Advertising is not the worst. In-App purchasing is. It turns the whole thing into endless ad stream. Every purchase confirms the success of previous efforts as ad, then what to do next? hit the f*cking user harder!
Yesterday I was sitting with a friend's young boy who was showing me some math games on a tablet. These are games designed to teach simple addition, subtraction, etc to young children.
What amazed me was how intense the push for in-app purchasing was! Every one of the several games had a popup after each level or activity that would offered some in-game "power-up" for just $0.99 or various amounts. It wasn't just that you could make an in-app purchase, but that the app was very aggressively pushing it. He told me, "my mom says I can't do that", but the "no" button was much smaller and harder to press than the yes button, visually.
His mom indicated that he had made such purchases before, and so far she hadn't found a way (on this particular tablet) to disable in-app purchases.
This is a plague of a problem. Developers who put IAP into their games frequently, in no uncertain terms, try to trick young kids into pressing the "buy $100 worth of database bits with your parents' credit card!" button. It's despicable.
AppLock on Android solved this issue for me and my kids (since any intent that goes to the Play store will get intercepted and challenged for authentication), but it's very frustrating to them to have to try to navigate these screens that have 12 big, bright "goes to the lock screen" buttons and 1 small, uninteresting button that does what they actually want.
I would think you could defund the account...? I am not familiar with iDevices, but with Google I could just remove payment information from my account, and that would pretty much put a stop to accidental purchases.
This is why I donate to PBS. Their content is unrivaled and unimpeachable. What is the name of the app your friend's son was using, they deserve a special place in hell.
The sad truth is if the developer had priced the game at say five dollars they most likely never would have been discovered or if they had the user's conditioning would have kicked in: "Must find free alternative! Dumb greedy developers trying to rip me off, entertain and teach my child for free. FREE I SAY!"
We (as app users) brought this on ourselves, or at the very least we're half culpable.
The day the app store stops being the primary marketing channel for apps the better off we will be.
I stand by my original comment. Yes, developers deserve to make money, that doesn't mean you have to be an asshole, especially when they probably go around claiming to be "educators".
