"You can get new skins by scanning the QR code." During the summer vacation, 12-year-old Li Ke received a private message from an unknown account while playing the game "Egg Boy Party". The other party said that he could receive game benefits by scanning the QR code. After scanning the QR code, Li Ke joined a QQ group called "Danzai No. 1 Delivery Person" and added a group administrator. Subsequently,The administrator threatened Li Ke on the grounds that there was an error in receiving benefits, saying that her parents' WeChat and bank cards would be frozen in thirty minutes, and she needed to contact internal personnel immediately to turn off this function.
Li Ke, a child, transferred money through QQ video operations and was transferred 100,000 yuan. Fortunately, Li Ke's mother immediately called the police and froze the relevant bank accounts after noticing it, and was able to recover the defrauded money.
However, other defrauded families were not so lucky.
On social platforms, if you search with the keyword "Egg Boy Party", you will find many parents sharing posts about their children being defrauded.Among the five parents interviewed by New Vision, the one who was defrauded of the largest amount was a 10-year-old child. When the parents found out, more than 200,000 yuan had been transferred from his bank card.
Picture | Li Ke’s conversation with the liar
"Egg Boy Party" is a mobile game for jelly beans. With its cute game style, simple game mode and strong social attributes, it has attracted a large number of underage users born in the 10s and 2000s.
According to official information,The number of daily online players of this game has exceeded 3 million.
01. “You don’t need to verify when you play games”
The money was transferred in the middle of the night
"Parents are responsible for this. There is no need to verify children's games. Who will take care of this kind of thing if it happens." On the morning of July 6, as the mother of a ten-year-old girl, Hu Liping discovered that a total of 22,680 yuan had been transferred from her account. Looking at her nervous daughter beside her, she felt angry and helpless.
On the night of July 5, Hu Liping found that several amounts of money, 3999, 11535, 570..., had been transferred from her bank account within half an hour. Hu Liping, who noticed something was wrong, pressed her daughter Yaoyao and found out that Yaoyao saw a page offering free game skins, added a stranger's QQ number, changed her password under the temptation and intimidation of the other party, and transferred the money in her bank card to the stranger through WeChat transfer.
Picture | Bank transfer slip provided by Hu Liping
Hu Liping's daughter Yaoyao is 10 years old and is in the third grade of a primary school in Tianxin District, Changsha.During the summer vacation, Hu Liping discovered that Yaoyao was obsessed with "Egg Boy Party". At first, she just finished her homework for a while, but later it got out of control.
At first, Hu Liping thought that her daughter would need to verify her identity information with her real name every time she logged into the game.What she didn't expect was that with just one real-name login, Yaoyao could easily log in to the game again without entering any information, and without text messages or face verification again.
This allowed Yaoyao to take advantage of the situation. She often secretly took out her iPad and indulged in "Egg Boy Party" behind her parents' back.
"One night in the middle of the night, I went to the bathroom and noticed that there was light in her room. When I got closer, I saw that she was playing games under the covers." Hu Liping said that her daughter often played "Danzi Game" on her mobile phone, but she did not receive text messages on her mobile phone.
Yaoyao likes to dress up the fat Danzi in the game "Egg Boy Party", that is, changing the skin in the game. This is also the favorite topic of discussion among female classmates in the class. Her egg cubs now have red beans and poached egg sets, and she is still working hard to collect zaizai bear sets. In order to discuss Danzi's skin, Yaoyao and her classmates also formed a dress-up group.
Unexpectedly, the egg boy skin that students like has become a bait for criminals to hunt them down.
According to Yaoyao’s recollection,When she was playing Danzi, someone privately chatted with her on TT Voice (a mobile game voice platform), saying that there was an official event to get the Danzi skin for free. Then she added a QQ number named "Route Home 9668". The other party asked her to scan the QR code page to receive benefits. After scanning, she was told that because she was a minor, the illegal operation caused the account to be frozen, and she would be subject to legal sanctions if she exceeded the deadline.
Picture｜Fake official notice produced by criminals
During the conversation, the other party kept threatening Yaoyao, "Why didn't you tell me earlier that you were underage? If it can't be done within an hour, my sister's money will never be back. If she can't get it back, my sister will have no choice but to call the police. If you call the police directly, your parents will also go to jail."
Picture | Liar threatens Yaoyao
"I was scared." Yaoyao felt very scared after hearing these words. She followed the other party's instructions and transferred four amounts of money to the other party through WeChat.
02. Parents question "Egg Boy Party"
The anti-addiction system for minors is useless
Since this year, many underage students have been deceived by receiving "Egg Boy Party", skins or purchasing accounts.
During the summer vacation, government affairs accounts in Zhejiang, Shanghai, Dongguan, Guangdong, Quanzhou, Fujian and other places reported minor fraud cases related to "Egg Boy Party". According to the government affairs account of the Wenling police in Zhejiang, during September, there were 29 cases of "Egg Party" game fraud in Wenling city.
New Vision learned from the interview that in June this year, 11-year-old Luo Xinyu from rural Anhui was drawn into the "Danzi Fun" group and was defrauded of 17,000 yuan in the process of receiving the skin. In order to receive the Danzi skin, 10-year-old Zhao Lele from Foshan, Guangdong was defrauded of more than 200,000 yuan. Her parents reported the case and there has been no response. In July, Wei Ming, a second grader at Haidian Primary School in Beijing, was defrauded of 11,000 yuan when he purchased an Danzi account.
The fraud techniques of this type of game are very similar. Many underage players are deceived by "adding QQ to get free skins", and then add strangers as friends through social software. Under the inducement and intimidation of the scammer, they followed the scammer's instructions to redeem the skin. In the end, not only did they not receive the skin, but the deposits in their family's account were also transferred by the fraud gang.
