The son played a game and recharged tens of thousands, and the father slapped himself angrily, causing concern.
In response to the top-up issue, the game company promised to strengthen supervision and protect the rights and interests of consumers.
Parents need to pay attention to their children's gaming behavior, prevent addiction, and jointly maintain a good online environment.
Why did the father slap him, and how did the game company respond?
A large amount of krypton gold has aroused heated discussions
On April 8, a video of a father slapping himself attracted attention on the Internet, in which Mr. Zhang's 9-year-old son recharged 6,400 yuan in just 10 minutes and deducted tens of thousands of yuan in a day or two while playing "Egg Boy Party".
Mr. Cheung said that he was shocked by the incident, and that he had wanted to educate his children, but the results were not satisfactory, and in fact, Mr. Cheung's experience was not an isolated case, and many parents had similar experiences.
"Acorn Business Review" searched for relevant keywords on the consumer complaint platform "Black Cat Complaint" and found that there were 21,946 complaints, and the hot recharge phenomenon of "Egg Boy Party" made this game a "star product" of NetEase.
According to NetEase's 2023 fourth quarter and annual financial report, since the launch of "Egg Boy Party" in 2022, the number of registered users has exceeded 500 million, becoming the main contributor to the annual revenue and has been praised by financial reports many times.
Mr. Zhang revealed to "Acorn Business Review" that his 9-year-old son recharged 6,400 yuan in only 10 minutes when he played "Egg Boy Party".
Mr. Zhang said that after the first recharge of 6,000 yuan, the subsequent recharges are password-free payments, and the platform should be suspected of inducing consumption.
In order to successfully refund the money, Mr. Zhang appealed on the official platform, but the reply he received was that the refund process would take 10 days to complete, which was unacceptable to him, so he took his son to NetEase to seek a solution.
Mr. Zhang believes that as a parent, he has a responsibility to educate his children, for which he slapped himself 10 times in public, and his son cried when he saw it, trying to stop his father, saying that he would never play again.
The video quickly spread on the Internet, which directly aroused heated discussions among netizens, and under the pressure of public opinion, NetEase responded on April 9 that it had refunded the full amount of the recharge requested by Mr. Zhang.
On April 10, Mr. Zhang released a video confirming that the refund had arrived, and said that the child had returned to normal school, and the money recharged by the child was indeed refunded, but the father may not be happy.
There are invisible walls for minor refunds
Now is the Internet era, the mobile game market is progressing rapidly, the number of gamers is increasing, and various regulations for games are constantly improving, but the rules are dead, and there will always be people to take advantage of loopholes.
Now the distribution of games or mobile phone applications is regular, but the rules are not obvious, the app store that comes with the mobile phone is even a channel, if it is the channel of the mobile phone manufacturer, then the consumption generated by the application and game on the shelves is a commission.
For example, the "Apple tax", as long as you spend in the Apple mobile phone, Apple will take 30% as a service fee, and the app store of the Android mobile phone will also have a commission, but the proportion has its own standards.
If you don't pay the money, you will be kicked out of the mobile phone app store by Apple, which can be said to be a big bully, who can stand up to the number of people who use Apple's mobile phone, and the manufacturer does not dare to give up that large part of the market.
If the manufacturer doesn't want to be commissioned, one way is to only release the installation package on its own official website, so as to avoid being drawn because of the channel, and the disadvantage of this is also obvious, there is no exposure.
The app store of mobile phone manufacturers is seen by many people all the time, which can increase visibility, if it is their own official website, unless they spend a lot of money on advertising, it is difficult to attract users, and no one will come to talk about profits.
Another point is update maintenance, the app store can be very convenient for version updates, users are comfortable with it, otherwise they can only update it manually, many users will find other products if they are troublesome.
In this child recharge incident, according to the report of The Paper, it can be seen that the channel provider of the game arranged a refund after rapid coordination.
There is no cooperative relationship between the manufacturer and the channel provider, it is equal, and the refund of this incident is also communicated between the game manufacturer and the channel, and it can only be resolved through negotiation.
The game industry will still progress, and the problem of channel services will become more and more obvious, and mobile phone manufacturers that only provide game distribution channels will naturally not easily touch the mess of underage refunds.
There are provisions for the protection of minors
After the issuance of the new regulations on the protection of minors, minors are a burden to game manufacturers, and the reason for this is very simple, the investment and income are not proportional.
After the new regulations were issued, various game manufacturers began to build and improve corresponding anti-addiction measures, such as system development, face recognition, and so on.
What is paid in the middle is a lot of costs, just to control the game time of minors and reduce consumption, it can be said that even the experience of adults is affected.
Many parents report that the game is addicted to children, or that there are elements in the game that are not suitable for minors, and it is clear that the audience of the game is not minors, and it also shows that the people who play it must be adults, but there are minors playing it.
Even if you play, you have to be reported if you are found by your parents, the content is deleted, and the serious ones are directly removed from the shelves, and the game manufacturers are the most innocent, and they directly pull the public into the water for a small number of people, which is also one of the reasons why the new regulations for minors must continue to be improved.
As a result, most game manufacturers restrict minors from registering and playing, and most of Tencent's games can only be played by minors for 2 hours a day, and there is face recognition from time to time, and some games directly do not allow minors to register.
The results show that minors are not a source of profit for games at all, and Tencent's 2022 Q3 financial report shows that minors account for only 0.7% of the total game time in the market.
NetEaseQ2 financial report shows that the income of minors accounts for less than 1%, which laughs out loud, not only has no income, but manufacturers have to make great efforts to make an anti-addiction system for minors, whose problem is it?
Game addiction is just a representation of educational failure
Many parents push their children's bad grades or any problems with their children to the game, but the game manufacturer said that we don't carry this pot.
Games are known as the ninth art, behind a good game is the common progress of the art, programming, planning, modeling, copywriting, and hardware industries, and the game raises the threshold for hardware use, so hardware manufacturers will have the incentive to upgrade the level of hardware technology.
Game manufacturers will gather the top level of all walks of life to create their own works, good games are pleasing to the eye, admittedly, there are also many shoddy games, polluting the entire market, after all, the forest is big and there are all kinds of birds.
Correct education, as well as companionship and care for children are the focus, rather than blaming the reason for something else, after all, there will be new reasons without games, such as short videos.
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