By Yaron
Video game apps including the popular Candy Crush would be banned from offering “pay to win” schemes aimed at kids, who pay for upgrades and bonus features, under federal legislation introduced Wednesday.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri proposed a bill that covers games explicitly targeted to underage players whose parents end up forking over dough for the in-game purchases, according to the Washington Post.
“When a game is designed for kids, game developers shouldn’t be allowed to monetize addiction,” Hawley said in a statement.
“And when kids play games designed for adults, they should be walled off from compulsive microtransactions. Game developers who knowingly exploit children should face legal consequences,” the freshman senator added as he takes on the tech industry.
Last week, in a speech to Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, he slammed social media companies for profiting off the addiction of their users, the Kansas City Star reported.
Hawley has already introduced a bill to restrict internet companies from amassing data from users under 13 years old.
The legislation outlined Wednesday – the Protecting Children from Abusive Games Act – takes aim at a lucrative industry revenue stream that analysts say could be worth in excess of $50 billion.
But the industry has drawn worldwide scrutiny amid fears it promotes addictive behaviors and entices children to gamble.
Under the measure, the video game companies also would be prohibited from offering “loot boxes,” which can be purchased or offered as rewards for achieving certain goals in a game.
The measure takes particular aim at Candy Crush, a free puzzle app that contains a bundle that enables users to pay $149.99 for 24 hours of unlimited lives and other bonus features.
A spokesman for the game’s publisher, Activision Blizzard, declined to comment to the Washington Post. King, the game’s Malta-based developer, did not immediately respond to an email from the Kansas paper.
Josh Golin, head of the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, applauded Hawley for the legislation.
“It is beyond unfair for developers to rig their games to manipulate children into making purchases themselves or nagging their parents to do so,” Golin told the Kansas City Star in a statement.
“Games that require additional payments to advance take advantage of children’s natural inclination to master new skills and compete.”
The Entertainment Software Association, a major lobbying group for the video game industry, cited other countries, including Ireland and Germany, that “determined that loot boxes do not constitute gambling.”
“We look forward to sharing with the senator the tools and information the industry already provides that keeps the control of in-game spending in parents’ hands,” Stanley Pierre-Louis, the group’s acting president, told the Washington Post.
