Ages 13–15

Scams, skins and in-app everything

Games are designed by people whose job is to make you spend. Knowing the design is not the same as being weak — it is the defence.

About 20 minutes Read it themselves Earns The Scam Spotter Badge

The Quest

For the kid

Two different things take money off teenagers online, and they need different defences.

One: the design

Free games are not charities. If the game costs nothing, the money comes from a small number of players spending a lot, and the game is built to turn you into one of them.

Mechanic How it works
In-game currency You buy gems, then spend gems. Two steps, so you never see the dollar price
Bundles that do not divide The thing costs 120 gems; gems come in 100s and 500s. Spare gems stop feeling like money
The countdown "Offer ends in 4:59." The timer is there to stop you thinking
Loot boxes You pay for a chance. Slot-machine odds, with the near-miss designed in
The social squeeze Everybody else has the skin. Also not an accident

Spending does not make you a fool. It makes you the person a professional team is aiming at.

Two: the scams

Outright theft, aimed at younger players as easier targets:

  • "Free V-Bucks / free Robux / free skins" — never real. Always takes your account.
  • The fake middleman trade. "Send me yours first, I'll send both back."
  • The account phish. A login page that looks right, one letter wrong in the address.
  • The friend who is not your friend. A hacked account messaging you under a name you trust.
  • The "giveaway" that needs a small fee to release your prize.

One rule covers most of it: nobody legitimate ever needs your password, your one-time code, or a payment to give you something free.

Your mission

Take one game and work out its real cost. Open your purchase history, add up six months, divide by six. Convert it into hours worked, or weeks of allowance.

The Parent Playbook

For you — read before you start

The instinct is a ban. Bans mostly relocate the spending to a friend's account and end the flow of information to you.

Three rules, agreed rather than imposed

  1. No stored card. Every purchase needs a deliberate step — a prepaid card, a gift card, or your approval each time.
  2. A monthly figure, set in advance, theirs to allocate. It comes out of their own money and they choose where it goes.
  3. The 24-hour rule applies to countdowns. Anything with a timer waits a day.

What to say

"I am not going to tell you that buying a skin is stupid. It is your money and you get to spend it on things you enjoy. What I want is for you to know exactly how much, because the game is built so you don't."

"If anything ever goes wrong — you get phished, you lose an account, you spend more than you meant to — come and tell me, and the first thing out of my mouth will not be a lecture."

Then keep that promise the first time.

Mistake to avoid

Do not mock the purchase. Once a skin is "a waste of money on nothing", every future purchase happens without your knowledge.

Check your own stored cards and subscriptions in the same sitting. Adults have loot boxes too; ours are free trials that renewed.

Do It Together

The 20-minute activity

Audit one game's real cost 20 minutes · the device, store purchase history, a calculator

  1. Open the real purchase history together. Their pick of game.
  2. Add up six months, out loud. The number usually surprises both of you.
  3. Convert it into hours of the Level 1 job.
  4. Find the design in the store screen. Have them point out the two-step currency, the bundles that do not divide, the countdown.
  5. Run the scam drill. Search their game plus the word "free" and look at what comes back. Ask them how each one is trying to work.
  6. Agree the monthly number and turn off the stored card before you get up from the table.

Done? Tick the level. One left, and it is the big one: the money that is already there for your education.

Done with level 05?

Fills in one leaf on the Growers map and earns The Scam Spotter Badge. Kept in this browser only — nothing about your child is sent anywhere.

Financial education, not advice. It describes how Canadian accounts and programs work and recommends no product, provider or investment. Dollar figures are statutory.