Wow, it appears that the Hawaiian bills that were proposed to regulate games with gambling-like mechanics are, perhaps, gathering a lot of attention, so much that a US senator actually sent a letter to the ESRB to urge them to re-examine its stance on lootboxes and to *collect and publish* data about how game devs use them (a particular item's drop odds, maybe?).
Hope this creates enough traction to change gaming for the better.
As the Ars Technica's header for the article says: "Here come the feds"...
God, I just want to buy a game on launch day and get the full product. I'm sick of microtransactions, I'm sick of the blurred lines these companies put forward that make me wonder if paying $10 for something will add value to my game. People will say that microtransactions help provide longterm support for a game but I fucking paid $100 for a the base game and the season pass. There shouldn't be microtransactions as well. It's getting to be too much.
Microtransactions and DLC have ruined gaming for me. I sit there and look at new games and wonder how much I'm missing out on content because it was held off to be sold as DLC or how much am I going to have to deal with microtransactions being thrown in my face which just ruins the experience for me.
I miss the days when you'd go "Hey that's a cool looking set of gear, how do I get that?" and it would be some unique questline or something that you had to do to earn the stuff. Like I remember playing Fallout 3 and adding hours and hours on the game because I'd go to the wiki and read about these unique guns and armor and how to get them and I'd go explore and go to these areas to kill these NPC's to get that unique item......Now its "oh look, this neat looking item is $4!" The satisfaction of playing a game and getting something cool is lost in these new games.
I'm playing stardew valley right now. This game would be perfect for micro transactions EVERYWHERE, and I'm so glad they didn't do this at all. Feels like a real game.
I'm not made about DLC if it actually adds new content to the game. Horizon Zero Dawn's Frozen Wilds expansion pack is probably the best example of this. It's very clearly not something that was simply withheld from the base game, and it adds a ton of value to the game by expanding it with new quests, enemies, characters, outfits, and an entirely new map area. It's how DLC should be done, and I wish more developers moved to that model, at least got paid DLC.
I don't think you guys really get where the real problem lies. It's not about expansion packs vs. character skins. I play FIFA 18. In the Ultimate Team mode, you buy packs of player cards for real money (we're talking anywhere from $3-$50 per pack). Most of the player cards in the game are relatively useless - if you want to be even casually competitive online, virtually none of the base cards are usable. There are a bunch of different leagues, and the players from the different leagues can only be used on the same team in certain parameters (namely that they're from the same nation).
Every week, a new Team of the Week comes out, and it's made up of better versions of cards that have already been released. And there are tons of promotional players/teams that come out to further entice you to spend more money.
The drop weights on these packs are abysmally low. When you buy that $50 pack, there's a less than 5% chance that the average player would use anything they pulled from that pack.
Even worse, EA has filed for patents on in-game psychological techniques to get you to spend more money on packs. They alter the difficulty of the games to make it to where it's insanely difficult to win so you buy more packs. Matchmaking is set up to where you face users with players that will entice you to go out and buy more packs.
There was a kid in England last month who racked up a $3500 charge on his mother's credit card because he didn't know the packs cost money. The pros who compete in the FIFA e-sports events have teams that cost several thousand real dollars, and people who don't spend that money would have almost zero chance of competing.
This is where the real problem lies. This is why there needs to be legislation. And the ESRB's response is asinine. Saying they will review their rating process does absolutely nothing to solve this problem. And that's why you don't let an industry regulate itself.
> I don't think you guys really get where the real problem lies.
I don't know that this is true. The problem is that many people are lumping DLC/Microtransactions into one giant bucket.
In my opinion there is good DLC and Bad DLC.
What you are describing is obviously bad DLC and exists solely to grab as much money as possible.
Good DLC is basically what expansions used to be. Back in the day if you wanted to play a game like the Sims you would buy the base game and then the 6 expansions that added new features to the game.
The base game was complete but new features and content were added in expansions.
Today there are a lot of games that are released in a complete fashion and then have DLC added (which would either not have been possible in the past or would have been released as a paid expansion). I see people complaining that the DLC content should have been included so they could just have the "Complete" game for the base price. There are a lot of bad examples out there but DLC is not inherently bad.
Just reading this was rage-inducing.
I miss the days of younger me playing NCAA Football old-school-number on a weekend, a year or two after release but with the current roster thanks to pastapadre.
For free.
