Bunch Group Video Chat & Games
By Neilie Johnson,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Play games while video chatting with simple social network.
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Bunch Group Video Chat & Games
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Privacy Rating
Our expert evaluators create our privacy ratings. The ratings are designed to help you understand how apps use your data for commercial purposes.
Pass
Meets our minimum requirements for privacy and security practices.
Warning
Does not meet our recommendations for privacy and security practices.
Fail
Does not have a privacy policy and should not be used.
Privacy Rating
Our expert evaluators create our privacy ratings. The ratings are designed to help you understand how apps use your data for commercial purposes.
Pass
Meets our minimum requirements for privacy and security practices.
Warning
Does not meet our recommendations for privacy and security practices.
Fail
Does not have a privacy policy and should not be used.
What’s It About?
BUNCH GROUP VIDEO CHAT & GAMES is a video chat app that lets you see a friend and chat while playing mobile games with your friends. Three simple games come with the download: Flappy Birds, Mars Dash, and Charades; others must be downloaded separately. The app uses your contact list and lets you invite friends via iMessage, Bunch Code (a scannable QR code), Facebook, and other social media apps. You can't play the games by yourself. First you have to "start a party" (invite friends), and the game starts when at least one of them accepts. Small video windows overlay the game screen so that you and your friends can see and hear one another during the game or use text chat. You can turn off camera and microphone functions at any time.
Is It Any Good?
This simple app has been compared to popular PC voice/text chat service Discord, but it has a ways to go before being quite as useful. For one thing, its usage at the time of this writing is very limited. Bunch Group Video Chat & Games comes bundled with three simple games, and the app itself doesn't offer any downloadable alternatives. True, if you register using your Facebook account, you get a welcome email with a list of games like Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft, but the list is disappointingly short. Also, signing up with Facebook means more data sharing, which more and more people are trying to avoid. The developer claims there are other games "secretly" supported by the app, but seems to expect you to find those on your own. This oddly obstructive approach becomes even more disappointing if you choose not to connect your Facebook account and instead sign up with your phone number. Phone registrants get no welcome message or game list, and are likely to think they're stuck with only the three games that come with the app. The developers provide a built-in suggestion box asking users to suggest games to be added in the future, but that's not much consolation for the current limited selection. On the plus side, what the app does have works reasonably well. And from a kid safety standpoint, the contact list-based friend selection seems to prevent kids from friending -- or being friended by -- strangers. The problem is, if it wants to become a Discord-like, must-have mobile game add-on, it's got to broaden its usability by, well, a lot. Until that happens, other, better screen-sharing options will continue to beat it out.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about video/voice chat safety in Bunch Group Video Chat & Games and other apps. Who is it safe to chat with? What kinds of information should you keep offline?
Think about apps that point you toward third-party downloads. What are the risks of downloading something you're not familiar with, that's recommended by other programs, or that doesn't exist in one of the official app stores?
Discuss how game-related voice/video chat could be misused. What's OK to say and not to say? What are the risks of using it for something other than game-related chat?
App Details
- Devices: iPhone , iPod Touch , iPad
- Pricing structure: Free
- Release date: October 12, 2017
- Category: Social Networking
- Publisher: 500 Labs
- Version: 4.0.2
- Minimum software requirements: iOS 10.0 or later
- Last updated: March 11, 2019
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