourite publisher, Square Enix, does this with their FF apps and it makes me ashamed of them. These apps are often aimed at kids.

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I think everyone in the mobile space does it. For example:

I very recently checked out Star Wars: GoH from EA again. Mainly because I wondered whether the beloved KotoR character Darth Revan was in the game. Turns out he's an event reward and in order to get him you need 5 certain characters. You can buy them in separated packs for roughly 80$ together. Even then they're not remotely strong enough to unlock him. So you have to buy additional crystal pack for each character which is a) still RNG based b) gives you 10-330 shards while everything from 50-330 shards has a 0.95% - 0.05% drop chance. So naturally you'll only get a few shards. In fact you can watch YouTube videos where people spend ~300-400$ to get Revan. This is the only other alternative aside from grinding on a daily basis for months.

We're not used to these shitty practices on consoles or with AAA games. People lose their minds about Battlefront 2's monetization but that's nothing compared to the whale hunting EA does on mobile. I'm not surprised by news articles like that and I think it'll only get worse without regulation from government.

Edit: Link to the before mentioned drop chances: https://eaassets-a.akamaihd.net/ass...K_PROBABILITIES/2H8G6D/pack_probabilities.pdf

 

[cnorwood]

You've clearly got some issues if your first instinct is to go to bat for the corporations instead of the people who may have made a mistake in their phone settings or in their phone access.

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Look at the thread in etcetera about how corporations are manipulating people into being fat and how many "well I lost weight so the answer is personal responsibility" even when the article says its more likely to hit low income people. The sad thing is that people want to be with the huge corporations so they can have someone to look down on.

 

[Deleted member 23381]

So many people in this thread excusing purposefully exploitative corporations just to shit on parents.

But I guess that's just gamers nowadays.

So sad.

 

[Eumi]

That's a little extreme. Even if we did that what's stopping kids from just clicking the " I'm over 18 button"

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...so it's both too extreme and also not far enough to be worth doing, eh?

What stops kids from doing the same for gambling sites?

 

[Deleted member 41520]

I just wouldn't buy stuff from digital stores for my kids at all. Kids don't need that especially when there are so many free apps and free games out there nowadays.
Your Amazon or Uber cc details aren't going to magically transfer over on the App Store. Unless that's a thing that happens now.

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If you read the examples you know that in many cases they aren't intentionally buying anything for their kids. The kids just start using an app, maybe on their parents old phone, and it's in there.

It works differently in many ways. On my Android phone whenever given a credit card menu it prompts to put in all my details, if I have it set wrong.

On hand-me-down phones, this can fuck you

 

[Strangelove_77]

Literally, the first, most basic, most trivial thing would be changing the rating system so any form of micro transaction means you incur whatever your country's equivalent of the 18 rating is.

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I don't think violence and microtransactions should be under the same exact umbrella. GTA5 and Fortnite should not be under the same umbrella.
BUT there should be a new banner or rating for microtransactions that makes it illegal to sell to anyone under 18.

 

[Dothraki Horse]

I'm not a boy and yet I spent 2k on fifa 18 ultimate team. I regretted that I didn't cut my fingers then. Gambling and pay to win is every fifa on the market.

 

[Nome]

Please name a single reason for virtual currency to exist aside from obfuscating individual purchases and spending habits.

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1. Flexibility in promotions and giveaways.
2. Enables offline transactions.
3. Easier to deal with international audiences.
4. Reduces friction of the transaction (no need to go into OS native purchasing flow).
5. Increased granularity of pricing.

 

[Ænima]

That's a little extreme. Even if we did that what's stopping kids from just clicking the " I'm over 18 button"

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How about 18+ games require a valid credit card number that is locked behind a password and not pulled automatic like most stores do? Ofc the regulations had to extend to the digital stores and the way they do thing. I have an exprired credit card linked to my google playstore account that i have no idea how to remove it. It it was valid and i had a kid, it was super easy for the kid to use the credit card in 2 clicks.

 

[Eumi]

I don't think violence and microtransactions should be under the same exact umbrella. GTA5 and Fortnite should not be under the same umbrella.
BUT there should be a new banner or rating for microtransactions that makes it illegal to sell to anyone under 18.

