Video Games Are Targeting Your Children to Get into Your Wallet

Summer break is here, and many children and young adults will spend a large part of their time playing video games. It’s estimated that 45.7 million children in the U.S. play video games, or more than 80 percent of all children between the ages of 5 and 18 according to data pulled from Entertainment Software Association in 2024. Video games and virtual worlds may seem harmless, but public reports have underlined the harms incurred through the industry’s use of design tricks, technology, and surveillance data to entice players into spending money. Gamers, or their parents and guardians, frequently report being harmed by scams or theft on gaming platforms. Players report having little recourse with gaming companies when the suffer losses, and game publishers claim to have no obligation to compensate the players for financial losses, including when service to a game is suspended or a consumer’s account is closed.

Have your gaming accounts been hacked, or assets stolen? Gaming companies frequently use underhanded tactics to encourage spending which can lead to unexpected charges on your debit card, credit card, or mobile payment service.

Many games use gambling-like design tricks to hide the odds and encourage compulsive spending.

Games are often designed to capture a player’s attention and then deliver constant and immediate rewards to encourage a player to keep playing. Collecting virtual items, like “skins” or “loot,” is a key aspect of that reward system. These items are often considered rare, immensely valuable, and collecting them is reinforced by other players.

These design tricks can lead to increased spending, especially when a game is connected to a mobile payment service or credit or debit card. Parents have reported an overwhelming amount of unexpected gaming transactions on their credit or debit card statements in consumer complaints to the Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

What you can do

• Consider a gift card or other option to block surprise overcharging: Many of these platforms require a debit card, credit card, gift card, or other payment method to be stored on the account to readily convert dollars to gaming currencies. You can refrain from storing your debit or credit card information on your child’s gaming account; if a game requires card information to create an account, a gift card, with a finite amount of dollars available for your child to convert to gaming currency, can be an alternative.

• Look for parental controls on payments: Some games support parental controls or specialized accounts for children that require a password prior to transactions. Banking alerts can help flag repeated payments to gaming platforms. You can also check to see if your bank will allow you to block payments to certain gaming vendors.

• Consider games without in-game purchases: When choosing which games to play, there are options that don’t have microtransactions. Consider games that are playable with a one-time purchase, or where add-ons have a clear and consistent value.

• Limit data collection and sharing on your child’s account: Game publishers typically monitor player behavior, such as purchasing history and spending thresholds. Gaming technology has been found to collect and monitor a child’s physical location and social media activity. Virtual or mixed-reality headsets can collect biometric data, such as iris scans, eye movements, pupil response, gestures, voice, and facial expressions as well as scanning the size of the room a player is in and if any other people are in range. Viewed together, such collected data can be used to generate an accurate portrait of a player’s offline identity, including their daily routines, home address, who they connect with while playing, and sensitive health conditions. This can be used to change in-game prices of items, ads displayed, playing conditions, and even the odds of winning rare items. Several games allow you to opt-out of third-party sharing and personalized content, including price updates on an individualized level. Consider opting-out of these data sharing and collection policies when possible.

• Submit a complaint: You can submit a complaint about a problem with a financial product or service in video gaming at consumerfinance.gov/complaint or by calling (855) 411-CFPB (2372). While most complaints receive a response from the company, many complaints about video games do not. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) have been working with companies to improve that. Whether a company responds to you or not, your complaint makes an impact by helping CFPB, other agencies, and law enforcement find bad business practices and spot problems and patterns.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will continue to monitor gaming markets, their similarities to traditional banking and payment systems, and the risks to players and their families.

Source:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/consumer-advisory-video-games-are-targeting-your-children-to-get-into-your-wallet/

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