A 13-year-old spent $64,000 of her parents' money on mobile games without them realizing

[wiyosaya]

Surprise Surprise, Blizzard is using Psychiatrists to design their micro-transactions strategy... all this to capitalize on the problems of the people.

This would have never happened if Blizzard didn't designed Diablo Immortal with a price tag of 50000$ for having a max built. It was purely intentional and they should answer about the consequence of putting some families in those kind of situation because their kid have a problem.

Maybe, maybe not. As the article said, this kind of thing has happened before. And its not the first time that a company has knowingly done things to addict their users to their "product." As I implied in my original post, giving a 13-year-old the passcode for your debit card to use is questionable at best, foolish at the worst. Had the parent not done that, the girl would have had no way to get that kind of funds from her mother's debit card.

 

[garyk]

When it comes to virtual currency, this girl's spending spree is on a whole new level. Her parents must be considering a nerf to their bank account

 

[Neatfeatguy]

My 11 year old daughter asks me 100 times before I can buy her a $10 dlc pack even when she was younger at the the start of the pandemic. We were all 13 years old once. Heck I earned my first $20 working in an ice cream parlor at the age of 12. A 13 year old who doesn't know anything about money. Something doesn't add up. I guess if you wait for the education system teaching the youth this would be inevitable. You have to teach your kids yourself.

Learning about how to add money, subtract money, writing a check, balancing a checkbook (or in general, a bank account) were all part of learning when I went to elementary school and even into part of middle school. Granted we weren't taught the finer points of money, but we were given an inside on how to do some things related to money and how to check our balances and keep track of our spending. The schools really don't do anything like that anymore outside of a little math that touches on adding/subtracting of money. Checks are almost non-existent anymore and for those that don't use checks they certainly aren't balancing their check book or bank accounts.....they just log into their account quick and see it has X amount of dollars in it.

Some of these schools are more hooked on trying to teach kids there are a bajillion number of genders and why everyone is special and why there are no winners instead of teaching kids stuff they'll actually need to know for the real world. All those life experiences they will learn as they grow up, from their peers and parents. The schools don't need to be teaching any of that $hit. Stick to the three Rs; Reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic.

 

[RandomWAN]

Learning about how to add money, subtract money, writing a check, balancing a checkbook (or in general, a bank account) were all part of learning when I went to elementary school and even into part of middle school. Granted we weren't taught the finer points of money, but we were given an inside on how to do some things related to money and how to check our balances and keep track of our spending. The schools really don't do anything like that anymore outside of a little math that touches on adding/subtracting of money. Checks are almost non-existent anymore and for those that don't use checks they certainly aren't balancing their check book or bank accounts.....they just log into their account quick and see it has X amount of dollars in it.

Some of these schools are more hooked on trying to teach kids there are a bajillion number of genders and why everyone is special and why there are no winners instead of teaching kids stuff they'll actually need to know for the real world. All those life experiences they will learn as they grow up, from their peers and parents. The schools don't need to be teaching any of that $hit. Stick to the three Rs; Reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic.

In this particular case it wasn't that she didn't know about money, it's value, or where it comes from. Anyone who's going to go to lengths to hide transactions and other steps to cover their tracks knows they shouldn't be doing what they're doing and that what she was spending is a large amount.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Yeah, Blizzard need the money for their stockholders way more...

/SARCASM

You don't get it. It's okay.

 

[Versutus]

This story is not about free to play game addiction... This story is about the careless parents. Dear Techspot, why are you doing this? When a kid spent 64k USD over 4 months on games it's not the games' fault ffs! And it wasn't even one game, or just free to play games... Or the buy once games are okay? Only the f2p ones are cancer to the society?

Also this comments section turned so fast into a Blizzard/DI hating topic it is incredible.

Is ThIs ArTiClE aBoUt MoBiLe GaMeS? I HaTe BlIzZaRd!!!444

 

[MyIOnU]

This has nothing to do with games. It's the failed parenting. I have alerts on all my credit cards. Don't understand how these parents did not know 'till 4 months later.

 

[amghwk]

Parents are too busy watching Tik Tok and chatting in Weibo...

 

[redgarl]

Let's pretend that this issue is not almost exclusively attributed to Free To Play games like Fortnite, Diablo Immortal or Rocket League...

It is funny to see all the people doing damage control for Epic and Activision. The matter of fact is those thing never existed before predatory monetary tactics by the publishers of the industry.

This kid would have never been in that situation if the industry was regulated against, literally, gambling mechanics towards kids. These kids are screwed for life. Gambling is next on the list of their addictions.

 

[redgarl]

You don't get it. It's okay.

It's okay, you don't get what is the root cause of the problem...

 

[hahahanoobs]

It's okay, you don't get what is the root cause of the problem...

You def don't.
You mention Blizzard when this has to do with a hands-off mom and her kid.

 

[pmshah]

What kind of ridiculously stupid credit card service is that? We in India get full transaction details like time, amount and beneficiary, as SMS, text for the American ignorant, on the linked telephone within a few seconds of using it at the POS. Apart from that no online transactions are possible without typing in the OTP (One Time Password) that is valid for no more than 3 minutes, received on the same linked mobile phone. I think the American credit card companies should sent some programmers with minimum 2 digit IQ to India to learn how to do thing right.

BTW in 2022 India surpassed both, US and China in total internet data usage, total number of online financial transactions AND total value of these transactions. Only because out service is so secure.

Not surprised the American and Chinese banks are failing big time. Not only that both Visa and Mastercard went crying to Biden that India's RuPay card service which charges mere 0.01 % as transaction fee instead of standard 2% charged by them is really killing them.

 

[jason lee]

"While the girl said she didn't understand much about money or where it came from, she knew to delete chat records and payment transactions to hide evidence of her spending from her parents."

At 13 you don't know what money is or where it came from?

Not only is she a bad liar I would disown her.
The parents are equally at fault I would notice $100 bucks missing from my account within a few hours.

$100 missing ? You must not have much in your account then lol.

 

[Lionvibez]

$100 missing ? You must not have much in your account then lol.

You figured that out from your magic 8 there bud?

ya there is 0.00 in my account and live off food stamps lol.

kids...