UK: Office of Fair Trading cracks down on in-app purchases

Mobile game developers have been given two months to comply with new standards set by the UK’s Office of Fair Trading.

Some of these purchases can be rather expensive: The Simpsons: Tapped Out, for example, asks players to spend £69.99/ $99.99 for 2400 Donuts (a form of in-game currency). Other games like Nimblebit’s Pocket Trains allow you to spend money on coins which can be used to speed up progress.

Due to the high level of concerns about the practice, the Office of Fair Trading - a UK qausi-independent regulator - has been investigating the industry for some time.

Now, it has laid down a new set of rules and given all makers of mobile apps just two months to bring themselves up to the new standard. Among the new regulations, developers must now adhere to the following:

• provide up-front information about the costs associated with a game before consumers download it
• ensure gamers are not misled to believe they must make a payment to proceed if that is not the case, for example if they could wait for a period of time instead
• prevent the use of language or anything else that might exploit a child’s inexperience, for example, implying an in-game character would be disappointed if they did not spend money
• make it clear how to contact the business if the gamer has a complaint
• only take a payment if the account holder provides “informed consent”, in other words a charge cannot be made because a password had recently been entered for something else

The last point in particular has been a source of woe for many parents, who have agreed to pay for one thing only to find themselves being charged for a raft of follow-up purchases as their children exploit the time window that allows them to make further purchases without the use of a password.

The OFT has also issued guidelines for parents about how to protect themselves and educating them about the problem.

Developers who don’t adhere to the guidelines could find themselves subject to legal proceedings and large fines.

Tim Cook, Chief Executive at Apple, has issued a statement in response. “The consent decree the FTC proposed does not require us to do anything we weren’t already going to do,” he said, “so we decided to accept it rather that take on a long and distracting legal fight.”

The ability to purchase in-game currency for real money has long been a source of hot debate in the gaming community, with many decrying what they consider to be a pay-to-win scenario. In addition, many in the general public have previously complained about their children racking up massive charges on credit cards by using microstransactions. While these new standards only affect the UK, given the global nature of the industry the new standards could have far-reaching consequences.

We’ll keep you updated as the story develops.