Simplyjack
04-Apr-16 10:02 PM
f2p games ftl
This weekend I found out my Dad was a F2P "Whale". Spending almost $30,000 in one game. (self.personalfinance)
I'll try to sum it up as succinctly as possible (I failed!). Some backstory, a month ago my dad was in the hospital because he was acting "different" (basically just having some bad memory issues). They found that he had several "mini" strokes. After being in the hospital for a week, they sent him home on a blood thinner, and various doctor appointments/tests scheduled.
So this weekend my Mom calls me and she's pretty distressed. She's basically just trying to get a handle on the financing. Previously my Dad would always handle all the bills since at this point he doesn't really work except for part time (~20 hours a week, average) and my Mom still works more than full time. She says she's been going through bills and things are worse than she thought. They had a few bills that were either underpaid, overpaid, or not paid at all, but now she's finding even more things, including credit cards she didn't even know they had. This wasn't exactly a deceitful thing, just something she didn't personally need to keep track of. But she starts seeing a bunch of iTunes charges, about 3 charges a couple months ago for $99.99 each.
I did some digging with his iTunes account and pulled up the purchase history (side note: Apple why the fuck do I need iTunes just to check purchase history?!). I was shocked at what I found. Pages, and pages, and pages of $99.99 charges to "Big Fish Casino". The worst was in October he spend over $3000! On fucking SLOT MACHINES in a F2P game! To put things into perspective, my Mom has an okay job, but definitely in the lower income area. My parents are basically just living on savings from when my Dad had a very nice paying job up until about 15 years ago, and are basically on borrowed time until they need to sell their house to get something more affordable.
I keep digging, all the while I'm on the phone with my Mom, I can't even hide my reaction, I was so shocked. I started telling her, what I was seeing, and at the time I was thinking it was maybe $10,000. Going all the way back to 2012. Needless to say we were both shocked at this and at this point my Mom was in tears. This was just such a high level of deceit, that after 40 years of marriage now of course she (and I) are questioning what else he has hidden over the years. I tried talking (mostly yelling) to him, but he's really just not all that "there" yet (or ever again?), so it was mostly pointless. He just kept saying "sorry" and that he didn't realize he was spending that much, which of course is bullshit, since he handled all of the bills.
After I got of the phone with my Mom I actually went and started tallying it up. In the end, over the course of about 3.5 years he gave the company that makes "Big Fish Casino" almost $30,000. This is a HUGE chunk of their savings, and I think we don't even fully realize how badly this has hurt their financials. I think it's probably going mean either I pick up a lot of their bills at some point, or my Mom will be stuck working until the day she dies.
Sorry this was so damn long. This was mostly therapeutic to be able to put this down into text. At this point I'm just so pissed, I don't really know what my relationship will be like with my father from now on, both because of his mental condition and the years of lying.
tldr; My dad spent around $30,000 on a F2P slot machine game over 3.5 years without anyone knowing.