The European Union has taken up free-to-play
The European Commission, the highest executive authority of the European Union, is concerned that applications with IAP are called free.
Over the past two days, the European Commission has been holding a meeting with “national authorities and major technology companies.” The central theme is micropayments in “free” games.
The EU government is aware of the importance of the “mobile application economy”, which employs more than 1 million people, and whose volumes will exceed the €63 billion mark in the next five years. It is also aware that about 80% of the revenue of this industry is generated by applications with micropayments.
And this, according to the EU government, is a problem. From their point of view, in order to unlock the full potential of the mobile application market and further develop, consumers must trust the products they use. In the current situation, as the European Commission sees it, there is no complete trust.
More than 50% of games on the European online market are positioned as “free”. At the same time, they often entail serious expenses. Moreover, according to the commission, users are not always aware that they are spending money. Children are especially vulnerable to games that are positioned as “free to play”.
Wishing to solve this problem in some way, the EU government is going to present its understanding of how to protect consumer rights in this area.
Within the framework of the general topic, the following proposals were put forward for discussion:
- Games advertised as “free” should no longer mislead users about the true costs;
- Games should not encourage children to buy anything or ask them to persuade parents to buy;
- Users should be sufficiently informed about the payment procedure and services (no debiting of money by default);
- Publishers (in the document we are talking about traders) must provide an email address so that users can contact them in case of requests or complaints.
The European Commission is largely inspired by the norms for projects with in-game payments introduced recently in the UK. We have written in detail what these norms are here.
Source: http://europa.euPhoto:
