2024-04-12 16:53
Source: Future.com
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Recently, "the boy played a game and recharged tens of thousands of yuan, and his father slapped himself" caused heated discussions. The 9-year-old boy played the egg boy party and recharged 6,400 yuan in 10 minutes, and the cumulative recharge reached 13,800 yuan in a few days. It is understood that at present, the incident ended with "getting a full refund", and netizens sighed: "How difficult is it to refund the egg boy party?"
The boy played the game and recharged tens of thousands of yuan, and his father slapped himself/video screenshot
"Successful refunds" are just the tip of the iceberg
Recently, a head of the family released a video saying that his 9-year-old child recharged 6,400 yuan in 10 minutes in a game called Egg Boy Party under NetEase (Hangzhou) Network Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as NetEase), and the cumulative recharge amount reached 13,800 yuan within a few days. Subsequently, the parent questioned the unreasonable top-up settings of the game and slapped himself.
According to media reports, NetEase Games-related staff previously responded that the user was a Huawei channel account, and a full refund had been arranged after communication and coordination with Huawei (channel service). After verification, the account was registered as an adult in August 2023, and it has been used for a total of 8 months, showing that the recharge amount is 13,824 yuan.
It is understood that the channel server is different from the official server (that is, the official server), also known as the unofficial server, which is a server authorized by the game developer to other companies to operate. The game developer signs a cooperation agreement with the channel party (mobile phone brand or other platform party) to create a "customized version" of the game. Under normal circumstances, games downloaded by users through the app stores and platforms of major brand mobile phone manufacturers belong to "channel servers", and the above-mentioned Huawei channel account of Egg Boy Party belongs to a similar situation.
In this case, although the parent finally received a full refund, the whole process experienced a lot of distress and helplessness. This is not only a simple hot incident, but also a profound reflection on the mechanism for the protection of minors online.
In fact, the fact that the parent was able to get a full refund quickly is not unrelated to the continued social attention of the incident. However, it is not an isolated case of a similar incident in which minors have encountered difficulties in refunding the egg boy party game, and a third-party complaint platform shows that the cumulative number of complaints exceeds 20,000.
There are more than 22,000 complaints related to the egg boy party game/screenshot of the third-party complaint platform
In a "Egg Boy Party Complaint Group" spontaneously set up by parents, the reporter noticed that the number of people has exceeded 380 and the number is still increasing. In the "Egg Boy Party Collective Refund Litigation Evidence List" filled in by the users of this group, a total of 691 people have filled in rights protection requests, with a cumulative amount of more than 5.7 million yuan. There are many groups of minors who need more attention, such as single-parent families and parents of left-behind children, and this group has become the hardest hit area for applying for refunds.
Screenshot of the dilemma of single mothers' difficult refunds/rights protection group
Faced with a huge amount of top-up, the first thing parents think of is to contact the gaming platform for a refund. However, the refund policy of the gaming platform made them feel helpless. Mr. Song, a consumer in Haidian District, Beijing, told a reporter from Future.com that a 9-year-old minor in his family recharged 117 times at the egg waffle party in more than 20 days from March 2 to March 24 without the knowledge of his parents, with a total amount of 9,454 yuan. When appealing for a refund on NetEase's "NetEase Parental Care Platform", it found that it could only upload ten relevant payment vouchers, and could not upload more than 100 transaction records one by one, while NetEase would only review the uploaded ten records, so even if all these records passed the review, the refund was very limited.
Refunds are difficult to protect rights, and channel services open a "back door" for real-name authentication
With the popularity of smartphones and mobile games, minors' addiction to the virtual world has become a hot spot of social concern, and the deputies and members of the National People's Congress and the National People's Congress have also put forward a number of suggestions in this regard. Some parents said in an interview that the supervision of their children's online behavior is often inadequate. Many parents reported to reporters that although most game platforms have underage modes and anti-addiction mechanisms, in practice, these mechanisms are often useless, and it is difficult to effectively prevent minors from making large recharges.
The official customer service of Egg Boy Party replied to the user's refund application that according to the relevant regulations, the game must be verified with real name, and the password must be entered when recharging for the first time. If the user checks the relevant option, the user can realize the password-free payment. For the recharge behavior of minors, the platform recommends that parents submit relevant materials to apply for a refund through the official official account.
However, in practice, parents face many difficulties. For example, due to lack of legal knowledge or lack of understanding of relevant regulations, they are in a passive position in the process of rights protection. On the one hand, many parents have no idea how to request a refund and what documents need to be submitted, and on the other hand, the refund process is often long and complicated, and parents need to be patient and ready to deal with any issues that may arise.
