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

06. Clash of Clans - Supercell

Before we begin digging into the issues with CoC that saw it falling smack-dab into the middle of this list of the Top 10 Rage-Inducing In-App Purchases we need to have a chat with the 800lb Gorilla in the room: The fact that CoC is perhaps among the funnest games you can get for iOS and mobile gaming in general.

Despite its saccharine coating the fact that CoC was never intended for kids to dominate it as the player base tends to be lost on most gamers today. The game was created with adult gamers in mind. That said, the reason that it made the list has everything to do with the kid-centric population too!

So, yeah, color us having acknowledged those facts completely.

Part of the problems that added it to our list smack-dab in the middle is the the kids actually, or rather their over-indulgent parents. While the game ToS flat-out require all players to be at least 13-years-old it is nevertheless popular with the tween set - and therein lies the problem.

CoC has a tiny little issue with in-app purchase lag. The result of that is that when a player goes to buy something, the game does not always or immediately kick back the confirmation notice - even when the transaction has actually successfully gone through.

Ordinarily this would not be a major problem - most adults are either patient enough to wait a few minutes for the notification to arrive, or savvy enough to check their email to verify that they received the payment confirmation notice there. Kids? Not so much.

What ends up happening is that when they do not receive instant notification for the success of their in-app purchase, the younger gamers (we hate to stereotype but serously? Totally true) will not get that immediate gratification, shrug and think to themselves - “Huh? Must be bugged!” and then straight away hit the purchase button again.

So what ends up happening is that Mom or Pop Gamerparent end up getting hit with multiple purchases - which in the case of Clash of Clans can easily run into serious money. Like in the really bad cases thousands of dollars!

What makes this especially egregious -- and the core cause for its ability to generate white-hot anger in parents -- is down to the fact that it the game is almost all about resources, and it goes out of its way to make that point to the player. For younger gamers that is often a siren song that leads them right onto the rocks.

Take for example the case of Paula Marner, a Canadian monther whose 7-year-old actually racked up $3,000 in in-app purchases in an amazingly brief span of time. Now, granted, the purchases were made in that funny colorful money that the Canadians use, so we can totally see how the kid could be confused by it. The stuff LOOKS like it is play money after all. But no, it is real money and it comes out of real bank accounts. We're just saying...

According to parents - and experts - the trouble specifically with Clash of Clans is down to issues like high-pressure in-app purchase promotion, poor IAP design, easy roll-over for duplicate purchases, and perhaps the biggest sin of all, targeting kid gamers when it really absolutely should not.

Tack on delays in IAP notification and you can easily see how (a) the game made our list, and (b) why parents are really angry about it.