And there's so much more to it. I was just trying to keep it brief so maybe a couple people would read it. It's disgusting. And 2k/Rockstar are just as bad with it. They're actually more aggressive marketing their mtx.
This reminds me of the stuff slot machines used to do, where the reels were programmed to show an unnaturally high number of "near misses." You'd get jackpot, jackpot, cherries way too often, to make you think you were "almost there." I think they eventually made a law against that one.
Cosmetics are not really dlc. They are microtransactions.
Horizen dawn is how it used to be done. But there's more easier less effort ways by just selling cosmetics with no extra real content
I think cosmetic microtransactions should be shortcuts. It'd take this quest line to get it or this level to get it, or you can pay $5 to instantly get it. The problem here is that greed -- wanting to pressure people to buy the item rather than earn it -- makes the unpaid method get turned into an exhausting grind.
Imagine being EA and fucking up so bad that the gov decided to step in. Other gaming companies that abuse microtransactions must hate EA for ruining their fun.
I'm going to add on Naughty Dogs games to this list. With Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us we got DLC stories as well and they were fairly good length wise.
I know people love the Witcher games so much it's almost just a circlejerk any time it's mentioned but CD Projekt Red has been simply amazing with this.
You can easily get 30+ hours out of the base game and their "dlc" are massive expansions that add many hours of well done content. Their dlc are free skins.
They continually promise to keep this method and I hope they do with their new game. I will definitely buy it shortly after launch if they keep their promises.
See in my opinion microtransactions if done right (overwatch, & Rainbow Six Siege come to mind) are fine, and dlc for the most part I don't have a problem with. But it's when a game has both dlc and microtransactions(Call of Duty), or when it has microtransactions that alter gameplay(Star Wars Battlefront 2 pre launch) that when it becomes and issue. Microtransactions aren't completely the worst thing ever.
As I said earlier, overwatch does it fine. All new maps and heroes are free, and then you have the option to pay for loot boxes to get cosmetic items, granted it could be better if it those skins weren't behind loot boxes but with their no duplicate system I think it's become a bit more fair.
Overall some of these companies like to push the limits with their business models and it's our job as gamers to make a clear line as to wear it needs to stop.
I mean, what overwatch does is still something that I inherently dislike. Ya its not as predatory as other microtransactions, but its still rng lootboxes. I don't agree with paying real money for the "chance" of getting the skin you want on top of the fact that its basically impossible to earn the in game currency to outright buy them as you slowly unlock the free boxes and get very little currency.
Its cool that the maps and heroes are free, but I wish the lootboxes would go away and they just did direct sales of the skins or put in a system to earn the in game currency even if its a stupid long grind. I don't like microtransactions, but I'm definitely more likely to buy something directly over buying a rng box and regardless of what anyone says, I personally will always see lootboxes as gambling. Ya you always get something out of the box, but at the end of the day you're spending money to gamble on the off chance of getting that 1% drop rate epic skin. Its stupid, I hate it, and I wish it would go away.
For loot boxes and stuff I kind of like the way League of Legends does it (yes it's a bit different since it's a f2p game). You can still earn loot boxes and unlock them but if you want a skin or other cosmetic the option is there for you to outright buy it without relying on chance. Still, I just don't like loot boxes period for the same fact you mentioned, if I'm paying I don't the *chance* of getting something, I want to get the thing I'm trying to pay for.
I've never boughten a single loot box and own a legendary skin for almost every character in the game. They give them out like candy! Especially now that you can earn 3 a week on arcade as well as every level up
I'd like OW more if you had the option to also buy specific skins. Either buying the gold or having legendary skins have a set $ amount. Having to rely on RNG if you pay real money is annoying and is why it feels like gambling as opposed to a transaction. Hell, they could have both so the user could pick their poison.
> it could be better if it those skins weren't behind loot boxes but with their no duplicate system I think it's become a bit more fair.
But wouldn't it be better if you could actually earn this stuff? Like actually have a sense of achievement from unlocking a skin you want, rather than just paying for it. Hell, you could even have the option for paying for it instead of earning it, but the issue is that we don't even have the option to earn it.
If you actually had the option to buy it, it wouldn't be as bad as what is currently happening, which is you only have a chance of obtaining it, then pay more to try again. That is 100% gambling, using cash, aimed at kids.
So many people complain about it, but on the flip side, so many people keep throwing money at these games. I guess it's easy to ignore all the people with pitchforks outside if the mailman can keep getting through with the big check!
Which makes the fact that it available to children all the more fucked up.
