Loot Boxes are Gambling - Get fucked EA

[Deftscythe]

Banning lootboxes would be a win for those who are irresponsible with their money(including kids who can't be expected to know better), but not necessarily for game consumers as a whole. If lootboxes are banned, I fully expect the standard price of AAA games to rise, probably to $70.

[Ksandra]

Banning lootboxes would be a win for those who are irresponsible with their money(including kids who can't be expected to know better), but not necessarily for game consumers as a whole. If lootboxes are banned, I fully expect the standard price of AAA games to rise, probably to $70.

I have advocated for this for a long time, actually. SNES games were $60. Now, they were able to keep it at that price for so long as sales increased, but they've leveled out which has led to the dlc, lootbox, etc. madness we all know today.


I would gladly pay $70 or even $80-$100 for a full complete game.

[dasva]

I fully expect them to try and raise them however not sure the player base will completely go along with that. Fact is they are still making boatloads of money off the games themselves with development costs actually overall going down. Though part of that is sometimes releasing blatantly unfinished buggy games then charging more to finish/fix them

The reason some have shifted to a more micro transaction model is they can actually make more money off that then the game itself while development costs for those are like 10-20% of what the game would be. People pay a lot more attention when going to buy a game then a little at a time. Not that that's anything new. I'm sure most of us have at one time or another spent more money at an arcade game or renting one back in the day then the it would've costed to just buy it

[Deftscythe]

I have advocated for this for a long time, actually. SNES games were $60. Now, they were able to keep it at that price for so long as sales increased, but they've leveled out which has led to the dlc, lootbox, etc. madness we all know today.


I would gladly pay $70 or even $80-$100 for a full complete game.

If you think they're not going to also continue doing the dlc shit... lol.

[Ksandra]

If you think they're not going to also continue doing the dlc shit... lol.

Of course they will. The cat's already out of the bag.

But reducing lootboxes is a start.

[Salodin]

Y'all keep talking about kids like adults don't fall for this shit hook, line, and sinker. Addiction is addiction regardless of what age you are.

This is supposed to be gambling discussion, not a parenting or age of consent discussion lol. I'm sure the legislation will reflect as such.

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[Deftscythe]

Y'all keep talking about kids like adults don't fall for this shit hook, line, and sinker. Addiction is addiction regardless of what age you are.

This is supposed to be gambling discussion, not a parenting or age of consent discussion lol. I'm sure the legislation will reflect as such.

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I specifically noted in my post that it didn't just apply to kids.

[Salodin]

I exclude you from my "yall".

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[dasva]

Well that's because in terms of laws regarding gambling and likely regulation involved would be age restriction. I seriously doubt anything passed would directly effect adult consumers. We perfectly fine peddling legal addictions to adults. Of course companies wanting to make money would likely avoid that in some titles similarly to how they avoid certain content for esrb ratings

[Jaybar]

If legislation gets passed that loot boxes and pay2win strategies such as these are considered gambling, would companies like EA have to pay additional taxes or insurances to keep selling those games? I'm not familiar with financials of casinos so I wasn't sure if there's additional fees imposed on gambling companies which could be applied to "gambling video games".

My thought process is that if fees are imposed on these companies then they might not want to invest in the gambling strategy.

[Patriarch]

I have advocated for this for a long time, actually. SNES games were $60. Now, they were able to keep it at that price for so long as sales increased, but they've leveled out which has led to the dlc, lootbox, etc. madness we all know today.


I would gladly pay $70 or even $80-$100 for a full complete game.

I agree 110%. I would be more than happy to pay a premium for a fully completed game. Not some early released, pushed pile of garbage, with day 1 DLC.

[Dimmauk]

I'm also in the get fucked EA group, and also LOL and fuck that day 1 DLC bullshit. Homie won't play that game.

[fantasticdan]

I have advocated for this for a long time, actually. SNES games were $60. Now, they were able to keep it at that price for so long as sales increased, but they've leveled out which has led to the dlc, lootbox, etc. madness we all know today.

I would gladly pay $70 or even $80-$100 for a full complete game.

These type of arguments are pretty meaningless for two reasons; an individual copy of a game has close to zero overhead cost, and the worldwide market for these games is gigantic compared to what it used to be. It's not just more people within the US/japan/UK/etc are buying games, latin america, russia, china, etc. are now HUGE demographics. Even if it costs more money to develop a AAA game, you have a hell of a lot more people to sell them to.

Just increasing the base price of a game doesn't simply mean you make more money; less people will buy for that price, which also means you have less people to snowball more sales. The most successful games of the modern era are all f2p (mobas, card games) or are sold for well below $60 retail (counter strike, pubg, minecraft, etc).

If legislation gets passed that loot boxes and pay2win strategies such as these are considered gambling, would companies like EA have to pay additional taxes or insurances to keep selling those games? I'm not familiar with financials of casinos so I wasn't sure if there's additional fees imposed on gambling companies which could be applied to "gambling video games".

My thought process is that if fees are imposed on these companies then they might not want to invest in the gambling strategy.

Existing gambling fees and taxes don't make any sense if you try to apply them to worthless digital prizes, so I imagine if the government wanted a cut, they would have to write up something new.

