Did any of you find RollerCoaster Tycoon harder as an adult once you knew what maxing out that debt tab actually means? Yeah. Yeah… Well, what began in best intentions has backfired for one father, who says his back is against the wall after his nine-year-old son’s Minecraft channel cost him his job and potentially his house. Having spent more than $100K on in-site ads boosting the YouTube page “Mighty Mike Plays,” the parent says he has a month to recoup costs.
“I’m Dave, I’m Mike’s dad,” says the parent. “Apparently my son has been running some high budget campaigns on YouTube that I was pretty much unaware of… He’s nine. He’s pretty tech savvy. So we just thought he was having fun.”
According to the video, Mike came to his father a few weeks ago, frustrated at how little traction his YouTube videos were garnering. Dave helped his kid create an ad campaign to boost his viewership. The campaign they set up together was only for $20 of promotions. This all sounds rather wholesome, but unbeknownst to Dave, Mike returned to YouTube’s ad suite and began running up a tab of $118K.
Obviously this did help Mighty Mike’s videos, and you can see a clear jump from a few hundred views to tens of thousands. But in the grand scheme of things, not a great situation. Dave explains this Google account was tied to his corporate card. After a tense confrontation with his employers, Dave says the joyride cost him his job. Expected to recoup the costs, he may have to sacrifice his house as well.
In a few short days, the humbled video has accumulated over three million views. As with all YouTube affairs at this scale, the roundtable of streamers have their skepticism. Drama chronicler MoistCr1tikal believes this could be a scam, as instead of setting up a GoFundMe page or other popular online financial aid, Dave is directing viewers to a merch page, where they can pick up AI generated tees that read “wassup chat.” In a follow-up video, Dave said he’s pretty naive about YouTube culture, and is mostly pushing through the exhaust to stay afloat.
“I’m not making this update to guilt anybody into buying a t-shirt,” says Dave. “I genuinely have no idea what our lives are going to look like a month from now. That’s literally terrifying to say out loud.”
It’s not the most uncommon story in the world. Games overwhelmingly popular amongst children run off infinite premium purchases. While Dave could have kept a finer eye on his son’s online activities, there are endless similar stories of kids running up steep bills on Robux. The companies at the center of those controversies seem slow to respond, though governing bodies around the world have begun to address potential exploitation of kids and their parents’ wallet in the online spaces they most frequent.