My Little Pony and Simpsons games are shaking down kids for cash

There are a lot of games for kids in the App Store, and most of them have some kind of micropayment system where they ask you for money while you're playing. The two worst offenders at this also happen to be the two biggest tie-in properties around at the moment, both of which are shows that appeal to kids: The Simpsons and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Of the two, the My Little Pony game is definitely worse. First, because the show and the game are aimed at a much younger demographic. And second, because the game shills so much more aggressively. You can hardly turn around without the game shaking you down for cash. But it almost doesn't seem that way, because the language they use to frame the purchase is so vague and unspecific. That's probably partly to blame for the $1,300 bill a six-year-old pony fan racked up on her parents' account.

At least with The Simpsons: Tapped Out, the game is aimed at a slightly older audience, and it makes the financial transaction very clear. But there are a lot of really cool items that you can basically only get if you pay money to buy donuts, which is probably how this eight year old boy managed to blow $1,500 of his parents' money on the game.

When a cultural juggernaut like the My Little Pony reboot or The Simpsons strikes a licensing deal with a game manufacturer, they often don't have very much to do with the end result. Presumably when they license an Apple game for the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch, they get a skim off the profits of the microtransactions that happen in game. I imagine this is somewhat lucrative, but I also think that they need to start policing these games a little bit better.

Image courtesy of Flickr/Joe Shlabotnik