New Pack Falsely Advertised as Free

"Amapola76;c-17937298" wrote:

"Calico45;c-17937290" wrote:

"Amapola76;c-17937277" wrote:

"Calico45;c-17937256" wrote:
Actually, worse yet, a kid's purchase. Sometimes parents hand over card info more easily than they should and may not pay attention beyond the "free" page until they see the charge later. 100% carelessness, but hey, why would the store page be wrong even if they know nothing about the Sims? Maybe it is a promotion like the free base game. They may really not know.

My parents gave up keeping track of a lot of my games well before the digital video game age cemented and there weren't bugged store pages.

This is a big mistake, and they need to fix it asap.

That being said, what you're describing is really irresponsible. We game, as a family, together and separately, but I would never ever in a million years give the kids our credit card information, even the oldest, and even though they are very responsible compared to many of their peers. We either directly purchase for them, if it's something truly special (like whenever the next single player TES arrives!), or they get gift cards for birthdays and holidays, and then manage their own purchases accordingly. But you should never be giving a child unsupervised access to your credit or debit cards. Too many things can go wrong, and accidentally paying full price for a Sims expansion is the least of it. I'm not saying this to be snarky or unkind, but as a PSA: people have had serious problems as a result giving kids access to their finances, for games or otherwise.

Yep, exactly. That is why I said 100% carelessness. I'll admit, I was surprised to find out how lax they were with my little brother and saving cards for a time. Then again, my mom checked her charges religiously so he never could do much damage and when he screwed up it was immediately taken away (but they can and will screw up).

Fun fact, he blamed Steam and because no one knew much about Steam besides him back then, I wrote it off as a shady site for years.

As the eldest, I didn't really get that freedom. I had a bank account very early in life so it was my card or no card for me, and as a kid I was terrified at having what few dollars I had stolen so I specifically opted for gift cards. (Then again, I didn't embrace digital until I was an adult for reasons mentioned above.)

So, yeah, super irresponsible, but we grew up when digital distribution was first establishing itself. People did not have the same digital literacy and our bank was really good about confirming abnormal charges.

Sorry, my intention wasn't to call out your family specifically, I just know a lot of people still will just give out their information freely to their kids or other family members, and I have seen it cause some big problems. It's a professional hazard: I always want to warn people when I see them doing things that could turn out badly. :)

But overall, yes, this is a huge sales/marketing team mistake, and I hope they are on top of it already.