In-Game Spending and Scams

The Two Money Dangers Hiding Inside Your Kid’s Favorite Game

The free game your child downloaded almost certainly isn’t free in the way it sounds. Modern games are built to earn money the whole time a kid is playing, and they’re very good at it. Two separate dangers sit inside that fact. The first is overspending, where a kid runs up real charges on in-game purchases, often through randomized, gambling-style mechanics designed to make spending feel urgent. The second is outright fraud, where scammers target young gamers with fake “free currency” offers and account-stealing links. Gaming is nearly universal among kids now ^[1], which means almost every family deals with some version of this.

This is a money-smart problem, not a moral panic, and you have real leverage. You don’t need to understand the games. You need to know how they pull cash out of a kid, how the scams work well enough to spot them, and the handful of settings and conversations that close most of the doors. None of it requires a confrontation.

How Games Are Built to Drive Spending

Here’s the part worth understanding, because it’s the same machinery across almost every game a kid plays. Most are free to download, which is the hook. They make their money after your child is already attached, through purchases sold inside the game. Two design choices do the heavy lifting, and both are aimed squarely at how a young brain weighs cost and reward.

The first is the made-up currency. Games rarely ask for dollars directly. Instead a kid buys V-Bucks in Fortnite, Robux in Roblox, FC Points in EA Sports FC, or Primogems in Genshin Impact, and then spends those points inside the game. The point of the extra layer is to blur the real price. Spending “800 V-Bucks” doesn’t sting the way spending eight dollars does, and currency sold in odd bundle sizes means a kid almost always has leftover points nudging them to spend again. Add in limited-time offers with a countdown timer, and the game manufactures urgency: buy now, or the deal and the item are gone.

The second, and the one parents most need to see clearly, is the randomized purchase. Loot boxes and gacha systems (the “packs,” “wishes,” or “pulls” a kid begs for) sell a random reward instead of the thing they actually want. You pay, and you might get the rare item, or you might get something common and have to pay again. That’s not shopping. It’s a bet. The mechanics map directly onto slot-machine psychology: unpredictable rewards, near-misses that feel like an almost-win, and sunk-cost pressure to keep paying so the money already spent “isn’t wasted.” Researchers have drawn the line plainly. In teens, spending on randomized in-game rewards like these is consistently associated with problem-gambling behavior, and the two appear to feed each other ^[2]. It helps to see these mechanics for what they are: a form of gambling → wearing a cartoon skin.

This lands harder on some kids than others, and it’s worth naming why. The children with the weakest brakes on impulse tend to be the ones who struggle most with problematic gaming and the spending hooks built into it ^[3]. That same vulnerability often travels with anxiety or low mood, where a kid leans on the game to feel better and the spending rides along with the distress ^[4]. The headline risk for your wallet isn’t a single splurge. It’s a kid chasing one more pull, then another, until the bill is hundreds of dollars.

What the FTC and Regulators Have Done About It

If part of you wonders whether you’re overreacting to a kid’s game, the regulators don’t think so. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission enforces the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPPA, which governs how companies collect data from children under 13, and it has moved against deceptive in-game money practices directly.

The clearest example is recent. In January 2025, the maker of Genshin Impact, Cognosphere, agreed to a $20 million settlement with the FTC. The agency said the company deceived players about the real odds of winning sought-after prizes from its loot boxes and obscured how much real money players were actually spending, and that it collected children’s data in violation of COPPA. The settlement didn’t just levy a fine. It restricts selling loot boxes to players under 16 without a parent’s consent and requires the company to show real-money prices rather than hiding the cost behind layers of virtual currency. The point for a parent is simple: a federal regulator looked at exactly the mechanics above and called them deceptive and a risk to kids.

The picture is broader than one company. Several countries treat certain loot boxes as a form of gambling and regulate or restrict them on that basis, and the debate over where the line sits is active worldwide. The details shift by country and by year. What holds steady is the underlying judgment that paying real money for a random reward, marketed to children, deserves scrutiny. Your instinct to watch the spending is on solid ground.

Scams That Target Young Gamers

Overspending is the game taking your kid’s money by design. Scams are strangers taking it by fraud, and gamers, especially middle-schoolers, are a favorite target. You don’t need a catalog of every trick. You need to recognize the shape of them, the way you’d recognize a too-good-to-be-true flyer taped to a lamppost. Almost all of them lean on one of two lies: that you can get currency for free, or that someone needs your login to help you.

