Loot Boxes are Gambling - Get fucked EA

[arus2001]

I don't really think molding legislation around minors is enough. All this will turn into is like another label on the ESRB or whatever where kids will still just play the shit and fuck their parents, anyway.

[Salodin]

Enough for what? You want big government dictating what can and can not be in your entertainment?

This is the best case scenario. Ban the predatory tactics from being used on children, and let adults be adults and choose what they want to spend their money on.

This was never going to be legislation to save the gaming industry from standards that "real" gamers hate. It's always been about preventing original forms of gambling from conditioning kids to hit get that one more hit.

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[arus2001]

Jesus christ I'm getting sick of people playing the big government card for the most chicken little of bullshit.

In terms actual, literal in-game content, be it the telling stories, graphical depictions, musical arrangement, combat systems, and so on, that can and should be 100% freely up to developers. From educational content to outright porn, I don't care. If they feel it marketable as a complete product, go for it. That doesn't absolve them of user criticism if it's all crap or something like far right propaganda, but that's just part of the process in the end.

What they shouldn't be able to do is decide that for $25, you maybe get 10 shots at a character/item/outift whatever. In fact, just selling that outright at such a cost should also be considered a gross rip-off and has led to the complete absence of creating content around such things because, "Screw it, just put it in the shop!" When P2W gets involved, it merely gets worse because you wind up with people acquiring competitive edges or generally getting waits removed. This process doesn't give a fuck if you're a toddler poking a screen or an octogenarian playing because your kids don't visit anymore, which was part of my prior point.

Historically, I'd say the evolution has gone something along the lines of: Main Game > Expansion > DLC > Microtransactions.

The further to the left you are on that progression, the closer you are to a complete game. To exemplify it better, let's use Starcraft. The main title launched, and it worked, no real problem. The Brood Wars expansion then launched, which brought with it new story, units, maps, and then some. If the game were to have DLC, I would expect it to be in the form of new map tile sets, perhaps an individual unit, a short story, and/or a combination of those things, but not to the same degree as BW. MTX you could likely interpret as, "BUY SWIMSUIT KERRIGAN FOR $15.99 AND DOMINATE YOUR FOES" with the unfortunate possibility it might even give her stat boosts. Nonetheless, this is a rather simplistic approach because Starcraft also happened to be a game that came about before the last 2 categories really started showing up.

Frankly, I don't know how many mobile games you play, but it's a cesspool. Largely gone seem to be the days of simply completing quests, progressing the story, and acquiring characters in an RPG type of game. If you do earn anything in this fashion, it's usually garbage compared to its premium counterparts. What's more, many of these games further go on to demand multiple copies of the same character, either to unlock additional stats/higher level cap, or more unique things like character-related equipment. Some games may have "safety nets" or long-term RNG protection (thanks more to Japan than our benevolent gaming overlords), but make no mistake these very rarely let a F2Per compete with even light spenders and usually translate to saving months+ of currency for one splurge. And while some dipshit may like to claim, "Well, so-and-so does XYZ with only certain quality units, so none of that is needed!" what they often tend to leave out is that stuff is farmed up with the good characters or they use certain unique rewards to deck out the lessers into some degree of functionality. But put bluntly, it tends to translate making these games harder than they should be, or as a personal handicap in the most optimistic of outcomes.

In the end, I just personally aim more for guarantees. If you want to sell a Swimsuit Kerrigan, then fine, but let it be purely cosmetic and far more reasonably priced (say $3-5) and occasionally part of a cosmetics bundle. I also get that mobile games need to make money to keep going, which is why they should be selling characters outright for $5 instead of making it so one person could get one first pull, while someone else could spend thousands and never see it. Yes, that happens. Or heaven forbid, they make demo versions of their games where, if you like it, you pay $30-50 for the full thing with none of the MTX bullshit, stamina systems, etc. at all. When one stops to analyze how most of these games function, it's not hard to spot a certain degree of corner cutting and minimal effort once core systems have been established. Hop on the BG Discord and pretty much talk to anyone who plays Epic Seven and how laughable it is Smilegate said main story content will come about once a year, further weighed against the effort they put into their so-called events. Repeat for Brave Exvius, Record Keeper, and so on. This industry really isn't about putting good games into our hands anymore, it's more about stringing us along, nickel and diming every step of the way. And then when you hear a title makes (tens of) millions, you stop and wonder, "How much of that has gone back in...?" and realize that most of the time, it's probably not a whole lot. Yet we're just told to smile and let adults spend their money, regardless of how irresponsible it may be or that some people are actually trying to improve their gaming experiences.

Yeah, fuck you.

