Earned media clipping in Washington Post
The makers of Dolphin Play, an iPhone game we recently wrote about, is changing some of its practices to make it more clear to parents and children about actual purchases that can be made while playing.
And Dolphin Play is urging Apple to change some of its practices to avoid surprise charges from the iTunes store.
The move comes after The Post’s story on iTunes in-app purchases, in which items such as $99 barrels of Smurfberries in the Capcom Interactive game Smurfs Village were bought by children. In some cases, children knew their parents’ passwords to buy the items. Other children bought items during a 15-minute window that doesn’t require password re-entry by users.
Lawmakers questioned the practice and asked the Federal Trade Commission to review whether the games sufficiently informed users that the purchases of childrens games were real or if they were deceptive in marketing.