How do I get my child games that are rated as older than he is?

[GraniteStateColin]

I have a 3 year old child with his own account on a Windows 10 tablet that he shares with my 7 year-old daughter. Each of them has a limited amount of time they can use the device each day, controlled via the Family settings on our Live/Outlook.com accounts. That works great, but it also means that each child needs the apps he uses accessible from his own account so they are not eating up each other's time.

There are some games my daughter plays that I want my son to be able to play from his own account, but they are rated 6+ for the age. How can I, as the parent, install those to his account?

I must say, unless I'm just missing the entire page where this is controlled, I find the entire method for getting apps for kids a real pain. I should be able to see at a glance what they have installed, block use of certain apps, and buy games/apps for them and add them to their app list without needing to even log-in to my child's account.

 

[charlatan1978]

Maybe I am misreading your post, but isn't your son's account doing what it should do, by preventing him playing games that are over his age rating?
Otherwise you may as well set him up as a 7 year old.

 

[sinime]

If they are sharing tablet, then technically the 3 year old should be able to use apps installed for the 7 year old, unless you choose to block them. My daughter has access to games I purchased while logged in as herself.

My daughter is also 3 and I am having issues letting her buy stuff on the Xbox... Wish I had just made her older when I set up the account, because now I can't seem to get her age adjusted. The problem is that certain games, while targeted for 6+ or 13+ kids, I am fine with her playing and she wants to play them. Fruit Ninja for example. Also, because of her age, she can't get certain free avatar props... such as the Friskies prop or the MS Ninja Cat stuff.

 

[GraniteStateColin]

Maybe I am misreading your post, but isn't your son's account doing what it should do, by preventing him playing games that are over his age rating?
Otherwise you may as well set him up as a 7 year old.

That may be the design, but it's poor design, because it's also preventing me from adding specific games to his account that I think are fine for him to play. Basically any game rated below teen is going to be entirely family friendly (and even that is subjective, as different parents have different ideas what they want their kids to see or not see). Beyond that, it's just what he's able to play. If he enjoys a game rated for a 6-year old and can play it, there is no reason why Microsoft should make it so hard for me to give him access to that game, especially when it's ALREADY INSTALLED ON THE TABLET.

The ratings are helpful as a guide to parents, and probably decent for kids when installing their own apps to prevent them from installing games that a parent might not approve, but there is apparently no way for parents to go through and select apps for their kids. That seems like an obvious feature that is entirely missing.

On the same subject, the daily timer is great, but it would be nice to have more granularity so a parent could allow his/her child to use certain educational programs for up to 2 hours, but other games only for 30 minutes a day in addition to still setting an overall max time for the entire device.

 

[GraniteStateColin]

If they are sharing tablet, then technically the 3 year old should be able to use apps installed for the 7 year old, unless you choose to block them. My daughter has access to games I purchased while logged in as herself.

That doesn't fit with what I see at all, nor does that match with anything I've read online. If my daughter has a game (or if I do) the only way for my son to have access when he's logged in is to also separately go to the Store and Install it for him. It is not necessary to buy it again if it's a paid game/app, but it is necessary to separately install it. I don't know if this actually stores it two or three times on the drive, or if it's only stored once and the extra install is just needed to give the other account access.

But my problem, as you've identified with Fruit Ninja, is that it's too hard to get games intended for older kids that may be fine for younger kids. The only way I have found to get past this is to turn off age-blocking or set my child's age to something much higher. But what if I only want to give access to a few particular older games? No way to do that, as far as I can tell.

My work-around is to turn off the age-blocking for my child from my account, wait several minutes for that to apply to my child's account, go to the Store from my child's account on the device he's using and install it, then turn age-blocking back from my computer. What a pain and no need to make this so complicated.

Just give us an option to add any app we've already purchased to any accounts on our family with all the same device constraints they already have in place to prevent abuse, then when that other family member accesses their Store, it should show up in a list of "Family Provided" apps or equivalent.

 

[sinime]

It's definitely not putting 2 copies on the PC. I downloaded Forza 6 and it's available to my daughter. I don't recall if I had to go to the store and install it for it to show up for her, but it definitely didn't re-download (it's a rather large game).

 

[GraniteStateColin]

It's definitely not putting 2 copies on the PC. I downloaded Forza 6 and it's available to my daughter. I don't recall if I had to go to the store and install it for it to show up for her, but it definitely didn't re-download (it's a rather large game).

Thanks for the info! That's definitely good to know.