I think that part of becoming a parent is to slowly, at least for a time, become out of touch with modern technology. Surely this isn’t true for everyone, but as raising kids really is a full time job sometimes it’s difficult with the two-minutes-a-day they have to themselves to keep up on every single piece of technology out there. As it was this week with two UK parents who inadvertently let their child rack up over £1,700 of charges on the “free” iPad game Zombies vs. Ninjas. Unbeknownst to them, Greg and Sharon Kitchen gave their son Danny the password to their account so he could unlock, in his words, “more free features.” That’s awfully trusting considering almost everyone who has an iPad knows it’s attached to a credit card, but they figured nothing bad would happen with a free game. Obviously they were wrong.
Earlier this week Eurogamer ran a piece about the family who was initially refused a refund by Apple after they saw that their son Danny had racked up £1,700 in charges playing Zombie vs. Ninjas. Almost as soon as the piece went online, Apple advised the family that they would indeed be receiving a refund for the full amount as well as getting some free education to prevent something like this from happening again. This is where my head begins to hurt. Despite admitting they were having company and really weren’t paying attention when their son asked for the password and the fact that they knew their credit card was attached to the account on the iPad, they didn’t feel it was their fault at all, claiming their FIVE-YEAR-OLD SON said it was free (red flag #1) and wondering who would every pay that much money on a free game (red flag #2.) Really? Blaming the kid? I’m pretty sure he didn’t set the account up or buy the iPad, but I guess that’s the kind of stuff you need to say when you’re attempting to appear oblivious. If they didn’t receive a refund I would keep my mouth shut, but since they did I had to say my piece.
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When I played through The Walking Dead I spent most of my time being a complete gentleman. I just couldn’t be mean to anyone let along Clementine, so I didn’t get to experience the game from the perspective of a complete and totally dick. Thankfully though YouTube user dubesor86 went out of his way to pick the meanest and most uncalled for negative reactions the game’s protagonist, Lee, could have said, putting together a compilation for our viewing pleasure. Now we get to enjoy the watching Lee be the meanest dude in the apocalypse without any of the guilt that goes along with it. Awesome.
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Finally, after years of waiting, Mac owners can now download and play the massively popular League of Legends. I don’t know what took them so long to be honest, I know preparing a release like this for a completely new platform can be quite a task, but it’s not like they don’t have the resources. I can’t imagine it’s going to be a great experience right out of the gate as it will take some time for Mac users to start actually downloading the game and playing it. Match Making is one of those things that only works really well when there are a lot of people playing, so if you’re a Mac user give it some time judging the game as the first few weeks, at least, are bound to be a bit frustrating.
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I like Cliffy B., and I think he’s normally a pretty smart and candid guy especially when speaking about the game industry, but I can’t really wrap my head around his latest blog post. In it he goes out of his way to defend companies like EA and Zynga from what he thinks is irrational hate. While I agree with him to some extent, nobody is really forced to buy a Zynga game, I’m not quite sure I agree with his comparison between Valve and EA. He says that fans didn’t care when Valve offered an engagement ring for $100 in TF2, but are up in arms whenever EA releases downloadable content. I see it as a huge difference, TF2 is free and those are cosmetic items while EA holds actually content hostage for a price. Ok, ok, maybe it’s not that simple, but you get the gist. Give it a read, it’s an interesting post, but I’m not quite sure I agree with him on this one.
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Taking up the anchor this week is another great short film from Cracked.com, this time it features what they call The 7 Deadly Sins of Online Gaming. I don’t want to spoil what they are, but it’s essentially a catalog of all of the things we hate to see from online opponents and teammates. It’s nice to know someone thought these were all annoying enough to make a short animated film about, as I was beginning to think that there were only about five people not guilty of doing all these things. It’s only a few minutes long, but it’s just enough to get you laughing to start the weekend.