Should I ban fortnite in my household?

[Gtiracer]

Really tempted to ban this game, it's causing so many arguments at the mo with my teenager it's absurd.

I hate the fact that there is so much peer pressure over this game between him and his mates with v bucks and in game purchases, I cannot stand games like this, it's like the ea loot crate problem but ten times worse.

Has anybody else stopped their child from playing this game?. He is 13 by the way.

 

[chroniclard]

My almost 11 year old plays it, bought the battle pass and never had to buy anything else as you can earn enough in game v bucks to buy the battle pass over and over. Dont let him have V bucks, waste of money. Dont have any issues with it.

 

[Mason-]

Why on earth do you think we would know? You've got to be the one to make the decision. If you're struggling to get him off to go to bed etc. then just turn the router off passed a certain time.

 

[Rifte]

My son is 9 years of age, and he has his own PC and Nintendo Switch.

The access to both is controlled by me and my wife via an app for the switch and passwords for the PC, and the router if necessary.

My son plays Minecraft, and I play WOW (elysium) with him. We use headphones, and he has ALL of his text boxes closed or minimized.

Now he is aware of Fortnite, his cousin plays it all the time....and by all the time, on one particular Saturday he started at 7am and finished at 8pm. Shocking parenting by my brother.

He has asked me to install it for him, however I wont because of a concern I have (maybe ignorance here) relating to the microphone. I used to get sick and fed up in my Halo 3 days of people claming that they had, had sex with my mother......I am not sure if he needs to hear that.

 

[Avenged7Fold]

Banning doesn't really work imo, well at least for me it didn't as a teenager. Are the arguments over virtual money or just playing the game when he shouldn't?

If he wants to spend money stupidly, make him work for it so he can spend his own. This way he can get a feel of what worth he is wasting. Trying to stop him from playing completely is a futile effort, especially if it is the way he socializes with his friends.

If you have already created an expectation for you to fund his in game spending, then you really have to put your foot down and refuse. No matter how much you argue about it, if you end up funding him then you are still enabling the behaviour.

TLDR - Don't spend a penny on in game purchases for him. Don't ban the game unless he keeps kicking off.

 

[chroniclard]

Microsoft family is useful here, if they are PC based. My kids have a set number of hours per day they can use the PC's, they get a 15 minute warning and can either accept it or beg for a little more time.

 

[Scania]

My 12 year old is obsessed with in game purchases - Fortnite being no exception - basically I’ve blanket banned all of them, he whinges that his friends have spent £££ on whatever, tough!

 

[Glanza]

Banning will make things worse, I don't get why he needs to constantly be buying V bucks for a new skin, buy the battlepass and earn some of the skins that require time rather than instantly buying them from the store.

 

[Hades]

My son is addicted. We do have to restrict his time sometimes and if he doesn't behave then it gets banned for a while... so it's actually useful sometimes!

 

[wolfie138]

if you can't make decisions about your family yourself w/out asking a bunch of strangers on a forum, maybe you shouldn't have children.

 

[chroniclard]

I find the battle pass model on fortnite pretty good, 9 quid or whatever and you can use it indefinitely if you dont waste your earned v bucks on skins. 4 or 5 months and not paid a penny on fortnite.

 

[Gtiracer]

We very rarely so in game purchases. Any they have had have been warned through household chores.

He gets upset because people at school taunt him for being bad at it and then moans that he should have more time in game.

We say you can have up to an hour (on weeknights) as long as chores are done. Quite often he only gets them finished late which means it starts to approach bedtime close to when he can start and then kicks off when he can't have his full hour.

So it's not all completely Fortnite related but it is upsetting him with peers at school

 

[cheesyboy]

My son is addicted.

I'm wary of giving Fortnite to my boy (8, nearly 9) as it does seem set up to take advantage of addiction impulses a bit (in common with a lot of big games, it must be said). Not that I've looked super closely - might give it a go myself to check it out before allowing it.

He's pretty happy with playing Minecraft (solo, Win 10 edition), so will leave him with that for now. He's still of an age where I can curate his games - not much peer pressure yet.

 

[glenimp617]

Yep, I heard on the TV some quite shocking stats. Something like 75% of children want to be a youtuber when they grow up, and also the number who play fortnite. My son falls into both those categories. Luckily he plays other games, and also believe it or not.....plays outside in the real world. Quite impressive for a 21st century boy.

Google wifi is good though, you can pause devices when they've had enough. I blame Microsoft for the outages lol

 

[antijoke]

My 13 year old also got addicted to it (even though he was limited to the amount of time he could actually play to about 6-8 hours a week), we ended up removing his xbox and banning him from playing the game.

It's a good game, but my God is it predatory on kids and really drives impulsive/addictive behaviours.

 

[Hades]

I'm wary of giving Fortnite to my boy (8, nearly 9) as it does seem set up to take advantage of addiction impulses a bit (in common with a lot of big games, it must be said). Not that I've looked super closely - might give it a go myself to check it out before allowing it.

He's pretty happy with playing Minecraft (solo, Win 10 edition), so will leave him with that for now. He's still of an age where I can curate his games - not much peer pressure yet.

I'm fairly relaxed about him being 'addicted' as long as it doesn't affect his school work. I was just as addicted to online Quake back in the day and thiing turned out fine. But it also has a positive side for him. he started a new school this year and he's got loads of friends through the game. He's also kept in touch with friends from his old school through it too. So in his case there are some positives, albeing tinged with some negatives.

In your case it sounds the right thing to do to let him keep playing Minecraft solo until other games and peer pressure knocks on the door. My son used to love Minecraft too.

 

[wingman]

if you can't make decisions about your family yourself w/out asking a bunch of strangers on a forum, maybe you shouldn't have children.

A touch harsh.

OP clearly knows that it's not an ideal situation, and just wanted to guage opinions. Strangers on a forum might actually provide better insight into the correct procedure than people he knows IRL.

Having said that I've not heard of any peer pressure with the game, didn't realise that was a thing. Few of my colleagues at work have children that play it regularly but they've never mentioned the pressure to buy V Bucks. Surely there's a large % of children at schools who don't play the game?

I personally wouldn't ban it. Restrict time on it? Maybe. But he's 13, is in High School, starting to make his first moves into adulthood etc, you should try to educate him to think for himself rather than ban it.

 

[Rifte]

This all reminds me of my Everquest days.

Unemployed and in a senior position in a top 5 guild on my server.....I used to be on that 15 to 18 hours a day......every day.

My 56.6k modem used to take a hammering.

 

[Gtiracer]

if you can't make decisions about your family yourself w/out asking a bunch of strangers on a forum, maybe you shouldn't have children.

Nice try troll but this is called a discussion forum for a reason, if you can't discuss things like an adult, maybe you should go back to school

 

[glenimp617]

GD moves up into second gear