[Thunder]

I dunno what to feel about microtransactions

On one hand, it seems that any game that doesn't include them is likely doomed to "not make enough money" so perhaps it's a necessary evil to have the studios "exploit" the people likely to get exploited by gambling mechanics and use that to effectively subsidize our desire for good games. The mobile game market is actually ridiculous, and I thought it was just the mobile games that could be susceptible but with the early weeks of fortnite (before battle royale it was a PVE co op vs zombie horde with building/trap/gun mechanics) people were cataloging literally tens of thousands of dollars spent on llamas for chances of legendary guns, even though the game was so god damn brain dead easy (and the chances for the "perfect rolled" gun were literally in the <0.001%s - just getting one of the good base guns, ignoring perk rolls, was a really really small %), lol. Although, how much of that went back into the game in some way vs just bonuses to execs or something? Dunno

But on the other hand it's some top tier bullshit, even if it's just adults getting affected, lol. I can imagine predatory gambling mechanics in all sorts of industries and quite honestly, if we're going to move towards heavier social welfare nets and/or ubi I kind of want that to go hand in hand with an organized body looking after our susceptibility to predatory practices. Otherwise, it'd be like subsidizing the luxury of the sleazy

[arus2001]

I can pretty much guarantee that if nothing is done now, when gaming shifts yet more to streaming, the ass reaming will intensify because PCs/Consoles will now be just as vulnerable as mobile games. But this is just one piece in the whole industry clusterfuck right now.

[Thunder]

Do you have any thoughts on how much the ass reaming funds more games and the extent it funds their quality?

I'm pessimistic about its positive effects (those being the only positive ones I can come up with) but I've always underestimated by A LOT how much $ these kinds of things generate (even cosmetic only) whenever numbers get published to any degree

[Botosi]

My 2 cents:

1) I fucking hate micro-transactions that effect your gameplay. Sell stuff that makes your character look cooler, but fuck P2W.
2) RNG should be abolished from anything that involves RL $$$.
3) DLC is fine as long as the game itself is "complete". - Lately most games are incomplete requiring DLC to feel fulfilling.
4) Stop the "pre-order the deluxe version before its even out to get X item thats never available again" bullshit

[Salodin]

That's a long post to talk about that thing in video games you dont like. I doubt the senator from MO cares about the state of video game development and publishing in 2019, and cares more about what looks like casino gambling in the form of loot boxes. Especially when its targeted towards minors. We have laws in place when people use these tactics in regards to casino gaming, and now we need to update them for the types of entertainment in the 21st century.

If you're upset about the boat loads of money microtransactions have bought, and how development has catered to that, then idk what to tell you. I still find plenty of games that arent affected by predatory tactics, and ignore the ones that do. In regards to mobile, which I think we'd both agree is plagued by microtransactions and p2w, I ignore the p2w games and focus on paid games that dont have em. I've been happy with how that's worked.

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[Salodin]

Then again, who are we to say people cant spend 100bucks a month on clash of clans if that's what brings them happiness? If its offered by the games developer, who are we to say "actually nah, only people who play as often and hard as me should be able to gate keep, not these people who spend money" when clearly the developers prefer the cash cows to do the gate keeping and not the gamers who try to get by spending as little money as possible. I just feel like gamers are entitled dicks in a world where there are plenty of great games without these gimmicks but no one spends enough time talking about them.

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[arus2001]

Do you have any thoughts on how much the ass reaming funds more games and the extent it funds their quality?

I'm pessimistic about its positive effects (those being the only positive ones I can come up with)

As a Diablo 3 player, I like to look at is a semi-recent good example of a AAA studio making bank, but still letting their product languish even though it didn't heavily rely on post-sale revenue, RMAH aside. They pretty much sold over 30 million copies of the game before factoring in RoS and the Necromancer DLC, and while certainly plagued with launch and overall design issues, Blizzard instead decided to scrap the second expansion and move onto the insidiously poorly received mobile "prequel" that we haven't heard about since the Blizzcon apocalypse. Now, what happens to $1,800,000,000 from those earlier mentioned 30m sales? Especially since it didn't go back into D3? Some into Overwatch? Okay, but at what point should it have paid for and continued to support itself? HotS? Hearthstone? The issue myself and many others tend to broach is that Blizzard technically isn't hurting for money, but it also doesn't really seem to be going back into their games if you want to factor people bitching about WoW's recent quality, too.

One of the regulatory nudges I'd like to see is that if a game does have post-launch revenue generation, the money needs a mandatory 95% reinvestment into the game that earned it within 6 months, otherwise it's taxed away. I know it's been a long while, but one of the conversations I had with a Rift dev prior to the game's sale from Trion was only something like 80% of money they made was guaranteed to Rift, but they were constantly understaffed or under crunch, with lots of bugs still hitting live despite PTRs. The game only slowly got more predatory since then with P2W schemes.

[Salodin]

As a Diablo 3 player, I like to look at is a semi-recent good example of a AAA studio making bank, but still letting their product languish even though it didn't heavily rely on post-sale revenue, RMAH aside. They pretty much sold over 30 million copies of the game before factoring in RoS and the Necromancer DLC, and while certainly plagued with launch and overall design issues, Blizzard instead decided to scrap the second expansion and move onto the insidiously poorly received mobile "prequel" that we haven't heard about since the Blizzcon apocalypse. Now, what happens to $1,800,000,000 from those earlier mentioned 30m sales? Especially since it didn't go back into D3? Some into Overwatch? Okay, but at what point should it have paid for and continued to support itself? HotS? Hearthstone? The issue myself and many others tend to broach is that Blizzard technically isn't hurting for money, but it also doesn't really seem to be going back into their games if you want to factor people bitching about WoW's recent quality, too.

