We bump into each other from time to time new overspending report for in-app purchases. They are usually run by games, and they are also usually run by minors, although over the years since this monetization system became popular, we have also heard of incidents involving adults, and it wasn’t necessarily with games. But what always coincides, what does not fail, is the presence of the in-app purchase model and micropayments through the nose.

On this occasion, as we can read in Wccftech, he is the main hero 13-year-old Chinese teenager who spent a whopping $64,000 in four months. And no, we are not talking about descendants from a first-class family for whom this amount is of little relevance, no. According to the publication, the minor squandered his life’s savings, leaving just 50 yuan (6.5 euro cents) in the account holding the card he was using. Of course, the family filed a lawsuit to try to recover all the money the teenager spent.

As I said at the beginning, this is not the first, or second, or etc. case that we have come across a case of this type, and of course it is something that guides us to think a little, ask yourself what is going onhow is it possible to spend 64,000 dollars on a mobile game, what could be done to prevent this type of case from happening again… in short, it raises a lot of questions and if we want to find possible solutions, to ask the question of who (or whom) is responsible.

In this regard, there are opinions for every taste, and although some are guided by objectivity, in most cases it is personal prejudices that force us to identify with one of the parties, so we tend to blame some and excuse others. However, the truth is that there is usually no good and bad in these types of stories. What exists, regardless of who weighs it, is accountable and responsible, for various reasons.

On the one hand, we are confronted a monetization model that is offensive and that is specifically designed to exploit psychological weaknesses certain user profiles. This is nothing I’m making up, there are several psychological studies that show how these titles are precisely designed to the millimeter to make people with certain tendencies towards gambling or similar conditions, as well as minors who do not yet have the cognitive ability to face to this type of design, they are tempted beyond what they can bear. So the developers who put greed before everything else are definitely the first ones responsible.

We should also take a look stores where these in-app purchases are offered, in case the payment system is not game specific. In these cases, the persons responsible for these warehouses should implement control systems, alarms for certain consumptions and other measures. Let us remind you that mobile operators are subject to very strict regulations regarding premium services, perhaps something similar would be needed for this type of business.

And of course, we cannot exonerate the children’s parents. It seems that there are still many people who have not understood what it means to put a smartphone in the hands of a minor. It is true that this is an even more open criticism if we are talking about children who, as in this case, are adolescents, but in any case it is difficult for me to understand that in cases like the one that concerns us in this report, the parents knew about the teen’s addiction problem from one of his teachers, where is the responsibility of adult supervision?