Well my point was that yes, they are called points, but there is a specific moment when you are purchasing said points where the screen clearly shows you that you are spending actual real world money, and asks you to confirm that you want to spend that money. Also yeah, a part of the point system is to dissociate money with the points, but I think it's primary function is to suck money out of people through the disproportionate cost of things vs the amount of points you can buy. You always end up with a little extra points than you need, thus they make more money.Mflick said:
Dad Blames Microsoft for Son's Xbox Live Spending Spree
- Thread starter The Wooster
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Seriously, when did parents turn into the same idiots their kids are?
When I was a kid if I'd somehow blew several hundred dollars they would've blamed me and only me (and rightly so) not the seller who was just doing his or her job.
Then again, they were smart enough to not give me any access to such obscene amounts of money :/
When I was a kid if I'd somehow blew several hundred dollars they would've blamed me and only me (and rightly so) not the seller who was just doing his or her job.
Then again, they were smart enough to not give me any access to such obscene amounts of money :/
I hate to just drop blame on the parents, but "I didn't realise what I was doing with my credit card when I put it on file for monthly charges!" Is REALLY dumb and NOT an excuse.
Not sure how xlive works, but i don't remember being that stupid when i was 12, perhaps that kid just spent the money without thinking, either way MS probably wont do anything unless they get a lot of bad pr. By the way, whwt the hell was he buying for these 2 games to spend £1,150, i don't remember cod releasing so many damned map packs.
When you are buying the points. It says, flat-out, that 400 MSP costs $5, 800 costs $10, and so on. Different values in the UK, I'm sure, but it's the same thing. In order to buy that the kid didn't know he was spending real money, you'd have to believe that he somehow managed to select the proper number of points, while not seeing the money value on the same thing he is selecting in order to purchase those points.Zachary Amaranth said:
It certainly isn't MS's fault, but I'm leaning toward blaming the kid more than his father. It's much too clear about how much money points cost for a 12-year-old not to know what he was doing. Really, this feigning ignorance was always my number one tactic for getting away with stuff, especially at that age (then I'd be outraged when my parents thought I was an idiot). Still, the father should have gotten a clearer idea how all that worked, and put parental controls on the account if he didn't trust his son not to abuse the card. His own ignorance certainly doesn't warrant compensation from Microsoft.
It appears that you do not understand the purpose of a Rating System. The M rating is to inform the parents of the content and judge for themselves if their child can handle it. It is not an AO rating which implies that they might be committing a crime like aiding in the delinquency of a Minor if they let a child play it. M is equal to an R rating which basically means if your parents say it's ok then it's ok.Grey Carter said:
MS really should have something in there to confirm that the person using the XBox is actually the person who owns the account before charges are committed to the account. My Amazon service on my PS3 asks for my Pin code even though I'm authorized my PS3 to log into my account. Helps prevent a repair man from coming in and running up a PPV bill while you're away. They also should flag account with 1k activity in a week as possibly hacked and lock the account down. It shouldn't have continued for very long if MS was being responsible.
The Father should also have considered looking into locking the system down, but this is the kid of risk you take when you give a kid an account that has purchase power. The system really should have prompted him, but a tech savy kid could probably have worked around it too.
My young son has a PSN account. The PS3 is set up to require the password every time he logs on (it doesn't remember it), and I have the password. He doesn't. No bank card details are put on it either. When he's online, I'm always there to monitor the situation. I use a half decent pair of gaming headphones that work with the dual output thingy in the PS3, meaning that other players voice chat doesn't come through the TV speakers. The mic is muted, the chat volume it muted and he understands the consequences if I ever so much as suspect he's trying to sneak them on. He can usually finish in the top 4 or 5 in games of Battlefield 3 though (no BBFC* rating, unlike CoD), and I've taught him to play for the team, and not just himself - he's got almost as many ace squad ribbons as I do now I think. Not the typical pre-pubescent urchin that you encounter online.erttheking said:
Yeah, FPS games are violent for sure. On the other hand, I grew up watching various cartoon characters devise ever more violent and creative ways to try and kill their nemeses, and you know what? I've yet to hit anyone over the head with a hammer or attempt to drop an anvil on anyone. It's not just the content of the game that's the issue (although some stuff like GTA is still waaaaay off limits to him), but what we as parent do to educate our children about what they are seeing.
