Blizzard Entertainment, creators of the Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo games, have acquiesced to parent demands that in-game purchases be less accessible for kids. Blizzard sent out a letter recently letting parents know that they’ll be adding a setting that turns off in-game purchases for child accounts. This means that kids won’t be able to:
- Make purchases in World of Warcraft
- Make purchases in Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
- Make purchases in the Diablo III Auction House (which will be defunct anyway come March 2014)
Pixelkin has written about kids and microtransactions before. We were recently interviewed by U.S. News about in-game spending, and we contributed our predictions about the increasing use of microtransactions in an article in Fast Company. It’s heartening to see that some companies are stepping up and giving parents more options when it comes to family controls.
