I keep hearing the story of kids who have access to mommy and daddy's credit card and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on mobile games. In general, it's about Brawl Stars, Clash Royale and others. Now the age of such compulsive and impulsive behavior is increasing and we are dealing with a teenager who broke his family's savings on items in PUBG.
It is about a teenager from India, who would have spent 21,000 dollars on items and upgrades for his character, but also for his teammates. PUBG is one of the most played games on the planet and it would be interesting to know if it is PUBG on PC or console or PUBG Mobile, on mobile. The 17-year-old boy had access to his parents' bank accounts and used the savings collected for medical expenses and the child's future.
To avoid any suspicion, the young man transferred money from one account to another and even deleted the transaction receipts. Upon hearing the news, the father forced his son to take a job at a scooter repair shop, but I think it would take decades for such a job to recoup the lost money. This is not the first time that PUBG has caused an unfortunate incident in India. In 2019 a 16-year-old went into cardiac arrest after playing PUBG for 6 hours non-stop.
The mobile version had 734 million downloads as of June 2020. There are 174 million players in India alone. PUBG has generated $1.3 billion in revenue so far in 2020. There should still be restrictions on the amount spent in the game, or at least some sort of parental and banking controls. Or, the games that condition your performance and leveling up with all sorts of loot boxes and gambling mechanisms should be declared gambling (as is being tried in Europe). Obviously, they are charged as such and prohibited to those under 18.
Personally, I'm fascinated that people spend money on skins in games, because I never cared about how my character looked, I was only interested in the gameplay.