Barry Sheerman – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Barry Sheerman on 2016-05-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps he is taking to protect children from in-game selling and promotions when playing games online.

Nick Boles

The Government is committed to ensuring that consumers are properly protected and that children’s vulnerability and inexperience is not exploited by aggressive commercial practices. We welcomed the Office of Fair Trading’s (OFT) investigation into whether children have been unfairly encouraged to spend money in online games and apps, in breach of consumer laws. The OFT’s subsequent Principles for Online and App-based Games were published in January 2014, to help ensure that online and app games publishers better understand their responsibilities and do not subject children to unfair or aggressive selling practices. The Competition and Markets Authority subsequently referred 3 games to the Advertising Standards Authority for further enforcement action.