There’s kids running up a few hundred bucks on in-app purchases, and then there’s the case of nine-year old YouTuber Mighty Mike Plays, who just cost his dad $118,000 – and possibly his job – after running a bunch of Google ad campaigns for his channel on papa's company credit card. 

The young Roblox and Minecraft YouTuber posted a video Tuesday – or perhaps it's more apt to say his father Dave posted the video to explain why Might Mike Plays might be going dark for a while. In it, nine-year-old Mike explains “I think this might be the end,” before handing the mic to his dad. 

“My son has been running some high-budget campaigns on YouTube that I was pretty much unaware of,” Dave explained after taking the mic. 

Dave didn’t figure this out after spotting the charges himself, however. He learned about it after being called into a meeting with his manager and the finance department at his employer, an unnamed “large” company where he works in marketing. Dave was confronted with a spreadsheet with a full breakdown of three weeks of advertising spending from his corporate card that totaled $118K and asked to explain it. 

“It dawned on me that, oh crap, this is probably something my son did,” Dave said in the video. “The number sitting on the page in front of me had about five more digits than it should have.” 

A breakdown of the spending named his child’s account, as well as Roblox and Minecraft video titles, making it pretty clear pretty quickly that Mighty Mike had been misusing dad’s corporate card. 

Whatever excuse Dave made for the mortgage-sized mess apparently didn’t go over too well with his employer, as Dave explained in the video that the matter is being escalated up the corporate ladder and he’s not sure if he’ll keep his job. 

“This is not just like a haha, funny story, everything worked out fine kinda situation,” Dave said. “There is a real genuine chance I have to end up personally having to pay some or all of this back out of my pocket.”

A series of avoidable events

As for how a nine-year old could run up six figures of ad spending to boost his video game recordings, Dave admits that’s pretty much entirely his fault. 

Dave started the channel for Mike a couple of years ago after watching his son spend hours in front of the computer passively ingesting Roblox and Minecraft videos posted by other players. He reasoned that encouraging Mike to record and post his own videos would at least be a bit more interactive. 

After a few months of doing so, Mike asked his dad for some Robux, the in-game currency used by Roblox players to buy cosmetic items and access to game features. In what would prove to be the first of several dumb moves, Dave put it on his company card. The advertising professional apparently failed to realize that putting those card details into the account made them permanently accessible.

Then came the second mistake: Mike said that his subscriber and viewer count wasn’t growing as fast as he wanted it to, so Dave sat him down and helped him set up a Google ad campaign for his videos with a $20 spending limit. 

“I didn’t think for one second that this was going to be an issue,” Dave admitted. “Huge mistake on my part; turns out he was watching a little more closely than I realized.”

After that $20 budget ran out, Mike simply started another campaign. Then another, and another, and presumably a bunch more after that, too. 

“When a nine-year old gets access to ad account with no limits and a CC that just says ‘approved’ every single time no matter what, he does not think that what he’s doing is wrong,” Dave said, correctly taking the blame for everything that happened. 

“This nine-year-old kid literally ransacked my company card,” Dave added. 

There are some good lessons for parents to take away from this: First off, don’t use your company card for personal purchases, which ought to go without saying. It’s perfectly reasonable that this should cost Dave his job, as he was apparently fine with using his company card for small personal purchases and is only feeling the sting of accountability because his kid went wild with company cash. 

Second, it’s probably safe to assume, after so many in-app purchase horror stories over the years, that any financial information stored on a device accessible to a kid is going to be used inappropriately, and you have no one to blame except yourself when it happens. 

“I’m not blaming him,” said Dave. “He’s only nine, he didn’t understand fully what a company card meant, or that a large number on the screen represented real money.” 

Better yet, just keep your kids away from screens. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest exposing kids to screen time – even a bit of it – has a long-term effect on their developing brains. Make ‘em go play outside, and if Minecraft is still on their minds just give ‘em a shovel and tell them to dig until they find some diamonds, or redstone, or something. It’s better for your wallet, the kids get exercise, and on the off chance they find something of value you can turn that into some Robux instead. ®