In the process of defending their rights, some parents also encountered prevarication and rejection from game companies. Some parents said that after submitting a refund application, game companies often refuse to refund for various reasons, and even require parents to provide hard-to-obtain materials such as video evidence of their children playing games. This way of dealing with it not only makes it more difficult for parents to defend their rights, but also makes them feel angry and helpless.
Some parents of minors expressed the dilemma they faced when applying for a refund, and the official customer service of Egg Boy Party directly replied to it that the identity information bound to the game login account is not eligible for a refund and cannot pass the user's refund application.
Previously, on the issue of minors using adult mobile phones to recharge large amounts of money at egg boy parties, a reporter from Future.com did a relevant investigation. It is understood that when minors use their parents' mobile phones to play games to verify their identity information, the channel service takes advantage of the permission held by the mobile phone manufacturer to call the mobile phone ID (account) to bind the adult identity information to authorize the game to log in with one click through real-name authentication, resulting in the real-name authentication process being easily bypassed. This is also the main reason why the official customer service of Egg Boy Party claims that the identity information bound to the account is an adult and does not meet the refund conditions.
It is worth noting that if the mobile phone is entered with the minor's fingerprint and face, or the minor has the payment password, it will inevitably lead to the frequent occurrence of minors' game recharge.
In response to questions related to the recharge and refund of minors' games, a reporter from Future.com contacted the person in charge of the public relations department of NetEase and sent a news interview letter, but did not receive any reply as of press time.
In 2023, NetEase's revenue will exceed 100 billion yuan, and the cumulative number of users of Egg Boy Party will reach 500 million
According to Shenzhen News Network, on February 29, NetEase released its financial report for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. NetEase's revenue for the fourth quarter of 2023 was RMB27.1 billion, up 7% year-on-year, full-year revenue was RMB103.5 billion, compared to RMB96.5 billion in 2022, and non-GAAP net profit attributable to shareholders from continuing operations was RMB32.6 billion.
Net revenue from games and related value-added services was RMB81.6 billion (US$11.5 billion) in 2023, compared to RMB74.6 billion in 2022. Net revenue from online games accounted for approximately 92.9% of the segment's net revenue in 2023, compared to 92.5% in 2022. In 2023, the net revenue from mobile games accounted for about 75.2% of the net revenue of online games, and in 2022, it accounted for 67.0%. The year-on-year increase in the proportion of mobile game revenue in 2023 is mainly due to the increase in the proportion of net revenue of mobile games such as "Egg Boy Party" and "Against the Cold".
NetEase said that "Egg Boy Party" has been very popular, with a total of 500 million registered users since its launch in 2022, and a breakthrough of 40 million daily active users during the Spring Festival.
Lawyer: Confirm that the minor recharge should be refunded
In response to the relevant issues related to the recharge and refund of minors' games, Liu Jie, a lawyer from Sichuan Xinzhongyun Law Firm, told a reporter from Future.com that according to Articles 19 and 20 of the Civil Code, minors under the age of eight are incapable of civil conduct, and their legal representatives are acting as agents to carry out civil legal acts, so their behavior of recharging games is invalid, and parents can claim the return of the recharge amount to the game platform. Minors over the age of 8 are persons with limited capacity for civil conduct, and their legally-designated representatives are to represent them in carrying out civil juristic acts, or with the consent and recognition of their legally-designated representatives. Therefore, it can only be effective after the consent or retrospective approval of the parents. After discovering that their children have made large recharges, parents should communicate with the game platform in a timely manner and provide relevant evidence to prove that the child's behavior when recharging is not the expression of their true intentions, so as to protect their own rights and interests.
In addition, Liu Jie said that according to the current laws and regulations of the mainland, the game recharge behavior of minors over the age of eight is valid and cannot be refunded if it meets the requirements of the relevant laws and regulations (20 o'clock to 21 o'clock every day on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and statutory holidays) and amount (8-15 years old: 50 yuan for a single ≤, with a cumulative ≤ of 200 yuan per month; 16-18 years old: 100 yuan for a single ≤, and a cumulative ≤ 400 yuan per month).
Liu Jie suggested that only by the joint efforts of the whole society to strengthen supervision and prevention can we create a safer and healthier online environment for minors. This not only requires parents to strengthen the regulation of their children's online behavior, improve their children's awareness of cyber security, let them develop good online behavior habits, and avoid indulging in the virtual world. It is also necessary for relevant departments to strengthen the supervision of gaming platforms, and urge relevant enterprises to improve mechanisms for the protection of minors. At the same time, game platforms should also assume their due social responsibilities, certify and implement the real-name authentication of games, take the initiative to strengthen the supervision of minors' recharge behavior, establish a more complete refund mechanism, and reduce the cost of parents' rights protection. (Wang Junwei)