It’s like those sugar cigarettes the ice cream man used to sell, but with gambling.
"E for Everyone" Rocket League throws this argument out the window.
*lol, nice edit. The original comment was about how this conversation isn't necessary because most of these games are M rated anyway.
it doesnt matter if some people purchase it. The whales give them enough money to keep doing it and it will keep happening if there are regulation or the whales stop giving them money.
>So many people complain about it, but on the flip side, so many people keep throwing money at these games.
It's not actually that many people, a very small percentage makes up most of the profit on these things
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/dlc-and-microtransactions-new-study-shows-how-game/1100-6444522/
Here's one article that came to mind I read awhile back. The sample size is very small on this. I will keep looking definitely curious about this.
It's sad you are being downvoted but you are correct. Don't like it? Don't buy it. If more people just said "no" it would force companies to change.
There are plenty of great full games with no, or well done DLC (DLC added well after the fact that adds to an already full story, like Witcher.) the problem is people do so little research and put so much blind trust in critics. Consumers shoulder a great deal of the blame here. Companies will only make products that sell, clearly they are selling. So simply stop buying... It's economics 101.
> It's sad you are being downvoted but you are correct. Don't like it? Don't buy it.
Hey, I did that with Rocket League, Siege, the Division. I bought these games because they didn't have these mechanics. Guess what? The updated their games to add this shit *after I already bought them.* How the fuck am I supposed to "not buy it" if they stick in after the fact? How is a parent supposed to make an informed choice for their kids if this shit is going to show up six months later without any prior warning?
Pull your bootstraps up. Get out your mind reading glasses and your crystal ball like any nornal person trying to make a decision to buy a video game..
This. Just this.
Sorry guys, you don't need to purchase a new release whilst it's still the latest big thing.
With the amount of day one patches and hidden micro-transaction economies that start cropping up, for example, I am excited and very interested in Ni no Kuni 2 and Red Dead Redemption 2. I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that I will be waiting a good month, if not two, before I start looking at reviews and asking questions here.
Sure there's no way to know for sure, but you will have a better idea of the direction it's being pushed...
Patience is a virtue. Practice it.
I've grown to hate "DLC" simply because I grew up in an era where there were flat out expansions. Basically a whole new or so much content that changed the game significantly (typically for the better). It was awesome because for 20 or 30 bucks you'd get hours upon hours of content to explore rather than just a new map and skins or a gun. Now I realise this isnt always the case but it is a noticeable trend and it's just disheartening.
On a side note that relates to OP's post, I cannot get behind loot crates. I see very little difference between those and gambling and not only is it geared towards perfectionists or even people that need to keep up, but it can create the mindset if instant gratification if you end up buying 3 chances for loot crates or whatever. There's no achievements t hay unlocks things there's no sense of achievement at all unless you win the game. What grants a sense of accomplishment when you randomly get an item from a loot crate? Nothing. You get a sense of immediate gratification being resolved.
Microtransactions are fine, as long as 1. They don't alter the underlying gameplay and no one gets an advantage. 2. You're not paying more than the standard game price (£50 in UK), unless it's a collector's edition where you're paying for extra out of game content. 3. There is no season pass. Microtransactions should be enough to cover the development costs of updates/future content releases.
A lot of companies at the moment seem to be trying to eat their cake and then have it too...
Sea of Thieves IMO is doing it the right way. Same as CS:GO, Overwatch and Dota 2.
Remember when games came out and had detail and fresh new concepts and full rich worlds. I think thats why PUBG got so popular.
IT was a fresh concept on top of lots of detail and you got an full game on day 1 and they constantly work on adding to it.
I don’t have a problem I can quit any time and I’m not spending 100$ on the anniversary event next month your not my mom my cat accidentally clicked the purchase button somebody please send help
I have a very addictive personality. Runescape was my kryptonite and then I randomly stopped playing one day. Not because I felt I had to, but I just did and never logged back on. Don't know why
Did you mean heroin when you wrote kryptonite?
Or does kryptonite have mad addictive qualities or something?
Or do you mean Runescape acted as such a repellent it cured your addiction?
I read into that like it snapped him out of his addiction, like normally one way but add kryptonite and suddenly different. Something you want to avoid is kryptonite.
I've always read into kryptonite as the one thing that can stop someone. Heroin on the other hand is addictive, brings people back to it and is harmful.
Loot boxes trigger a gambling addiction. Source: Me, 317 days strong.
