It’s a story that happened in almost every game with in-game currency and unsupervised kids. One Reddit user, u/A_Sad_Frog, recently posted on the popular Reddit thread ‘TIFU’ (Today I F****d Up) to share his sad tale with the internet. Long story short, his niece and nephew went on a V-Buck spending spree in Fortnite.
The two kids had access to his PSN account. Despite needing a verification number linked to his payment card, they managed to bypass that and spent about $531 USD. Not only did this literally drain his savings account, but it also put a damper on his girlfriends’ plans while on holiday. The account held savings she intended to use as spending money for her trip to the USA.
“I feel so terribly guilty for putting my girlfriend in this situation, the kids are upset that they did it. We’re not a rich couple, and this one has hit us both pretty hard.”
The kids purchased 65,000 V-Bucks in Fortnite before their father contacted A_Sad_Frog and told him to check his bank account. The father discovered that the kids somehow had that huge amount of in-game currency and wanted to know why. The poster admitted he was shocked to discover what had happened and was in utter disbelief.
“All told, £422.90 ($531) had been siphoned out over a week, with most of the bombardment happening yesterday. By the time I got back into to account to assess the damage, 20,000 vbucks had already been spent. I saw that the Playstation wallet can be topped up before each purchase, so they must have paid for it by first buying wallet currency, which apparently didn’t require a code.”
Reddit to the rescue
By posting his story on that thread, it caught the attention of Epic’s Community Coordinator, Sean ‘MrPopoTFS’ Hamilton. He basically offered to help resolve the situation since PlayStation’s Store does not offer buyer protection and fighting with the bank can be hard. Many Redditors did, however, say they were successful with contacting PlayStation’s customer support to get a full refund on their card and not just wallet credit.
It’s great that Epic Games will, hopefully, help. A_Sad_Frog learned a lesson for sure, and this also serves as a reminder to all with young kids to not let them play unsupervised. Always double check your payment settings. Perhaps educate your kids that in-game currency, like Fortnite‘s V-Bucks, costs real money, too.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or if this has happened to you. Did you manage to have the purchases refunded?
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