One of the regulatory nudges I'd like to see is that if a game does have post-launch revenue generation, the money needs a mandatory 95% reinvestment into the game that earned it within 6 months, otherwise it's taxed away. I know it's been a long while, but one of the conversations I had with a Rift dev prior to the game's sale from Trion was only something like 80% of money they made was guaranteed to Rift, but they were constantly understaffed or under crunch, with lots of bugs still hitting live despite PTRs. The game only slowly got more predatory since then with P2W schemes.

Uh, yeah no thanks. I don't want big government getting involved in game dev or publishing when it cant even figure out not neutrality.

There needs to be changes to the gaming industry, the biggest probably being unionization of the developers themselves, but I dont want a bunch of Republicans dictating where and how game profits are used cause I know full well it wont be going back into the game. Keep politics out of gaming unless it's about protecting vulnerable communities.

Policing clash of clans p2w system is not protecting vulnerable communities. Preventing kids from getting addicted to gambling is protecting vulnerable communities.

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[SephYuyX]

I'd love it if any sort of microtransaction/lootbox/dlc/etc after the initial purchase/download was banned. Give me the game in full, put shit behind grindy stuff, call it done.

[Silenka]

My take is that anti-gambling laws exist to protect people who become addicted to gambling. It is absolutely a failing of the biological human response to expect reward after high risk venture and I completely understand why there should be laws against gambling in certain places and for certain people.

Gacha/lootbox are the new wave of gambling. Instead of paying money to win money, we are paying money to win virtual items, but it amounts to the same thing - people who are susceptible to addiction to traditional forms of gambling will also be susceptible to gacha. The same or similar laws should absolutely apply. However, one problem is that it's much harder to enforce laws in a virtual realm and most lawmakers don't even understand how gaming works, let alone how it could be a problem other than "oh isn't it violent?" Most are completely out of touch with popular culture, especially in regards to technology, so another problem is making laws that are appropriately tailored to gacha instead of traditional gambling. I know there are laws against betting real money in online poker and that they took a while to be enacted, but I'm not sure how different they are from traditional gambling laws.

I don't believe we're far from seeing gacha laws, though. Belgium has already enacted anti-virtual gambling laws. They're the pioneers in this case, with more sure to follow. I play one gacha game regularly, and the prices it charges for currency packs are high enough to deter me from buying them. Plus, I don't have a gambling problem. But online communities for gacha games are rife with tales of gambling addicts who never thought they would become so, who spent well outside their comfort zone chasing that one character or that one weapon, to the point where it's ruined their relationships and their finances. It's a slippery slope from "casual player" to "obsessively spending money on gambling" and gambling laws should be there to protect these people.

Note that the pricing being unfair or the method of implementation in games has nothing to do with this. If a law is going to be enacted it's going to be to protect people against gambling, not to make games fair or pricing more justified.

[arus2001]

You can't divorce the two as long as money is involved and results are RNG, though. So, yes, you absolutely have to go deeper.

[Thunder]

You can't divorce the two as long as money is involved and results are RNG, though. So, yes, you absolutely have to go deeper.

but then you just make it so money can't purchase rng things and then you can divorce them, right?

[arus2001]

I'd say it then more resembles DLC, but overall price is still a factor. We don't need repeats of games like Disgaea or Fifa that way.

[Salodin]

I'd be happy if they just made it illegal to use microtransactions to fuel some ingame rng item.

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[Thunder]

I doubt anyone disagrees with the "illegal to sell RNG things" with respect to "microtransactions"

BUT

what about return policies. Technically, if I'm buying a game I don't know before buying if it's a buggy mess, and maybe I need to be exposed for >24hrs from first launching the game (origin's policy) to see just how buggy of a mess and how much NOT AS ADVERTIZED it is. That's kind of RNG. I dislike that. I like steam's "it doesn't matter" return policy, lol

Especially if it's an mmorpg game which is heavily dependent on patches moving forward. It was like 2 weeks after launch that fo76 got its first post-launch patch (not a patch that was in development prior to launch that was pushed out after launch) and it was pretty clear from the absolutely shit notes that the game would never get proper pass throughs for balance and bugs

[arus2001]

In my experience, Google just tells you to fuck off if you try to reverse a charge on a mobile game. And if you go past them to your bank, you're pretty much guaranteed to be banned by the game in question even if it's a fuckup on their end.

[Salodin]

In my experience, Google just tells you to fuck off if you try to reverse a charge on a mobile game. And if you go past them to your bank, you're pretty much guaranteed to be banned by the game in question even if it's a fuckup on their end.

Not true. You can return a game within a few hours at the least for any reason. Not compatible, didn't like it, whatever. I've done refunds <24hrs from mobile purchases, including in game item purchases.

Thunder, I dont think we should be legislating away buyers remorse lol. Go read some journalism and make an informed purchasing decision. I suggest giantbomb.com, they have great experience and opinions I trust.

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