The most common is the “free currency” scam. A website, video, or ad promises free Robux, free V-Bucks, or free Primogems if your kid enters their username, watches ads, completes “offers,” or downloads something. There is no such thing as a free currency generator, full stop. What’s really happening is the site is stealing account credentials, installing junk, or harvesting personal and payment information. Close cousins include fake giveaways (“the first 100 players get a free skin”), account-phishing links that lead to a fake login page that looks exactly like the real one, and “I’ll trade you” item scams, where another “player” promises to trade a rare item, gets your kid to hand over an item or password first, and then vanishes. A lot of this now happens over Discord and direct messages, where a friendly stranger, or an account that looks like a friend, sends a link.

The table below lines up what a legitimate interaction looks like against the red flags of a scam, so you and your child can sort them fast.

Two rules of thumb cover almost everything in that right column, and they’re short enough for a kid to keep in their head. Free currency offers are always fake. And no one legitimate ever asks for your password or the security code texted to you. A child who holds onto those two sentences is hard to con.

What Parents Can Do

You have more control here than it feels like, and the strongest protection is a mix of a few settings and a couple of honest conversations. Start where you can and build from there.

Require Purchase Approval and Kill One-Click Buying

This is the single highest-value setting. Every major console, store, and phone lets you require your approval before any purchase goes through, so no V-Bucks pack, loot box, or “deal” can be bought without your sign-off. Turn it on, and turn off one-click or instant buying so a saved payment method can’t fire with a single tap. This alone stops the surprise charge that catches most families off guard.

Use Gift Cards or Limits Instead of a Linked Card

A credit card saved to a kid’s account is an open tab. A better setup is to remove the saved card entirely and fund spending with a fixed-value gift card or a hard spending limit instead. When the gift-card balance is gone, it’s gone, which turns an invisible, bottomless bill into a small, visible budget you both agreed on. It also caps what any scam or runaway pull can possibly cost.

Talk About Loot Boxes as Gambling-Style Risk

A kid who understands the trick is far harder to manipulate than one who’s only told “no.” Explain, in plain terms, that a loot box or gacha pull is a bet: you pay for a chance, the rare item is deliberately rare, and the countdown timer exists to rush you into spending. Naming the mechanic out loud, the near-miss, the leftover currency, the “don’t waste what you already spent” pull, takes away a lot of its power. For the bigger picture on how these worlds pull kids in, the guide to video game addiction → goes deeper.

Lock Down Account Security

Most scams end with a stolen account, and a few minutes of setup prevents it. Help your child set a strong, unique password for each gaming account, one they don’t reuse anywhere else, and turn on two-factor authentication so a login also needs a code from their phone. Then teach the two rules that matter most: never share a password or login code with anyone, including someone claiming to be a friend or a game “moderator,” and never click a “free currency” link or a login link sent in a chat or DM. For more on locking down accounts and data, see parental controls for gaming → and protecting your child’s privacy →.

Getting Help If Spending Has Become a Pattern

If you’ve read this far, you’re already doing the most protective thing a parent can do, which is paying attention. For most families, a few settings and an open conversation are enough to keep both the spending and the scams in check. Reach out for more when the money problem isn’t really about money, when a kid can’t stop chasing pulls, hides what they’ve spent, or falls apart when you cut off the spending. That pattern points to a gaming problem underneath, and it responds well to help, especially family-based support for young people.

Find treatment and support that fit your family →

For the wider picture of how these games hook young players, dive into the guide to video game addiction →. And for the full set of steps to keep your child safe across the games they play, go deeper on keeping kids safe while gaming →.

Written by

Jessica Miller

Editorial Director

Jessica Miller is the Editorial Director of Addiction Help. Jessica graduated from the University of South Florida (USF) with an English degree and combines her writing expertise and passion for helping others to deliver reliable information to those impacted by addiction. Informed by her personal journey to recovery and support of loved ones in sobriety, Jessica's empathetic and authentic approach resonates deeply with the Addiction Help community.

Reviewed by

• Fact-Checked
• Editor

Kent S. Hoffman, D.O.

Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer

Kent S. Hoffman, D.O. has been an expert in addiction medicine for more than 15 years. In addition to managing a successful family medical practice, Dr. Hoffman is board certified in addiction medicine by the American Osteopathic Academy of Addiction Medicine (AOAAM). Dr. Hoffman has successfully treated hundreds of patients battling addiction. Dr. Hoffman is the Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of AddictionHelp.com and ensures the website’s medical content and messaging quality.