Blizzard Ramping Up Battle.net Parental Controls

[MarlaDesat]

Blizzard Ramping Up Battle.net Parental Controls

The upcoming change to parental controls will prevent in-game purchases by default.

Yesterday, Blizzard announced some upcoming changes to the Battle.net parental controls. The changes will disable, by default, in-game purchases for those accounts that have parental controls turned on. Accounts that have parental controls enabled will receive an email soon that details this change and provides instruction on how to enable in-game purchases. Blizzard has provided an risks of phishing [http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/11160555968], Blizzard recommends checking the source before clicking on email links or manually visiting Battle.net account management to make changes.

The change will prevent, by default, any purchases in the World of Warcraft in-game shop, the Diablo III real money auction house (until it as much as $100 million [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/127881-Diablo-III-Auction-House-Closing-Down] to customers in a class action lawsuit over in-app purchases made by minors.

The Battle.net parental controls [https://us.battle.net/account/parental-controls/index.html] allow parents or guardians to manage access to Blizzard games for minors (or allow adult players to impose limits on their own play). The controls can set daily or weekly limits for time played, or restrict play to a schedule. Parental controls can also be used to configure access to voice chat and to enable Real ID. Parental controls can also be used to disable in-game purchases, but before this change purchases were allowed by default.

Source: Battle.net [http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/11160555968]


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[jackpipsam]

With all the news reports of kids spending thousands of dollars on games, I think Blizzard is smart doing this ahead of the curve.

 

[holyshaman]

thank you blizzard for be a company to look op to with the parent control. i hate to hear when kids are spending thousands of dollars without the parents promisen.

but som times it is also the parents own fault by just leaving credit data in a system.

 

[Baldr]

During this upgrade, they disable my ability to buy stuff in-game(Even though my parental controls were set to do so). I had to get a CSR to reset my parental controls. I've always been impressed with Blizzard's parental tools. Some of them are pretty useful even though I don't have kids.

 

[Strazdas]

You know this may be the first time eve i am in favour of parental control. Well done blizzard.
Of course, the easier solution that we did for my sister was simply not give your credit card information to the service. so they cant buy it even if they press it.

 

[exobook]

Very sensible.

But doesn't this also suggest that the use of micro transactions in things like WOW and diablo are going to be ramped up? or have they been already?

 

[Jamieson 90]

Always a good thing but then you could always do what my parents did, you know paying attention to what I was doing...

 

[Roofstone]

Very sensible.

But doesn't this also suggest that the use of micro transactions in things like WOW and diablo are going to be ramped up? or have they been already?

Well, they did add a ingame shop, instead of having to go to the web page. So that might be it.

 

[AuronFtw]

Very sensible.

But doesn't this also suggest that the use of micro transactions in things like WOW and diablo are going to be ramped up? or have they been already?

They're trying to have a game that is self-sufficient, i.e., you don't need to log onto a website for anything. They've already started porting in some things like scrolls of resurrection to the game client, and the minipet/mount store was added recently.

There's not "much" there but it's enough to be annoying if your kid buys it all up at once. Path of Exile, for a different example, has thousands of dollars of stuff in their in-game store. Blizzard isn't quite there yet.

 

[Li Mu]

Always a good thing but then you could always do what my parents did, you know paying attention to what I was doing...

Don't be silly. Why would parents consider paying attention to what their kids do? The parents are too busy watching murder porn. :-D

 

[Micalas]

I'm all for companies giving tools to the parents. Good job, Blizzard

The parents are too busy watching murder porn. :-D

Wait, what?

 

[Vicarious Reality]

Yeah, if only there was a way we could make the computer games raise our kids for us...
It is just too hard to sit down for 30 seconds and tell your own flesh and blood to not spend the next quarters food budget on imps and celestial steeds