Video Games: British Boy Racks Up £900 Debt on Facebook’s Farmville

Beware: So-called “free” games aren’t so free.

This fact was proven by a 12-year-old British boy who used his mother’s credit card to spend over £900 on Farmville, a popular simulation game on Facebook created by the video game developer Zynga.  In Farmville, players can manage their own virtual farm by growing crops and managing livestock using virtual money.  If the player wants to progress faster through the game, he/she has the option to use real money on more features and luxuries for the farm.

Neither Facebook nor Zynga will refund the money to the mother, who wishes to remain anonymous, because she and her son live under the same roof.

“Facebook has disabled his account and Zynga has unhelpfully suggested I use password protection on computers in the future,” said the mother.

Her bank, HSBC, did not deem the transactions suspicious and informed the boy’s mother that she would only be eligible for a refund if she agreed to file criminal charges against him to the police.

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