Loot Boxes are Gambling - Get fucked EA

[Ksandra]

Overwatch for example makes not that much comparatively on their boxes

Bliz has been very secretive of how much money they are making off of the lootboxes, but I have little doubt there are making a fuckton off of them.

[Mrbeansman]

I think the recent Patent filings from Activison kinda drag down the its just cosmetic excuse.

[Mrbeansman]

Overall though I don't mind paying for cosmetics when I can just pay to get a thing I want.

[Ksandra]

Overall though I don't mind paying for cosmetics when I can just pay to get a thing I want.

Agreed, and we have bought a few mounts/pets off of WoW because of it.

[dasva]

Bliz has been very secretive of how much money they are making off of the lootboxes, but I have little doubt there are making a fuckton off of them.

I believe they have said that Overwatch itself wasn't a huge money maker though.

[Ksandra]

I believe they have said that Overwatch itself wasn't a huge money maker though.

https://venturebeat.com/2017/05/04/w...ing-franchise/

With $1 billion in revenue, Overwatch is Blizzard’s fastest-growing franchise

[synistar]

This one is a tricky one. While it doesn't effect things directly and it can indirectly. Overwatch for example makes not that much comparatively on their boxes and it's doubtful that affects much. However other games (usually f2p) even microtransactions for things not affecting game play can end up bad as devs can end up catering to their whales

I understand that. My long-winded response I didn't post was a bit broad but I tried to focus my initial post on minors.

I laugh at this reddit post about a guy who spent $7000+ on Path of Exile since beta (2013 - Free to play FYI). His GF then got in contact with the Community manager and game devs and they got him a signed T-Shirt modeled after the in-game Tabula Rasa - A white T-Shirt with the graphic of 6 gem slots. Funny enough, the community wasn't in outrage that he spent $7000. The community supports the pricing model, all say it is fair, and they even recommend to most new people to stay Free-to-Play until they decide to buy the QoL microtransactions.

For myself, I have spent $200+ on DotA2 cosmetics (Free to play) But I have well over 2000 hours played + another few hundred hours on DotA1. Divide that by 100, and that's 20 units of game, divide that into the price of a AAA game ($60) and I have spent $3/100 hours of gameplay. That's a lot of value. And I have friends who have spent maybe $10 and have about the same amount of game time.

Adults need to be responsible. We know minors don't have the decision making know-how about what is a need and what is a want. I'm ok with some sort of regulation for loot boxes, especially when minors can potentially have purchasing access due to either irresponsible guardians or outright stealing their CC & Billing info.

[dasva]

https://venturebeat.com/2017/05/04/w...ing-franchise/

More than I thought but if you follow the links it's actually really vague. Them just saying it's a billion dollar franchise. Vague in-game content revenue is increased by 25% but not what that is and when disclosing revenue lumps it in with subscriptions... though with a bit of work you might be able to get a guessimate on how much they make from subscriptions to get an idea of how much of that is microtransactions though some of that will be WoW

[Ksandra]

More than I thought but if you follow the links it's actually really vague.

I know, that's why I said before they were secretive.

But I think it definitely suggests they are making a ton.

[dasva]

I'm sure there's someone on reddit who has done the math

[Aerin]

While the latter part of that might be true a lot of big companies have actually cut down on total development costs over the last 10 years or so while also charging more per games and having a wider audience and often more games. Actually production costs are waaaaaaaaaaaaaay down. Also there are examples of plenty of very successful games going at decently under $60 price tag

I'm not sure where you're getting that production costs are way down? Licensing certain game engines like Unity or Unreal can certainly bring initial costs down. But non-junior game programmers at AAA studios typically make 100K+ a year. If you're talking indies then production is certainly less expensive but indie dev's will tell you it's a labor of love and certainly not about the money because they hardly make any. Unless the studio gets bought out, which does happen.

[Moridam]

i think collectively you can cobble together the case for regulation from this thread alone. my number one thing always goes back to what byrth mentioned; these gacha/lotbox systems were designed to exploit peoples' behavioral tendencies that have been reasonably well understood since skinner's heyday. combine that with the malleability of kids, who are fed into an opaque promotional ecosystem with no meaningful disclosure requirements, and the whole thing is a disaster. it's a system that's meant to engineer its users into gambling addicts, and i don't think there's much of an argument you can construct in terms of the social utility of predatory gaming schemes.

it would be nice to see enough regulatory and technological restrictions applied to make the whole endeavor entirely unprofitable.

[Mrbeansman]

It'd be great if any game with lootbox's was given and AO rating since none of the big 3 consoles will publish AO titles.

[Melena]

It'd be great if any game with lootbox's was given and AO rating since none of the big 3 consoles will publish AO titles.

And you’d have the big 3 fighting tooth and nail over that as I believe they get a small cut of every purchase off of their store.

[Mrbeansman]

Seriously though the ESRB will give out AO ratings for lootboxs when publishers need to avoid legislation. The ESRB is a tool of the ESA to keep the government off their backs and wont step in till they do.

[Moridam]

right, don't look to the ESA to intervene here unless they're forced to, and even then they'll only enact measures that do the least amount of damage to publishers (e.g., automatic M rating, or a new line item to list after 'cartoon violence' or 'mature themes' or what-have-you). it's a tool of the industry; the companies that make money off of these schemes are not going to willingly give up the obscene amounts they bring in.

[6souls]

Overwatch made $585M revenue in 2016 and Activision Blizzard had made $6.58B revenue across the board for the year. For their first quarter of the new financial year for A-B, they made $1.7B.

[arus2001]

The community supports the pricing model, all say it is fair, and they even recommend to most new people to stay Free-to-Play until they decide to buy the QoL microtransactions.

Fans will put up with a lot of shit to justify their game of choice, though. Odds are the people you find on reddit will circlejerk their beliefs into oblivion whereas those who disagree have been chased off or get habitually mocked. More in the context of your quote, however, the fact QoL is locked behind a paywall is something I view as a problem. And in the case of PoE, that's most likely to be stash space. The game's inventory system is hot garbage with very limited on-character space and items ranging from 1x1 to 2x4 grid slots. The fact one needs loot filters to even really make the game "playable" tells me their loot pools are super saturated with shit to push people toward such investments.

Contrast to Diablo 3, items are 1x2 at most, personal inventory is bigger, and more stash space can be acquired through a mix of gold purchases and seasonal play. This is one of those instances where Blizzard gets the win, even if total stash size improvements weren't really on the radar until RoS. They could've nickel and dimed, and people would have bought it up out of desperation. In fact, we still get some asking for more function under the belief that it'd lead to more game development perks. Blizz isn't one of those companies hurting for money. D3, alone, had over 30m sales at one point. The same people at the PoE board will probably tell you it's the worst game ever made, too.

I'm more inclined to assert people are a mix of gullible and misinformed on these matters, really.

[Cail]

Like has been said, Witcher 3 was the correct way to do DLC

[dasva]

I'm not sure where you're getting that production costs are way down? Licensing certain game engines like Unity or Unreal can certainly bring initial costs down. But non-junior game programmers at AAA studios typically make 100K+ a year. If you're talking indies then production is certainly less expensive but indie dev's will tell you it's a labor of love and certainly not about the money because they hardly make any. Unless the studio gets bought out, which does happen.

Programming would be development cost which I mentioned before that. Dev costs can even be broken down. While per game for the regular game play it's likely gone up unless adjusting for inflation overall has some downward trend for some companies since comparatively most in-game purchase systems are a much lower cost to make on top of netting more gross a lot of the time