Legal provisions on the recharge of underage games

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New Hainan Client, Nanhai Net, Southern Metropolis Daily reporter Wang Tianwen/map

"If you want to dress better and have stronger skills ... come and charge with Krypton!" Recently, a 13-year-old girl in Hainan was attracted by an online mobile game, and secretly used her mother's WeChat to recharge the virtual game currency "Diamond", amounting to 65,438+100,000 yuan. This behavior made the child's mother furious.

In recent years, incidents of minors playing games with large sums of money have occurred from time to time, so can the money charged by minors into the game be refunded? Do parents of children need to take responsibility?

The recharge interface of games played by children in Jason. Reporter Wang Tianyu photo

Event: Hainan 13-year-old girl stole the game and recharged it 10000 yuan.

Recently, Jason (not her real name) was in trouble, because her 13-year-old daughter was attracted by an online mobile game called "Cats and Mice" and secretly used Jason's WeChat to recharge the game to buy the virtual game coin "Diamond", amounting to more than RMB 10000.

If it wasn't for the WeChat bookkeeping pushed by WeChat Pay on the morning of June 26th, Jason was still kept in the dark. "I just got out of the hospital that day. The amount of expenditure shown by WeChat bookkeeping yesterday reached more than 4,000 yuan. There is not so much expenditure in the impression. " Zhang Jie said that she carefully checked the transaction records and found that many bills were for "cat and mouse diamonds", and the deduction merchant was a computer system company in Shenzhen.

Seeing these transaction records, Jason was dumbfounded because she didn't buy them herself. At first, she didn't know what she bought, but after checking with her children, she knew that it was the virtual game coin "diamond" that the children secretly bought on the game with their mobile phones.

Jason displays part of the deduction information on his mobile phone. Reporter Wang Tianyu photo

After verification, Jason found that from May 3 1 to June 26 this year, her mobile phone * * * had 55 transaction records to purchase this product. The maximum amount is 648 yuan, and the minimum amount is 1 yuan.

Jason revealed to reporters that the child's game account was registered with her QQ, and the payment was made without her knowledge.

"To be honest, I never told my child my WeChat payment password. It may be that I secretly wrote it down when I took my child to the supermarket to buy things and enter the password. " Jason said that because of this incident, the child knew that he was wrong and wrote her an apology letter to admit his mistake.

In order to recover the loss, Jason called the game's health game counseling platform to reflect the situation, and applied for a refund according to the relevant tips of the customer service staff.

Part of the deduction information compiled by Jason. Reporter Wang Tianyu photo

On the morning of June 30, Jason told reporters that the game platform claimed that the recharge amount of the game account was more than 9,000 yuan, but it was not fully refunded. At present, she has received 50 refund messages, totaling more than 8,000 yuan. She was satisfied with the amount of the refund. Because as parents, there are also regulatory negligence. In addition, she reminded parents to take good care of their mobile phones, bank cards and other items, and not to let their children know the payment password, so as not to cause unnecessary losses.

Status quo: The phenomenon of minors' game recharge occurs from time to time.

In fact, the recharge behavior of minors playing games is not only not conducive to their forming a correct view of money, but also affects their studies and makes some families who are not rich worse. In order to recover the loss, parents will try to get their money back through various channels, but few can get it all back.

202 1, a similar case occurred in Haikou. 10 Xiao Ming (a pseudonym) took a fancy to a game and secretly used his mother's mobile phone to recharge more than 40 thousand yuan in the game. Xiao Ming's mother found out and applied for a refund of the game, only paying more than 20 thousand yuan.

The reporter noted that the above cases are not individual cases, and it is not uncommon for minors to play mobile games to recharge and cause refund disputes. According to media reports on May 20th this year, Zhao Nvshi, Baoding, Hebei Province, reported that his 1 1 year-old son played three games with his relatives' mobile phones and recharged them 66 times in a few days, totaling 14684 yuan, and had a dispute with the game developers.

In addition, the reporter combed the public media reports and related cases of China Judgment Document Network, and found that in cases involving minor network service contract disputes, parents often encounter the problems of "difficulty in proof" and "difficulty in refund" when applying for a refund from the platform. In some cases, the plaintiff lost the case because he was not sure that the subject of the transaction was a minor. In the referee case where the parents won the case, the court supported the platform to return part of the money.

Statement:

A. Can I ask for a refund for a large amount of recharge in minors' games?

In recent years, there have been frequent incidents of minors playing games to recharge their batteries. So, can parents ask for a refund? In this regard, Lin Lihua, a lawyer of Hainan Guo Xian Law Firm, said that according to Article 19 of the Civil Law: "A minor over the age of eight is a person with limited capacity for civil conduct, and he is represented by his legal representative or licensed by his legal representative to carry out civil legal acts; However, you can independently implement civil legal acts that are purely beneficial or civil legal acts that are suitable for your age and intelligence. " Article 20 stipulates: "Minors under the age of eight are persons without capacity for civil conduct, and their legal representatives shall act as agents to carry out civil legal acts". "Guiding Opinions of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning Proper Trial of Civil Cases Related to COVID-19 Epidemic (II)" mentioned that the people's court should support those who restrict persons with civil capacity to participate in online paid games or "reward" online live broadcast platforms without their guardians' consent. According to the above regulations, it is not legally effective for minors under the age of eight to recharge the game. Parents or guardians are required to represent and agree, otherwise they can ask for a refund. For minors over the age of eight, if the amount of recharge games is large, which does not match their age, intelligence level, consumption ability and consumption level, and their parents or guardians have not obtained their consent or ratification, their parents or guardians may ask for a refund.

B. Is the burden of proof to prove the minor's recharge borne by the parents?

In reality, some parents apply for a refund but can't get a refund, which involves legal evidence. Then, is the burden of proof to prove the minor's recharge entirely borne by the parents or the legal supervisor?

In this regard, Lin Lihua said that when such cases are triggered, the court will pay attention to and review: the registrant and user or actor of the game account, the effectiveness of the contract, the degree of fault of both parties, whether the losses and behaviors are compatible with the age and intelligence of the minors, and may also consider the type of the game, the living environment in which the minors grew up, and the family economic situation. In view of the fact that most online games on the market are equipped with anti-addiction mechanisms for minors, thresholds have been set from the beginning of registration, including signing electronic contracts, real-name authentication, and even face recognition. In the game recharge, some game platforms will set a monthly recharge limit, which requires face verification to continue recharging. Therefore, for the game platform, the main evidence is the evidence of fulfilling the regulatory obligations. As for the evidence of whether the consumption of minors should be refunded, parents should bear the burden of proof according to the principle of who advocates who gives evidence, otherwise there may be legal risks of being refused a refund or losing the case.

C. Do parents bear the losses if they fail to effectively supervise their children's payment behavior?

Lin Lihua said, for example, taking the recharge of minors' games, although the electronic protocols of games and live broadcast platforms generally stipulate that recharge users must confirm that they have reached the age of 18 and have full capacity for civil conduct, or underage users need to obtain the consent of their guardians when using the recharge service. However, in reality, it is not uncommon for minors to steal their parents' identity information or directly use their parents' accounts, which makes it difficult to verify the identity of minors, and the convenient mobile payment function does not require identity verification. Therefore, in this kind of service contract dispute, it is difficult for minors to prove that the act is legally invalid. Even if it proves that it is a minor's consumption, the court will assess whether the parents are negligent in management. Or fail to limit the time and way of children's online games, fail to take reasonable measures to manage identity information and passwords, fail to take active educational measures to guide children to establish a reasonable consumption concept, and thus judge parents to bear corresponding responsibilities.