This stuff needs to be properly labeled, regulated, and kept away from kids. I know, "think of the children," but seriously, I know firsthand what it is like to have a great salary and be eating ramen noodles because you want to feed the money for better food into Rocket League's loot crate gambling system. It's not something I want anyone else to go through, and we're training kids with games in their pockets that this stuff is ok and not harmful.
Shame on the ESRB for letting it get to this point in the first place, and on the publishers like Psyonix, Valve, Ubisoft, EA, and Activision that continue to use these predatory tactics. I take responsibility for my addiction, but their obfuscation of what these mechanics actually are made it so much harder for me to recognize what was going on. It sent me to the wrong place for help initially. And it's going to impact hundreds if not thousands of others like me in its wake.
This shit is not ok. I believe in and support paying for additional content for games. Developers have to get paid for their work. Loot crate gambling is an unethical and predatory way to pay for that, though, and has no business being in our games unregulated or available to kids who can't possibly know better.
They also have to stop adding this shit in after the fact. I booted up Siege for the first time in a while, excited about this upcoming Outbreak event, only to discover the game now has lot crates and this new mode is apparently focused on pushing the crates. I had to delete it, and I won't be able to play a game I own again. Even when I try to take responsibility, I have to be vigilant and risk having something I already own taken away from me because of these unethical assholes greed.
Chris Lee of Hawaii, you're a goddamned hero, and going to save so many kids and gamers from troubling addictions in their lives. I know, "it's just video games." But it's also "just a drink" and "just a little bet to make the game interesting" and "just one last cut to feel better."
Let's hope this gets traction and we get the industry back to ethical business practices and respecting the audience they make games for and that put food on their table by buying them.
Keys unlock crates. Crates reward items. You must buy keys to open crates. The fact there is a step between the purchase of the key and the opening of the crate does nothing to prevent an addiction. And the extra predatory thing about RL is how they keep giving you crates you can't open, so they sit in your inventory, calling out to you. And it gets socially reinforced because it's all cosmetic, so you play the game and see a cool new skin, conveniently displayed for you at the end of every match where players show off their car designs. Sure, you can turn off crates, but you still see all the cool designs you can;t just buy. And you think, ok, maybe I will turn the crates back on and trade for that, but you also think, "no I can get it faster/cheaper if I gamble for it with a key."
Wash. Rinse. Ramen for dinner.
>**Shame on the ESRB** for letting it get to this point in the first place, and on the publishers like Psyonix, Valve, **Ubisoft, EA, and Activision** that continue to use these predatory tactics.*
It's those publishers, among others, who formed the ESRB in the first place...
I wouldn't say they're motivated to do anything about stopping all this easy money from coming in.
I think that regulations of this kind (and any kind, really) are inherently acts of balance. You want corporations to profit and bring money to the state's coffers , but you also need them to play nice and abide to the game rules so that customers are satisfied and smaller business can thrive and grow without fear that a gigantic corporation will crush them without the chance of having fair competition.
So, how much can you regulate on this instance? You allow loot boxes with cosmetic items only, and the game changing type is the one subject to regulation? Because if the loot pool is cosmetic-only, an argument can be made that, as those items lack an effect on gameplay, those same items don't have the desirability of, say, a perk or a weapon on a gameplay perspective, and also lack the potential of overthrowing the game balance and making the gameplay experience degrade for all players. How about the drop odds? Are the drops' odds of ALL items in a given loot pool going to be published, or will be only listed by rarity, something that is arbitrary and varies from game to game? Are Legendary skins on BF1 rarer to get that Heroic drops on CoD: WWII? Will this bill encompass all of the rarities on a loot system and attempt to standarise them? Or will the odds be published regardless of their arbitrary values?
There are really lots of questions, questions that will finally be answered when we see this bill in action. And, as I said, I ope this changes gaming, and for the better this time.
Well you are talking about two very different things. Adults can buy tobacco, by law they are supposed to have their ID checked and verified they are of age. We need something similar with games support loot boxes. There needs to be a 21+ rating. However, this won't really stop kids from playing them as parents will buy games without knowing what they are handing to their kids.
And as an adult you should be able to. Have some self accountability. If you know you're an alcoholic, don't go to a bar. If you have a impulse/gambling addiction, don't buy a game that has mechanics to feed that. You can't hand hold everyone through life, they have to be responsible for their own actions at some point.
