AN 11-year-old boy spent all of his family’s saving on a mobile game in only three months without letting his parents know. His father found it out only when he was informed that his bank card was out of money.
The father, surnamed Li, spent years saving up a little more than 30,000 yuan (US$4,414). The family lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Dalang, Longhua District.
When Li attempted to make a deposit recently, a bank clerk told him that all of the money on his card had been transferred out of his account.
Feeling extremely shocked, Li asked the staffer to check the transaction records of his bank card for him and saw that 207 transactions had been made from January to April to Tencent.
Li called Tencent and found his card was bound to a QQ number. He had never used QQ before, so Tencent customer service suggested that he check with his family members. His son, identified as Xiaohui, admitted to Li that he had applied for the QQ account and that he had used all of his father’s money to purchase props for his characters on “Glory of the King,” a mobile phone game produced by Tencent.
Xiaohui is a Grade-5 student in a primary school. He said that a classmate of his had given him a cheap smartphone early this year so they could play the game together. Xiaohui became addicted to the game.
“After losing the game, I wanted to be stronger so I thought of buying the props,” said Xiaohui.
He stole his father’s card from his wallet and bound the card to his QQ account. He deleted the text messages from the bank.
In only three months, Xiaohui spent more than 30,000 yuan to buy nearly 50 virtual characters for the game.
Li was furious and smashed the phone in front of his son.
Tencent has promised to refund the family.
The game is popular among young people. Statistics show that there are more than 200 million registered players of the game and 50 million daily active players. The game is especially appealing to players at a young age. As much as 54 percent of the players are between the ages of 11 and 20. (Zhang Qian)
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