What should really happen is the ESRB steps up and says real cash for random prizes = AO rating, than we wouldn't need any real regulation.

[Psion]

i usually just wait here until season passes are out/steam sale, and pick my games wisely. for a latter example i grabbed the binding of isaac: rebirth bundle for 35$, without a sale. i had over 130 hours on the original and i still had fun playing it, plus had hard mode achieves to unlock. the remake i bought has over 4x the achievements and content and even fixes the old games lag due to a different game engine <_< its pretty common for people to have over 1000 hours playtime on the rebirth bundle, and since the games been out a while i dont have to deal with all the bugs from day 1 launch!

much better than shelling out 70 bucks for yet another EA game of fail. (IM LOOKING AT YOU, ASSASSINS CREED 3. I SPENT TWO WEEKS GETTING YOUR STUPID GAME TO STOP CRASHING AFTER HALF AN HOUR WHILE LAGGING THE WHOLE TIME!)
to this day minecraft remains the biggest bang for my buck for entertainment. ffxi would have won except you know, you gotta pay every month kerbal space program has over 1000 hours as well.

i think the big issue is people should focus less on graphics and more on aesthetics/gameplay. bastion cost me 2 bucks yet the gameplay was amazing and the look of the game was a work of art, even if it wasn't hyperrealistic.

[arus2001]

Majority of games released these days wouldn't be fucking worth $70. Part of the "back in the day" cost was that making chipsets and the cartridge casing was a lot more expensive than burning some CDs like nowadays, presuming one just didn't buy digitally and avoid the physical media altogether.

Sath was poking fun at me about Granblue earlier, of which character acquisition in primarily based on the lootbox/gacha model. They rotate banners with drop rates for specific characters increased, but it's still possible someone could spend hundreds of dollars and not see the character they want. No doubt related to JP legal issues, though, they put in a "spark" system that's basically 1 point of currency per draw where getting 300 in a banner will let you select something among it. That's still a hell of a lot of money, though, and a singular character isn't really content. Every few months they have a "surprise ticket" draw where you can drop $25, get the usual 10 roll, but also have a guaranteed pick. This is something I'd put in the much more fair territory, but that's mainly in the context of the alternative. Granblue has tons of characters, and while many are useless, it's still a lot of shit to wade through to get to the gems.

In this respect, I'd say the mobile market has been ahead of the curve of consoles/PCs relative to scummy tactics. This Star Wars stuff has gained notoriety primarily in part due to its association with the SW franchise. Were it some other random game, it'd probably be a gripe amongst niche fans. But make no mistake, bit by bit the mediums are becoming more alike. The closest a lot here may relate is P2W MMOs. Meanwhile, anyone who's paid attention to me across various MMO debates in the past would know that I will continually assert we don't get what our money is paying for if you're dropping for a sub, nevermind shit like cosmetics. So, where does the money go? Well, us XI fans would know a fair bit went to XIV's development, among whatever other SE titles came about. Meanwhile, XI languished in content development and/or potential fixes it needed to make it a better experience. Stuff like this is where I feel post-sale profit generation needs to be regulated to guarantee a certain degree of reinvestment into its host product, otherwise getting heavily taxed if it doesn't. So, if they're not really interested in bigger things like expansions, then they can keep the costs small and essentially keep the cycle going with more of the same. Otherwise, if they're not interested in maintaining the effort required, then they best launch in a finished state with whatever the intend to release and stay away from post-launch sales altogether.

[dasva]

In this respect, I'd say the mobile market has been ahead of the curve of consoles/PCs relative to scummy tactics. This Star Wars stuff has gained notoriety primarily in part due to its association with the SW franchise. Were it some other random game, it'd probably be a gripe amongst niche fans.

Not quite accurate. Been going on for almost a decade with guess who EA in one of the most popular sports franchises that exist. You could argue mtgo was basically the same thing which has been around since early 2000s

[arus2001]

Well, not saying they invented it. They've just been rolling with it harder. Hasn't really been until the last console gen that it started creeping more into mainstream.

[dasva]

Perhaps. Would have to go back and check. From what I remember it's been a huge part of EA's business model for awhile and where most of it's profits were for years... it just was somewhat contained to it's cash cow FIFA. Side note this could destroy them because of just how much they restructured the company to be based on that kind of stuff.. and them being terrible otherwise

[Byrthnoth]

Just a note on the psychology behind this.

There has long been a theory in psychology that animals and people will work harder for an inconsistent reward schedule.

As a completely made up example, if you put a rat in a box with a lever that dispenses a chocolate sprinkle every four presses, it maybe presses the lever twenty times per hour. If you use a lever that dispenses a sprinkle 25% of the time, it would press thirty times per hour.

Humans pretty much respond the same.

[Byrthnoth]

Just a note on the psychology behind this.

There has long been a theory in psychology that animals and people will work harder for an inconsistent reward schedule.

As a completely made up example, if you put a rat in a box with a lever that dispenses a chocolate sprinkle every four presses, it maybe presses the lever twenty times per hour. If you use a lever that dispenses a sprinkle 25% of the time, it would press thirty times per hour.

Humans pretty much respond the same.