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More than 40 million children and adults play Fortnite Battle Royale and, with so much popularity, it rakes in around $1.5 million a day. Much of this money comes from in-app purchases, as one Redditor knows all too well.
"We have a fairly large family, four kids," a woman by the username of "The-Expert-Is-Here" wrote on the subreddit True Off My Chest. "Our 15 year old son spent $500ish on Fortnite skins/whatever without our permission. He will wake up on Christmas with no presents as payment for this. It's killing me inside a little since all the other kids will get gifts, but I also think it's an important lesson for him to learn."
After the many comments and her responses, the woman added an edit to clarify a few things.
"He has been told not to expect presents from us on Christmas. He thinks we're just threatening that, because we are kind of pushovers," she wrote. "This is not make or break money for us. I am working on trying to get a refund, but if I don't, it's not going to keep us from eating or paying rent or anything like that."
She continued: "This seems to be a very divisive topic. Either you think the punishment is fair and deserved or you think we're absolute assholes for even considering it. I get it. There's not one right answer. We did have a password for purchases, but he either guessed it or saw one of us inputting it at some time and memorized it. I now get a notification every time my card is used and the card info has been deleted out of the system."
Needless to say, there were a lot of opinions about the woman's choice not to purchase any gifts for her son — but not because it's Christmas. Many pointed out her seemingly lack of desire to stick to her aforementioned consequence. So far, the post has gained over 38,000 upvotes and more than 7,500 comments.
"Judging from OP's responses...I'm not shocked your kid is acting like an entitled brat. He only 'accepts' certain brand name gifts? He repeatedly steals your stuff without consequences? You can't raise him with that mindset and defend his actions and then wonder why he acts the way he does," boob__punch wrote.
"Seriously by 15 I knew not to do anything even a fraction this bad or Id be living an incredibly barebones existence literally until adulthood. OP has FOUR KIDS being raised like this. Yiiiikes," Waste-Passion said.
Tybackwoods00 agreed with a unique POV saying, "OPs son is going to end up in jail. I know this because I was that son. Not entitled to certain brand name gifts but definitely stealing from anyone and anything."
"You need to start parenting. Holy sh*t. I've been reading through your responses. Your kid walks all over you. He has zero respect. Do something!" SuperCalzor said.
"Reading through some of your comments on here, it seems there's something majorly wrong with you and your son's relationship. I don't know. It's just a Reddit post, but you may want to reflect on your actions/attitude and the consequences of such over the last 15 years. Based on the comments here, I'm sure this will be downvoted but I'm commenting anyway in hopes that you'll read this and reflect. For your son's sake," thaaaaatlady added.
They weren't all negative comments. Some offered encouragement and ways to make things right.
"You might be able to get it refunded if it's pretty recent. My kids did this, spent around $400 on fortnite stuff. I called Microsoft customer service and they refunded me. It must happen a lot," collectablespoons said.
"This is totally reasonable for a 15 year old. He was old enough to know exactly what he was doing and how wrong it was. If he gets upset, tell him that money he spent was supposed to be for gifts, and he already chose his gifts. Real parenting is supposed to hurt a little inside sometimes. Stick to your guns on this," give_me_goats added.
The post was still accumulating upvotes and comments at the time this was posted.
