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The AP reports about a controversy involving Capcom’s latest iPhone game, The Smurfs’ Village. Though the game is free, there are in-app purchases that can be made. Unfortunately, some loopholes have found little ones purchasing things without even realizing that they are racking up charges on mom’s and dad’s credit cards.

The Smurfs’ Village allows players to build a Smurf village, which is powered by Smurfberries. You can play through the game gathering Smurfberries, which as you can imagine take time. Or you can go the quick and easy way and make in-app purchases. These can range from getting a bucket of Smurfberries for $4.99 all the way up to a wagon of the berries for a whopping $99.99. One might question the mental competence of someone who’d pay a hundred bucks for a video game of this type, but there it is.

The problem is that there seems to be a loophole (or several, from what the AP article states) in purchasing. First off, when you download the app, you have to enter in your password. There is then a 15 minute window when you don’t have to enter your password again for anything app related…including in-app purchases. So, parents apparently gave the game to their kids right after downloading the game and the kids were able to make in-app purchases without needing to enter the password. But some parents claimed that they had waited out the 15 minute period (as much as several hours or a day), and still these in-app purchases occurred.

Apple has stepped up to the plate to remedy the situation. They have refunded the erroneous charges to parents who have complained. They have also reminded parents that anyone can restrict in-app purchases from within their iOS device by going into the preferences panel and changing the settings. However, while this is true, this would be a global change to all in-app purchases, and would need to be manually reset each time one wanted to play a game where in-app purchases are desired.

Capcom has also attempted some fixes, both by altering the notes on the App Store page for the game reminding parents that this game “charges real money for additional in-app content” and giving them information about how to restrict in-app purchasing. They’ve also placed these warnings within the game itself.

This has really highlighted a much more general issue with freemium games using in-app purchases for monetization. Free games that make their money off of in-app purchases all risk this type of issue. Regardless of whether the highest purchase that can be made is $0.99 or $99.99, the charges can quickly rack up, especially from the hands of a little one who doesn’t understand that tapping the button will take money out of mommy’s or daddy’s pocket.

And this article is not the only one that claims that the window that allows in-app purchases without the use of a password is longer than 15 minutes. This forum discussion from the Apple.com website from back in August also highlights this problem, with developers claiming that they, too, confirmed this issue exists. To see for myself, I downloaded a free game that uses in-app purchases and tested out the password issue, but I was unable to duplicate the problem on either my iPhone or iPad.

Is this an issue that Apple needs to resolve by changing the way that they require passwords when making in-app purchases, or are parents not fulfilling their parental duties? Perhaps parents do need to have a more hands on approach when it comes to safeguarding their wallet when handing over the iOS device for the kids to play on. Then again, one never needed to hide the wallet in the past when the game was purchased from the retail store. This is a new and recent issue that has parents, developers, and Apple wondering how far to go and who to blame.

Regardless of what we might think it is, though, Apple is finding itself having to refund money to parents who feel unable to control the spending habits of their tots playing games on their parents’ iOS devices. In the end, it may not matter who’s responsibility society believes it is. In the end, Apple may make changes just to preserve its bottom line.

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