Also, the option to buy $59.99 worth of Smurfberries at a time remains. The warnings may alert parents, but it’s doubtful that they’d deter children who can’t read and don’t understand money. The game has retreated to being the fourth-highest-grossing app in the App Store. Two of them, “Tap Zoo” and “Bakery Story,” have buttons for in-app purchases of $100 in just two taps.Ĭapcom Entertainment, the publisher of “The Smurfs’ Village,” says inadvertent purchases by children are “lamentable.” When it realized what was happening, it added a warning about the option of in-app purchases to the game’s description in the App Store, and it’s updating the game to include warnings inside it as well. Four of those are easy, child-friendly games. Of the 10 highest-grossing apps in the App Store, six are games that are free to download but allow in-app purchases. This year, developers have started to use the system in earnest as the main revenue stream for many games. The 17 highest-rated comments on “The Smurfs’ Village” in the App Store all complain about the high cost of the Smurfberries, and two commencers call it a “scam.”Īpple introduced “in-app purchases” last year, letting developers use the iTunes billing system to sell items and add-ons in their games and applications. Rummelhart joins a number of parents who have been horrified by purchases of Smurfberries and other virtual items in top App Store games. She counts herself lucky that her son didn’t start tapping on another purchase button, like the “wheelbarrow” of Smurfberries for $59.99.
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