One of the most important aspects of any online gaming service is how you pay for it. As gamers, we’re willing to spend a substantial amount of cash with companies that we trust. These days it’s not just boxed games and MMO subscriptions either – publishers offer us a range of in-game items and downloadable content to extend and enhance the games we play.
The cornerstone of all of this is trust. Do we trust the games companies to use our payment details safely? Will we be left out of pocket when things go wrong? Can we rely on them to put things right quickly, or are we likely to be left without service for an extended time?
For most of us these questions remain unanswered until it’s too late. Recently there’s been an upswell of reports that Microsoft’s xBox Live service was costing people large amounts of cash, as criminals run up huge bills on compromised accounts before selling them on third party sites on the backwaters of the internet.
It’s the kind of news that you can put down to “phishing attempts”, “social engineering” or other bland terms that tend to push responsibility back to the customer. But what if it’s Microsoft’s service design that actually exposes us to greater risk and creates a greater market for purloined accounts?