The UK’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is looking into freemium apps and whether they’re tricking children into paying for additional content. More specifically, the agency is investigating whether these apps (mostly games) include “direct exhortations” to children to encourage them to purchase content or persuade parents to make purchases for them. As you can imagine, this is unlawful practice, regulated under the Consumer Protection (from Unfair Trading) Regulations 2008.
OFT was quick to point that they don’t want to ban in-game purchases, and they rather want to see app developers and publishers clearly showing the price so there’s no confusion later on.
To that end, OFT has written to companies developing and distributing these apps, requesting details of in-game marketing to children. At the same time, parents and consumer groups are being asked to get in touch with information about “potentially misleading or commercially aggressive practices” they are aware of in such games.
At the moment, 80 of the top 100 growing Android apps are free to install with developers making money through in-app purchases. No (company) names were unveiled, yet, but we do know that OFT will publish its next steps by October when we may find out who’s pushing children into making in-app purchases…
[Via: MobileWorldLive]