According to the 2023 ESRB rating, Sprunki was rated E10+ (suitable for 10 and older) for “mild fantasy violence” and “simulated gambling mechanism”. Visual violence frame rate in the combat scenes within the game accounted for 8% (e.g., skill effects triggering 3.2 explosion animations every second). In comparison to its comparable game “Minecraft” (with a violent frame rate of 2%), its child-friendly parental environment is four times worse. For instance, as per the survey of Brazilian Youth Protection Committee in 2022, it was observed that 23% of users between the ages of 9-12 were experiencing symptoms of temporary anxiety lasting for 12 minutes on average, induced by Sprunki’s “Dungeon raid” mode mostly due to the high-stakes mechanism occasionally activated at 45-second intervals via the “monster raid” incident.
In the anti-addiction system, Sprunki is dependent on switching on the minor mode, limiting children’s gameplay to 1.5 hours of game time per day (overridable to 3 hours upon authentication through a parent’s password). But practice-based surveillance leads to 78% of children bypassing the limitation by exchanging adult accounts. In 2023, a survey conducted by the South Korean Ministry of Education reported that roughly 120,000 elementary and high school students reduced their daily average study time by 47 minutes due to Sprunki addiction. Among those whose school rankings decreased by more than 30%, 41% of them played games for more than four hours per day. In addition, the ratio of in-game social activities (voice chat, recruitment of guild) with unfiltered keywords reaches up to 17% (for example, “paid team formation” and other inducing content), whereas the rate of unfiltered identical educational game “Robles” only has 3%.
The mechanism of consumption is very hazardous – Sprunki’s “Magic Treasure Chest” system has adopted the microtransactions based on probabilities (Gacha mechanism) such that it will cost just 1.99 for one treasure chest and drop rate as high-end apparatuses (like “Star Bow”) is no more than 0.15420 (from Apple iOS). Statistics from the Parent Control panel show that when the in-app purchase feature was disabled, children’s account activity dropped by 72%, which verifies that paid content is a significant factor in user stickiness.
In terms of data privacy compliance, Sprunki is COPPA (United States Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) compliant. Under-13 users need to input their guardians’ email addresses to undergo real-name verification (98% pass rate). Voice chat records are stored and encrypted with AES-256, and data leakage accident rate is as low as 0.03% (industry average is 0.12%). But in 2023, the German youth protection agency Jugendschutz.net reported that Sprunki is gathering device data (e.g., GPS accuracy ±12 meters) through SDK 1.2 times per minute, a frequency 34% higher than the “minimum collection principle” of the EU GDPR.
In spite of the controversy, Sprunki’s “Education Expansion Pack” released in 2022 reached 830,000 student users globally with STEM challenge activities (e.g., constructing a floating island that requires the use of basic physics concepts), and the overall logic test score of the participants rose by 19%. The Indonesian Ministry of Education pilot program demonstrates that three-dimensional spatial cognition capacity is enhanced by 37% through the 2-hour-per-week Sprunki “Architectural Simulation course,” but the access privileges to non-learning materials must be closely monitored (e.g., turning off the PVP mode). The rational intervention of guardians (e.g., establishing the “learning Mode” time lock) can increase the educational value of the game to 3.7 times the risk cost and reach a balance.