Several times in recent months we’ve expressed unease at children’s apps including in-app purchase options as high as £69.99, while there have also been regular media reports about kids blowing their parents’ iTunes accounts on virtual items.

Now something’s being done about it. The UK’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has launched an investigation into freemium web and ap-based games for children, exploring whether their in-app practices are “misleading, commercially aggressive or otherwise unfair”.

“We are concerned that children and their parents could be subject to unfair pressure to purchase when they are playing games they thought were free, but which can actually run up substantial costs,” says Cavendish Elithorn, the OFT’s senior director for goods and consumer.

The OFT says it has written to companies offering such games with questions about their practices – it’s not saying which ones though – as well as asking parents and consumer groups to contact it with their views on this area.

The investigation has teeth. The OFT says it wants to find out whether freemium games are making “direct exhortations” to children to make a purchase, to do something that will require making a purchase, or to persuade parents or other adults to make a purchase for them. The kicker being that this is already against the law in the UK.

Apple, Google and other app store owners may also fall under the investigation’s remit, since the OFT wants to find out “whether the full cost of some of these games is made clear when they are downloaded or accessed”.

Apple recently added a more prominent “Offers In-App Purchases” message to freemium apps’ pages on its App Store, but there may be scope for more information still – and on other companies’ app stores as well.

It’s important to note that the investigation isn’t trying to decide whether in-app purchases in themselves are bad or good – just the marketing practises around them.

“The OFT is not seeking to ban in-game purchases, but the games industry must ensure it is complying with the relevant regulations so that children are protected,” says Elithorn. “We are speaking to the industry and will take enforcement action if necessary.”

So what happens now? The OFT will gather information from games developers and “games hosting services” (this includes Facebook, as well as Apple, Google and other app store owners, and possibly online virtual worlds like Moshi Monsters we’re assuming) to “understand business practices used in this sector” and decide whether there’s wrongdoing.

It expects to publish its next steps by October based on that research. We’ll update this post with a link where you can make your views known to the investigation once we have it.

And our view? We’re sad to say it’s about time for a regulator like the OFT to step in and ask some searching questions about children’s apps and aggressive in-app purchase marketing.

We’ve seen games that deliberately pop up a message selling virtual items within the first 15 minutes of playing – something that means kids whose parents haven’t changed their default IAP settings can buy without entering a password.

We’ve seen apps based in world-famous children’s brands with in-app stores going as high as 70 quid. And we’ve seen games tugging on children’s heartstrings with sick animals that need to be cured (with virtual items that are purchased with real money, of course).

Yet we’ve also seen – and enjoyed – lots of apps that used in-app purchases responsibly, putting them firmly under parents’ control, and used for things like turning an app from a free trial to the full thing, or for buying individual digital books or level packs, which aren’t promoted aggressively.

IAP itself isn’t the problem, then, so we’re glad the OFT is recognising that.

We wonder if there’s scope to expand the investigation to cover advertising in children’s apps too. Many freemium games don’t just make money from in-app purchases: they carry ads too, and not always ones you’d want your children to be seeing and tapping on (examples: £400 Wonga cash loans, expensive ringtone subscriptions).

We hope the OFT investigation nudges the apps industry towards a point where parents are better educated about how their IAP Restrictions settings work; where scammy or over-aggressive app developers change their ways; and where the many honest developers making marvellous apps can reach and delight even more children and parents.

Call us optimists, perhaps!