With the exposure of many underage fraud incidents, parents have strongly questioned the underage protection measures and anti-addiction system of "Egg Boy Party".
"After a child uses his parents' information for real-name authentication, there is no verification when logging in to the game again, even through secondary identity verification such as text messages. Isn't this a loophole?" Hu Liping believes that although parents have the main responsibility for supervision, the anti-addiction system of "Egg Boy Party" is too loose, providing room for criminals to operate.
"I reported it to customer service, but they said it was an adult account login that could quickly recharge and play games. They didn't think there was any problem at all." Hu Liping said angrily.
Li Ke’s mother also expressed her worries, “Many people’s children around me have been defrauded of money, all because of the game Eggman Party.” She believes that the login of the game “Eggman Party” is too simple, making it difficult for parents to guard against it.
According to the feedback from the above-mentioned parents, minors can log in to the "Egg Party" game through various channels, such as entering an adult's ID card at will, or purchasing an account online to log in.
Some parents reported that the official game "Egg Boy Party" has an anti-addiction system, but it does not have the multi-channel server. Children can easily log into the game by purchasing numbers online, and it is also very easy to be defrauded when purchasing accounts. "He bought an account to play online without telling us. He didn't dare to tell me that he was cheated. If I hadn't discovered it early, I don't know how much money he would have been cheated of."
Channel servers refer to official servers (official servers). In order to attract users and obtain more revenue, the game party signs a customized version of the game with the channel party. It is usually downloaded through mobile app stores or other platform channels. Multiple channel services will also increase the difficulty of anti-addiction supervision for minors in gaming.
New Vision searched with the keyword "Egg Boy Party" and found that social platforms are full of information about channel service account sales. One of them showed that I would like to rent an account from a certain mobile channel service. An empty account is also acceptable, as long as there is no anti-addiction.
Picture｜"Eggboy Party" rental account information on social platforms
New Vision's actual testing found that when users log in to "Egg Boy Party", they only need to fill in their name and ID card information to determine whether it is included in the anti-addiction system. You can enter the real identity information of any adult at will and you can play the game directly without secondary verification. After exiting and opening the game again, there is no need to verify your identity.
Picture｜New Vision actually measured landing at Eggman Party
This means that two years after the strictest new anti-addiction rules in history were implemented, “Egg Boy Party” lacks an effective identity verification system to prevent minors from becoming addicted to the game.
03. Is "Eggboy Party" really unstoppable?
New Vision sent an interview letter to the "Egg Party" game team regarding the "Egg Party game breeds fraud" and the anti-addiction protection of minors.
On October 20, "Eggboy Party" responded that it was inconvenient to respond to such fraud incidents, and attached an overall introduction to the company's protection of minors in games.
According to the introduction, in response to the behavior of minors pretending to be adults to bypass anti-addiction, the company used the deep learning framework pytorch to build a set of neural network models to determine whether the player's characteristics belong to suspected underage players, and conduct timely interception, verification and effective control.
In addition, a face recognition system has been further developed based on this AI recognition system, and face recognition will be launched for users who are highly suspected of being minors.
However, parents did not buy the explanation of "Egg Boy Party". As a parent, Pan Ling said that "Egg Boy Party" did not strictly enforce the anti-addiction regulations for minors. Both AI technology and content supervision were very loose, and the platform should bear corresponding responsibility for this. Parent Sun Yan thinks it has no effect. "This game group is mainly played by primary school students. The children around them only play for an hour. Their anti-addiction system is not ideal."
Black Cat Complaint Platform shows,There are 12,025 complaints related to the game "Eggman Party". Among them, a search using "underage" as the keyword produced 5,352 results, all of which were based on reasons such as refunds of recharges for minors, inducing consumption at egg boy parties, etc.
In September this year, the Shanghai Consumer Rights Protection Committee issued "three soul questions" to "Danzi Party", pointing out that "Danzi Party" has been reported by consumers that the game has problems such as difficulty in refunding purchases, fast games, channel services and other anti-addiction loopholes.
In response to behaviors such as minors pretending to be parents to log into games, Internet analyst Zhang Shule said in an interview with New Vision,Once minors bypass the anti-addiction system and enter the game, the game manufacturer should bear corresponding responsibilities due to design loopholes, including but not limited to refunding the recharge amount, shutting down relevant accounts, proactively issuing an apology statement, and quickly iterating the game version to seal the loopholes.
Zhang Shule said that facial recognition can indeed have a miraculous effect in solving "physical isolation" in minors' game recharge. However, the research and development, operation and maintenance, and data confidentiality of facial recognition work also require a lot of technical and financial support. Generally, small and medium-sized game manufacturers do not have the technical strength and funds to deploy in place. But in Pan Ling’s view,As the operator of "Egg Boy Party", it is fully capable of using technical means to strengthen supervision, but it does nothing. "Game parties cannot say a protection statement, or sign the user terms by default, and then think that they are compliant."
With the daily active data exceeding 3 million, the revenue data of "Egg Boy Party" has also increased.According to statistics from Qimai, in February this year, the game "Egg Boy Party" earned approximately US$27.3446 million (approximately RMB 185 million) in revenue on the iOS side alone, surpassing MiHoYo's gold-sucking beast "Genshin Impact" and second only to "Honor of Kings" and "Peace Elite".
As a game that has a huge influence on young children, in addition to its commercial performance, "Egg Boy Party" may have more issues that need to be solved, such as the protection of minors.
(At the request of the interviewee, Hu Liping, Pan Ling, Yaoyao, Li Ke, Luo Xinyu, Zhao Lele and Wei Ming are pseudonyms in the article)
Author｜Jiang Pou
Editor｜Yu Hao