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Seems bizarre to have FIFA rated PEGI 3 if you're not allowed to sell it to anyone under 18.

If anything, that would just be contradictory and confusing information to throw at a parent.

If you want it differentiated from games that are just violent, then hit it with an 18 rating, and next to that a specific "micro transactions" logo to boot.

 

[Sheepinator]

1. Flexibility in promotions and giveaways.
2. Enables offline transactions.
3. Easier to deal with international audiences.
4. Reduces friction of the transaction (no need to go into OS native purchasing flow).
5. Increased granularity of pricing.

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... sanitation, medicine, education, public order, irrigation, roads... :-)

 

[Deleted member 25671]

My son spent about 7-10 bucks on minecraft and a monster hunter theme. In the end that was my fault for not locking my payment with the password, which i immediately did after. I also do not keep any payment on my phone, otherwise i know i'd be out 2k by now. It's a scary thing at how easy it is for kids to spend this money, and it's nothing new. My friend and his brother blew $800 on those 900 number sex lines when they were kids.
I hope the parents are able to get refunds for this stuff, but parents do need to be vigilant as well.

 

[LordRuyn]

Yeah, you know what? After reading this I am just fine with government overregulation. MTX need to go, I'll gladly pay a Warframe sub if that's what it comes down to...

 

[Rei no Otaku]

I'm always torn on this issue. I'm a parent and it can be tough to cover all your bases when it comes to your children, but at the same time it's not that hard to put parental locks and passwords on your stuff. As soon as my oldest was old enough to pick up a controller I locked everything down. On top of that my kids aren't allowed to play with our phones and tablets at all. I never understood parents who just hand their kids devices to keep them quiet. I love my kids, but I'm not giving my 6 year old my $800 smart phone to play with because he's bored.

Being a parent is tough, but that doesn't resolve you of all responsibility. The least you can do is make sure you know the ins and outs of the technology you let them use. At the same time, fuck MTX and if other parents being absentminded gets rid of them then cool.

 

[mrmoose]

If you want this to stop happening, make the user input the credit care every single time a purchase is made. It will never happen because it will kill ease of spending in games for everyone, but it would absolutely curb this. The reason this is happening is because of convenience, the same with one click buying on amazon and the like. It's also one of the reasons credit card debt is so easy to accumulate.

 

[Spyware]

I definitely find the parents partly responsible for not educating themselves on how their info on the devices can be used, it's definitely a requirement in today's world. But I also get why it happens. It feels like there is way too little info about parental controls based on how often this happens.
We need to fight back against the predatory practices for sure, but we (as a society) also need to make this way more visible and inform people. The aggressive attitude of "hah, suck it up loser" isn't helping anyone. Even if you think they put themselves in the situation you don't have to be an ass about it.

I mean, I don't share my phone with anyone at all but I still set it up so that I need to ID myself with my face or a password to make a purchase. Same with all the consoles. I made sure that I am as protected as possible if my stuff gets stolen or whatever. If I had a kid I would be even more vigilant. But I am also interested in tech and use these things daily. Many parents of 10-ish year old kids are not.

 

[Zarckoh]

I think everyone in the mobile space does it. For example:

I very recently checked out Star Wars: GoH from EA again. Mainly because I wondered whether the beloved KotoR character Darth Revan was in the game. Turns out he's an event reward and in order to get him you need 5 certain characters. You can buy them in separated packs for roughly 80$ together. Even then they're not remotely strong enough to unlock him. So you have to buy additional crystal pack for each character which is a) still RNG based b) gives you 10-330 shards while everything from 50-330 shards has a 0.95% - 0.05% drop chance. So naturally you'll only get a few shards. In fact you can watch YouTube videos where people spend ~300-400$ to get Revan. This is the only other alternative aside from grinding on a daily basis for months.

We're not used to these shitty practices on consoles or for AAA games. People lose their minds about Battlefront 2's monetization but that's nothing compared to the whale hunting EA does on mobile. I'm not surprised by news articles like that and I think it'll only get worse without regulation from government.

