Problems in Game Land: IAP Fees Get Gamers Up In Arms

02. Candy Crush Saga - King

The Candy Crush games number among the most popular in the mobile gaming universe, and for good reason... The sinple match-three structure and the too-sweet theme combine to make it both one of the most popular puzzle games and one of the most imitated.

The basic structure is simple enough - gamers play through increasingly more difficult levels of puzzle, and as long as they manage to complete each puzzle successfully, within the set time limit, they can keep right on playing.

They are given x number of “free” lives (this is a Free-to-Play, Free-to-download game) and if they fail to complete the puzzle in time they lose a life. Additional lives can be obtained by having friends “send” the player a life via social networking, and by purchasing additional lives - paid for and not supposed to expire under any circumstances other than the player using them up themselves.

If a player runs out of lives, does not buy more, and does not get them from friends via social networks, they have no choice but to wait out the timer (usually 30m) for a life to “regenerate.”

Serious fans of the game lay out the cash to buy additional lives - viewing these lives as insurance that will keep them playing should they run into a particularly hard level - or a run of bad luck. So we can only imagine the rage that they felt when they logged into their game only to discover that the added lives that they paid for were gone.

Initially the company behind the games - King.com - suggested that they must have used their lives, but players all over the world began to suspect that the publisher was intentionally deleting the paid-for lives with the sure and certain knowledge that the serious fans would buy more - and they did!

The trend in disappearing lives eventually generated a massive multi-million-dollar class-action lawsuit - as cases like this tend to do -

The lawsuit -- filed in Chicago -- accuses the maker of the gaming sensation of systematically deleting players’ "lives" in order to spur sales.

"The lives cost 99 cents, and that doesn’t sound like very much until you realize how many people across the country have had this problem,” Chicago attorney Joseph Siprut told Chicago TV news NBC 5 Investigates.

The game publisher responded to inquiries by the station with the following statement: "We believe the claims are without merit and intend to defend them vigorously. If any of our players run out of their free lives in Candy Crush Saga, more free lives are available (and always have been available) to all our players either by waiting 30 minutes or getting friends to send you lives."

We don't know if there is any legitimacy to the claims being made by players, but we do know that the players are angry and getting angrier over the issue.

The feelings are that when you spend your money on an in-app purchase, the game publisher should not be able to take away the digital goods you bought in good faith, for any reason, but especially not to cause you to buy more!