Fraud Scare in App Store as Chinese Game Charges for Massive In-App Purchases

The game Hoolai Three Kingdoms is at the centre of this hacking-fraud case.

There are fears of credit card fraud among some users of the UK iTunes App Store after a Chinese game has stormed up to ninth place among the top-grossing games in the country. Some users of the game Hoolai Three Kingdoms, made by the Beijing-based Hoolai games studio, say the game has racked up huge amounts of in-app purchases that have been charged to their credit cards.

This whole controversy was spotted by Twitter user @will_luton. He snapped some of these desperate comments on the game’s iTunes App Store download page:

One newer comment added:

This game appeared in my purchase history and a card which I didn’t recognise was charged £69.99 for in-app content!!! Extremely Annoyed!!

It’s not possible to verify if the game somehow auto-downloaded onto some users’ iOS devices, as some claim.

The most popular in-app purchase for Hoolai Three Kingdoms is the pricey £69.99 (US$110) package, not the cheapest 69 pence ($1.10) one, as shown in this collage of screenshots:

But the Hoolai studio is an established operation with backing from Japan’s GREE (TYO:3632) and has tens of millions of users across its other multiplayer online games in China, so it’s likely that this is some very unfortunate incident in which the developers could be the victims as well – not the scammers. And so whichever fraudsters are making these huge in-app purchases have targeted this game because of its very sizeable in-app purchase options, so as to steal as much as possible in virtual items using the hijacked credit card – or App Store – credentials that they’ve somehow acquired.

The PocketGamer site spotted that the same game is rising in the app charts in the US, Canada, and Australia as well, suggesting this might turn out to be a major headache and embarrassment for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) – and an expensive hassle for users affected.