The dad in the OP is completely at fault, no argument. There is allowing your child to share your interests, and then there is doing what this arse did and let MS "babysit" for him. Assuming he's being straight up about not knowing for SIX FUCKING MONTHS that his card was being hit up...
*BBFC: British Board of Film Classification, who until last week were the ones who issued the legally binding age restriction for games in the UK. Oddly, BF3 (my copy anyway) only has the PEGI rating.
You mean like at what point does it tell you that? Well I buy points often enough from there, but I checked my Xbox just to be sure. You go to your account and select add points, and then a list of the available increments of points, and right next to them, their price in dollars (or whatever currency, in my case dollars)Zachary Amaranth said:
Once you select the points you want, it gets you to confirm the purchase, and shows you what you are about to buy, how much it costs, AND how you are paying: in my case it says VISA and shows the last 4 digits of my credit card. At the bottom it says "plus tax" if that wasn't enough.
Throughout this whole process to the right it explains that microsoft points is a value system where you purchase value for your account to redeem digital content.
I find it pretty hard to believe a 12 year old could mistake all that.
Parents are getting more retarded with each passing week.
I am actually wondering what will be next, after the Facebook toddler-in-the-bathtub murder that the defendant got acquitted of for no fucking reason.
I am actually wondering what will be next, after the Facebook toddler-in-the-bathtub murder that the defendant got acquitted of for no fucking reason.
By your own words, the difference is entirely "in your eyes", as it were. Most people will look at a game like Resident Evil or DOOM and see the massive amount of violence going on. If anything, it's kind of worse than games like Call of Duty because of the visual gore. If you want a proper argument about violence in video games, go look at Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. First friggin' area you have Bloody Zombies which look like knights and scream loudly in a raging torrent of blood when killed.lunavixen said:
That is FAR more disturbing and graphic than shooting a dude in the nuts and watching them writhe about on the ground. Hell, shooting people is quite common in daytime television.
The fact is, my mother likes horror films, and I'd been forced to endure them since as far back as I can remember even though I'm not a huge fan of the genre. If I'd shown her a picture of DOOM, she's have probably been intrigued. My mother is not terribly violent, in fact she startles rather easily to our amusement. I myself am not violent, though I do have a few anger issues which are related to mounting frustration with the economy, my own health, and various other issues.
As has been said, games like DOOM, Goldeneye, and so forth were very helpful in reducing stress by allowing us to vent our frustration. Games like Call of Duty and the modern Resident Evil titles are still largely capable of falling into this. Hell, to go back to the "killing humans" idea, you could rationalize it away as "stopping bad people.." You know, like the police, military, and so forth do.
I think somebody else said it best when they remarked that whether or not a youth should be playing "violent" games is usually up to the parents and the child themselves. My mother knew I'd be fine, my cousin has an innately strong sense of real vs make belief so his mother was fine, too. Plenty of children who are.. well, not news worthy enough to be featured in internet articles all over the US and other countries are probably perfectly capable of handling such games.
I mean, yeah, if Little Billy giggles fiendishly while hacking the tails off of pet mice, he probably shouldn't be playing a CoD game. But then again, he probably shouldn't be anywhere near a blunt/sharp/heavy object period.
Why should they care? It's not their job to keep track of how YOUR child spends YOUR money. Plus it's not like they didn't give you the tools to prevent this from happening. Parent's are too fucking lazy these days to look at what they are buying their children. If this kid's father took maybe 5 minutes out of his time to look through the settings he would have noticed the Parental Controls. They aren't that hard to find.Raven said:I have a sneaky suspicion that the folks at Microsoft have only one thing on their mind...
Parents... Do not let Microsoft babysit your child. That is all.
Serves this guy right for letting us 12 year old loose on XBL playing games outside his age bracket. If you can't figure out that you can buy stuff with the click of a button on XBL, I'm not sure you're qualified to raise a child.
The guy could've checked his statement at any time and seen what was going on, too. Time to quit living such a clueless life, friend.
The guy could've checked his statement at any time and seen what was going on, too. Time to quit living such a clueless life, friend.