Pre-teen FarmVille player racks up $1,300 in charges

by Griffin McElroy on Apr 8th 2010 7:00PM

No, no, no. This simply will not do. There are so, so many things in this world worth buying with money you don't technically have, that we can't sympathize with a 12-year-old boy who, according to the Guardian, ran up a £905 tab (something like $1,380) by purchasing FarmVille funny money through developer Zynga. Since the boy lives with his (unknowing) mother, the company reportedly refused to refund the money, leaving the boy's life savings and the mother's credit card account in a world of hurt.

There are a handful of burning questions at the forefront of our minds with this story, the most pressing being: What was the endgame, here, kid? Was your sizable initial investment going to be completely recouped with this season's bumper crop harvest of virtual soybeans?

Source

Tags: browser-based, casual, debt, dlc, facebook, farmville, microtransactions, zynga

Reader Comments (89)

I guess you could say...he milked it until it hurt.

...YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Sunglasses Shag...SUNGLASSES!!

Quick, take these!
*throws shades across Joystiq

those utters'r gonna be sore in the mornin'....

@Mu93n, lolwut?

The kid should have used Kwedit.com

All he would get is a bad kwedit score for not being able to pay the bill.

udders

/spelling fail

Now he'll have to....

*puts on sunglasses*

Reap what he sows.

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Will someone explain the whole YEAAAAH thing? its kind of an eye sore, and now i always expect to see two or three after every freakin snappy one liner.

@H5Jesus....

CSI: Miami
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mznsEcZlM2I&feature=youtube_gdata

JS is an inside joke factory..

That's what she said.

C-C-C-C-Combo Breaker!!!

[/wackjokes]

Hahaha.. maybe he was playin on his mom's profile..

One more thing.. if MW2, GoW, Half Life, etc are HARDCORE games, should we not be calling casual/social games SOFTCORE.. since the games industry tends to borrow a lot from the movie community.. im sure that terminology can be used.. :D

@whatever... : that would make it look like we're talking about porn.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Why is a 12 year old on facebook in the first place? Isn't the age cutoff 13?

Honestly, yes, it's a case of questionable parenting, but Zynga should still refund the money.

Zynga is in a tough spot. I can see the rational for refusing to refund the money, because with online transactions it can be difficult to verify that it was actually the kid and not the mom who was racking up funny dollars. How many adults who do stupid things like this would blame it on their 9-year-old if they thought they could get away with it and get back that $1000 they just spent on virtual clothes or whatever.

That said, both companies and parents should do a better job of ensuring that minors aren't blowing money on games like this.

i know tons of 12 year olds with fb.

Sony Boy, that's something I would expect Michael Jackson to say…

i'm 14, i know 6th graders who have FB.

@Courtney my guess is, not many people would do that. If your gonna go into fraud, you could at least get something real out of it. And even if they did, what has Zynga lost? These digital goods don't cost a penny to make. It's shameful that they would extort a child like this.

@Haywire,

I don't think anyone would do something like that from the beginning, but I can see some obsessive/ignorant/foolish adult spending over a thousand dollars on a game like this over a month or two, and then freaking out when they realized what they had done and trying to figure out anyway they could to skip out on the bill. Fraud of this sort is concocted after the fact, not before.

Do you remember the story from awhile back where the guy claimed that his dog chewing on his 360 controller caused it to purchase a whole bunch of MS points? These stories, real or concocted, do pop up and as a company dealing in virtual goods, you do have to figure out how you're going to handle them. I just don't automatically assume Zynga is in the wrong on taking this stance.

Now, I abhor their entire genre/business model in the first place, but that's a different discussion.

F*ck you, Traceur.

I dont get it, did she give him her credit card? Obviously the whole story isnt being told here. No matter what, the kid got a hold of the credit card.

but zynga is crap too. these stupid flash "games" look so boring and lame. Im suprised people enjoy it.

Dude, FarmVille on Facebook is like crack to people.

To be fair, poker is pretty decent. Apart from that, yea.

I have a personal hate for Farmville. I get like 5 friend requests a day from people I have never met before in my life just so they can invite me to play farmville. I have never played it so I don't see the appeal, but is it really that interesting? I mean... Jesus Christ...

I always thought Facebook was supposed to be an easy way to get in contact with all your friends. But nope, it's for Farmville...

You do realise how easy it is to stop that? Next time you get an invitation, click "Block Application". You will never get another request again. I've probably got half of all FB games blocked by now lmao.

Oh, didn't know that. I never use it on PC and you can't do that on the mobile app, I'll have to do that later.

farmville is a game that prey's on people.

seriously, it's a skinner box, it forces people to do the most mundane shit possible in order to get "rewards", so they keep doing this mundane shit, because theyw ant the reward.

and what happens if people don't play it enough? all of their shit withers and dies.

it's honestly criminal how some games work, and it's the reason i refuse to play MMOs or any shit like this anymore, because if you don't play it nonstop, you get ravaged.

Ok, ok, now comment my crops!

Man.. Iv got people at work who do nothin else but farm all day.. All u hear is the clicking of their mice.. These are people who wouldnt play any other type of game anyway.. Boring or not, this game is raking in the moolah..

Young McDonald had a farm, now he's on welfare.

1) Zynga should refund it since it's virtual money.
2) Bad parenting. No kid that young should have any sort of access to that amount of money or cards.
3) That's a lot of F*in Farmville money.

yeah, and i bet he got no closer to beating the game lol

I don't know if it's bad parenting. From the context in the article, it sounds like he took his mom's card without her knowledge. When the bill shows up, she's wondering who the hell spent 905 quid on a website. Or maybe you're right, maybe she's such a pushover that he thought nothing would be wrong with running up mom's bill. Should know better by age 12.

Why should they refund it? His dumb self is the one that decided to spend the money and the mom not only made it possible for him to get at her account or credit card but failed to properly teach and supervise him.

Yes this is ridiculous but someone has to take responsibility for it.

@AltairDusk

Because Zynga is taking advantage of a child's bad doing. They know no one would spend that kind of money on virtual money for FarmVille. As a business they should do it out of good faith. Not saying they should refund every time someone is unhappy with their purchase but it's good press for them. A mistake was made and they could help be the bigger person and refund the money. If it was a material item, I may say different, but this is virtual money.

Wow I would send his ass away balloon kid style, but he would really be in the balloon.

You see now? This is why I hate Facebook. You get sucked in.

Just when I thought I was out...

My mom grounded me for life.

Seriously, dude, f^ck Facebook.

NOW YOU MUST BATTLE YOUR PROFILE.... WITH YAHTZEE!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with facebook, aside from possible violations of privacy. The games however are indeed evil.

Tis not Facebook that is criminal, it is what people do with their time on Facebook that is truly baffling.

Six or seven I could understand, but he was 12. He knew full well what he was doing. This is a case of bad parenting.

Not all 12 year olds are mature enough to know better. Trust me.

Lesson to parents: never give the kids your card and keep yours on your personage at all times.

$1,380 spent . . . .

and not a damn thing to show for it.

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Pre-teen FarmVille player racks up $1,300 in charges

Reader Comments (89)

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 7:03PM Shagittarius said

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