Having your children rack up massive bills due to their buying microtransactions is actually not a strange thing anymore. Many celebrities even criticized this practice. One of those celebrities is Kanye West, who thinks that there should never be microtransactions in games for kids.
Even though we have lots of ways to stop kids from in-game purchasing when they haven’t got permission. However, mistakes still happen from time to time.
Recently, a Reddit user with the name A_Sad_Frog has lost $531 to Fortnite V-Bucks. This was all because he let his five-year-old nephew and his niece got access to his PSN account.
Frog’s description of the kids was “bright, kind, good-natured kids.” The kids don’t have a lot of good games on their own PSN accounts. Therefore, Frog allowed them to use his as well.
He wanted them to be able to get access to his game collection, which is, in his word, “far superior”. He, in fact, believed that without the verification code on his card, they couldn’t buy anything. Consequently, he didn’t have any concerns about them purchasing microtransactions or game.
Everything seemed normal for about a month. But after that, Frog’s brother-in-law (the kids’ father) contacted him. He found it surprisingly strange that the kids owned over 65,000 V-Bucks (Fortnite’s in-game currency) out of nowhere.
Frog then checked his bank account and saw that the kids had purchased £422.90 worth of V-Bucks ($531 in the US). It turns out, it’s possible to buy PlayStation Store funds without needing credit card verification. The kids used the money they put on the PlayStation wallet to buy V-Bucks in Fortnite.
Frog did some researches to see is it possible that he could get a refund. However, it didn’t seem to be one of his lucky days. Moreover, things even got worse when the bank account that funded the PlayStation Store also included some of his girlfriend’s money. Unfortunately, that was the money she has been saving for her trip to the US to visit her family.
“She will have expenses sorted because she’s staying with family, but she will be going with virtually zero spending money now, and they had a number of activities [sic] planned which she likely can’t take part in now.” Shared Frog
He said that he was not angry at his niece and nephew: "I really believed that they had done it on purpose". Instead, he admitted that he felt mad at himself: "I supposed that it hadn’t been possible".
He regretted not having done more research. He also stated that they weren’t a wealthy couple, which means this incident affected them a lot.
Frog finished his post by warning other PSN users. He reminded them to make sure they have set up the proper security features for the payment process. This will help them avoid ending up just like him.
The early access version of Fortnite on Xbox One, Switch, PS4, PC, Android, and iOS is now available.
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