Kids rack up expenses in iPhone games

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Updated: December 9, 2010 7:23PM

“The Smurfs’ Village,” a game for the iPhone and other Apple gadgets, is giving some parents sticker shock. It was released a month ago and quickly became the highest-grossing application in the iTunes store. Yet it’s free to download.

Kelly Rummelhart of Gridley, Calif., knows where some of the money is coming from. Her 4-year-old son was using her iPad to play the game and racked up $66.88 in charges on her credit card without knowing what he was doing. Rummelhart had no idea that it was possible to buy things — buy them with real money — inside the game. In this case, her son bought one bushel and 11 buckets of “Smurfberries,” tokens that speed up gameplay.

“Really, my biggest concern was them scratching the screen. Never in my wildest dreams did I think they would be charging things on it,” the 36-year-old mother said.

She counts herself lucky that her son didn’t start tapping on another purchase button, like the “wheelbarrow” of Smurfberries for $59.99.

Apple introduced “in-app purchases” last year, letting developers use the iTunes billing system to sell items and add-ons in their games and applications.

Capcom Entertainment Inc., the publisher of “The Smurfs’ Village,” says inadvertent purchases by children are “lamentable.” When it realized what was happening, it added a warning about the option of in-app purchases to the game’s description in the App Store, and it’s updating the game to include warnings inside it as well. The game has retreated to being the fourth-highest-grossing app in the App Store.

The warnings may alert parents, but it’s doubtful that they’d deter children who can’t read and don’t understand money.

Usually, the purchases require the owner of the device to enter his or her iTunes password. But there is no password challenge if the owner has entered the password in the last 15 minutes for any reason.

However, Andrew Butterworth of Brooklin, Ontario, was well aware of how in-app purchases work and of the password-free period. He was careful to let at least 15 minutes pass after a password entry before letting his 5-year-old son play with his iPod Touch. That didn’t help, once he’d loaded “The Smurfs’ Village.”His son’s shopping spree cost $140.

AP