Edit: Link to the before mentioned drop chances: https://eaassets-a.akamaihd.net/ass...K_PROBABILITIES/2H8G6D/pack_probabilities.pdf

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Wow that is pretty bullshit. That reminds me that in Japan there is a law that prohibits gacha characters (the ones where you can only get through the premium currency) to be a requirement to get another character. Gungho with Puzzle & Dragons was originally going to make some monsters require gacha monsters as material required for evolutions but the law made them retract.

This also reminds me that the law on most western countries is way behind from Japan when it comes to these games. Which is why you get bullshit like Blizzard being able to avoid revealing their rates on the lootboxes.

 

[Galactic Specter]

I didn't know newer Fifa games had lootboxes until I saw that BBC article about it.

 

[DJ_Lae]

I've got three kids and have all their ipads locked down - but the process do so is not all that clear, from what I remember. It's improved over the years, but I still found myself second-guessing and wondering if every purchase option would actually require a password and all in-app microtransactions were blocked. I'm still not convinced there isn't an easy way to bypass it.

I like the way Microsoft handles it for kids accounts, and I think Apple has finally adopted this recently. If my daughter wants to buy something in Minecraft, for example, she's free to do so if there's money in her wallet. If not, she requests to buy something and then I get a notification and option to add funds so she can buy it. I can track all of their purchases via the family account page, which is nice.

Kids are also pretty devious, and games and apps do not even pretend to try and hide microtransactions. It's infested the mobile space almost entirely at this point and is little better in bigger console/PC games. The only positive thing I can say there is that they usually hide the microtransaction stuff a bit better. Usually.

 

[eso76]

My daughter spent exactly 0,00$ because a)I'm always with her when she plays videogames b) she knows not to spend real money on stuff c) because I didn't let her play until she was old enough to read and understand the difference d) passwords.

 

[Rotimi]

Honestly we all know micro transactions can be explorative. Not all of them and we can't expect them to disappear. many parents are not tech savy, and they don't understand the danger. Still Free to play games have to make their money one way or the other.

My issue is It really it shouldn't be so easy to pay for stuff, but people want to be able to pay for stuff quickly. So if you are going to let a child have access to your payment details at least keep tabs and use parental control options.


But it's weird that someone can make a purchase of up to £3000. By 200 you should be alert and ready

 

[apocat]

You act like parent have to be on ERA 24/7 to simply restrict the amount of moneya Kid can spend with his account on a digital store. Most of these stories resolve about there being no spending cap and the Kid having access to to an account with a linked credit card.

I dont know what parents you are talking about...my parents didnt knew much about tech, but at the same time they wouldnt have taken me or my sibling spending hundreds of dollars on digital BS as a minor annoyance but as a immediate call to action.

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Except there are digital stores on pretty much every platform these days. I know people with high academic educations but with an absolute disinterest in electronics who maybe got the hang of Apples app store back when. But then they get an android pad or a videogame console for their kids, and they just can't keep track of it all. These are people with stable lives. Add to that families that are not even well off in the first place, and who might be struggling with poverty, lack of education or parents working multiple jobs to make ends meet and then tell me it's okay for companies to employ behavioral psychologists to design these services in a way that absolutely rewards mindless spending hidden away behind a friendly graphical interface. Every purchase a dopamine spike, and with a design that tries to make you forget that you're spending real money.

 

[Brat-Sampson]

No game with mtx or gatcha with real money is appropriate for children. Simple as.

The Era Parenting Experts who are blaming parents here should be ashamed for taking the side of disgusting predatory gambling-esque sales techniques aimed at children.

Congrats, you know more about the mobile gaming industry and modern technology then the average parent.

 

[Theorry]

"He doesn't have Fortnite any more"

Hmm

 

[SephLuis]

I don't think the parents in every case this has ever happened to have all acted flawlessly, in some instances, mistakes may have been made, or they might not have been aware of how these games or tech in general operate.

We are technically savvy but didn't think to put a password on and my son, who was 12, ended up spending around £700.
This is one of the parents. I think most games have a warn as you boot them that they contain in-game purchases. Obviously, such warnings are ignored until the bank bill appears.

I'm not saying the parents are 100% absolved of all responsibility, but neither are the developers of these games

Why blame developers for selling a product ? I'm not following.

If bad parenting and children being reckless is just something that has always been the case, what kind of things were kids in the 90s, or 80s, or 70s, blowing thousands and thousands of their parents money on?

70s-90s didn't had credit cards as we have today, sepecially not connected to n different accounts for easy purchase.
They couldn't buy digital items in the speed we can today.
Checks also needed a signature.
So I still have to ask, why those people even had access to a CC in the first place. Easy of use comes at a price.

To hand wave away how these games are designed, and to put all the blame on the parents, is just weird, in that it's clearly not just a parenting issue

Specify.
Usually those treads go round and round because it isn't much different than trading cards, kinder surprises or other digital items.
You probably can find a couple of examples where some games really try their hardest to trick the player. I can probably find 3x more examples where they are open about what they are offering.
Thus, is the problem in the business model or different implementations of it ?

I don't understand why so many posters here have such a hard on for ignoring that these games are literally desiged to extract an unlimited amount of money from their players. Posters couldn't be happier to discount that completely and put all the blame onto something else

Get off your high horse, for starters. Just because we don't agree with the "opinion" of many here in regards to those games, it doesn't mean we don't know the strenghts and the weaknesses of such model.
I can bring a lot of examples of mechanics made to cap player spenditure, for example. Step-ups, guaranteed characters after a certain number, sales, increased % banners, shards, the list goes on.
A lot of games prefer to have their players attached to their game for a long time, doing dailies, events, new banners and etc., rather than drying them at every turn. No different from other GaaS games really.

It's just weird. If good parenting is all that stands between a child blowing all their families money on digital JEPGs, then maybe that is worth looking into

Works for a ton of families. I never understood how children have access to CCs and, even worse, how they don't know money.
I get it some mistakes can be made, but if you only realize after thousands lost, something is way, way wrong.

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Answered in bold

 

[Bito]

How about 18+ games require a valid credit card number that is locked behind a password and not pulled automatic like most stores do? Ofc the regulations had to extend to the digital stores and the way they do thing. I have an exprired credit card linked to my google playstore account that i have no idea how to remove it. It it was valid and i had a kid, it was super easy for the kid to use the credit card in 2 clicks.

Click to shrink...

Why not just make every purchase on every digital store locked behind a password, on my ipad and phone I have to put a password or my fingerprint to get anything, even a completely free app. I'm pretty sure when You set up devices nowadays they always ask if you want to set up a password for purchases.

 

[Canucked]

Apple: You wanna be on an apple product? Everything goes through us...

..except complaints and refunds.

 

[cw_sasuke]

Except there are digital stores on pretty much every platform these days. I know people with high academic educations but with an absolute disinterest in electronics who maybe got the hang of Apples app store back when. But then they get an android pad or a videogame console for their kids, and they just can't keep track of it all. These are people with stable lives. Add to that families that are not even well off in the first place, and who might be struggling with poverty, lack of education or parents working multiple jobs to make ends meet and then tell me it's okay for companies to employ behavioral psychologists to design these services in a way that absolutely rewards mindless spending hidden away behind a friendly graphical interface. Every purchase a dopamine spike, and with a design that tries to make you forget that you're spending real money.

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Lets agree to disagree then. If im giving my exploitable young kid the keys to the Kingdom, without checking from time to time what he is spending money on or getting receipts - i would blame myself first for neglecting what my kid was spending time and money on.

No one said being a parents was easy or that there arent alot of challenges to overcome - but they arent getting a free pass just because of it.

The thought of having kids spending money on digital stores, without having to enter a password or needing a confirmation from a parent account is crazy irresponsable to me in 2019.

 

[headspawn]

No they wouldn't

The problem is it a lot easier to keep spending on a game, and then rack up huge debts, because the games are literally designed for this to happen. Kids are less able to cope with this and are more likely to keep on going

No child is going to buy thousands of pounds worth of anything with their parents card without those psychological tricks coming into play

It's bonkers some of you can't see this

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It's also easier to block payment on these devices, not sure why you're discrediting that part.

Send a gang of kids to my house and they wouldn't be able to make a single purchase on any device i own, no matter how long they tried. It's not because I'm some mastermind, it takes several minutes to secure all of your devices.

If you can't do that as a bare minimum as a parent then maybe you shouldn't be putting your credit card on things and handing it to an unattended child who has no concept of spending.