With tons of lawsuits being hurled at Facebook, a class-action lawsuit has yet again smacked Facebook, Zynga Inc., and others. This is due to the widening ad-based social game scams infesting Facebook.
The so called “offers-marketing” have been popping up like mushrooms in Facebook. These ads would offer virtual money or goods in exchange of certain offers like subscribing to Netflix, a flat rate rental-by-mail and online streaming video store, or answering a market research survey. There is one instance where players are asked to answer an I.Q. Quiz wherein they need to enter their mobile numbers to receive the quiz results and then charged $9.99 without their knowledge.
Another scam is the “Video Professor”. Players are offered virtual currency if they sign up for a free CD. The gamers are tricked into believing that they only pay for the shipping fee of $10. But upon agreeing to get the CD, on a different page of the contract, it is stated that they are actually purchasing an entire set of learning CDs and will be charged $189.95.
The strategy of these ad-based games is to bait free-to-play game players. To increase competitive edge, some players use real money to get upgrades. However, those who do not want to shell out cash can fall prey to these “offers-marketing”, not knowing that they would likely end up paying more than what the upgrade or virtual items cost.
Due to the increase of scamming incidents, Facebook has taken action against some of these advertisers by disabling the ad networks and suspending several games. Hence, a lot of developers have been greatly affected by this move. In return, the developers opted to shut out their offers completely instead of losing a spot on Facebook.
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