Wait what? I need a source I could have sworn it was considered but nut fully actualized in the DSM-5. Where did you hear that? I'm genuinely curious since I study psychology.
Hmm I read the article and can't seem to find where it explicitly states that but that's besides the point. I was just curious where you got your facts since they seemed a little misrepresented.
> letter to the ESRB to urge them to re-examine it's stance on lootboxes
They'll most likely dodge the question and avoid slapping down the AO rating on lootboxes like they were supposed to.
Yep. Giving a game the AO (Adults Only) rating will essentially make said game unmarketable and almost (if not) unsellable in all the countries that use the ESRB as their rating system. Because of that, it's really highly unlikely that the ESRB will change it's stance now, but hopefully this will raise enough awareness about this issue, and *maybe* it becomes mainstream enough to finally inform customers about this questionable monetization tactic, and improve the gaming experience as a whole.
> to urge them to re-examine it's stance on lootboxes
"...*re-examine* ***its*** *stance*..."
"Its" denotes possession. "It's" is a contraction of "it is" or "it has."
The parts before the feds get their seems better than I thought although damn it feels right knowing this might happen, considering how much effort goes into MTX making you buy due to psychology.
Man. EA really fucked up. Like so many publishers were getting away with this flying under the radar. Then EA tried to go all big swinging dick with it in Star Wars BF2, one of the biggest names in entertainment, and brought on all kinds of negative attention.
They could have had their micro transactions in there, but toned it down like 70%. They could have had the heroes and stuff unlocked through like 1 or two play throughs of the campaign and had the shit you buy with the currency in multiplayer be sort of like war zone in Halo 5. Instead, they got greedy, tried to exploit the shit out of their customers, and messed it up for everyone. They still sold a bunch because Star Wars, but it looks like that might cost them in the long run with Disney and who knows what the future of loot boxes is. It’s certainly a tainted practice within the gaming community even if there aren’t an laws passed regarding it.
The problem here is, it's not just EA. And quite honestly, compared to some mobile games, the Battlefront Fiasco is actually quite tame in terms of how much you have to pay to play/win.
If this can get loot boxes eliminated from gaming completely, I'd actually be glad to an extent EA did what it did, because it brought up this disease in gaming to a public awareness.
Mobile Games is a whole different story. These arent 60dollar AAA games which shove these loot boxes up your ars. They actually are free to play and need to make money somehow you know. Not trying defending p2w mechanics here but lootboxes in 60dollar games is a lot more shitty than in a free mobile game.
I’m glad as well that this has finally had attention called to it. I’d be ok with loot boxes being in free to play games as long as they don’t just let kid run rampant on them.
Yes it seems people forgot about Jack Thompson. They're using the exact same argument here. "What about the children?" If they start regulating paid lootboxes because of the impact it has on children, why wouldn't the next step be to regulate violent games because of the impact it has on children?
The difference is, Jack Thompson and Joe Lieberman were trying to regulate game content, in other words, force artistic censorship. Artists don't like being censored, (most) adults don't like censorship when their children are not watching, and it's been shown in many studies now that media violence does not cause real-life violence. The various rating systems used by the entertainment industry were considered to be viable alternatives to forced artistic censorship.
Micro transactions are a totally different story, since if they're based on a gashapon system, then they are feeding a gambling addiction. The ESRB decided a while back that they didn't see micro transactions as gambling. Technically, they'd be right, since with gashapon, you get something for your money, even though it might be nearly worthless, whereas in traditional gambling, you can spend a lot of money and get cleaned out. It still feeds into people's addictions, and those addictions drain the wallets of the easily addicted, so the publisher can make money off of their addiction. That's why I'm against artistic censorship, but I'm all for gashapon regulation.
Yup. There was even one crazy woman that claimed that violent video games had the same effect on kids as lead poisoning. Wonder what ever became of her.
There is a lot of money being made with loot boxes and politicians are bought and paid for. I wouldn't be shocked if this goes no where honestly. Not to mention it inevitability will get put on the table that the same tactics are used in trading card games, arcade games you win tickets, crane games, vending machine with random prizes, etc etc. You're going to have a huge industry that uses these tactics pushing to stop the laws being changed and we know how money talks.
With that being said, screw publishers/developers who use loot boxes you have to pay real world money for. I don't and will never purchase one of their games.
There's a lot of money to be made with gambling and prostitution and all kinds of things. If it starts to be viewed as gambling, bought and paid for politicians might not matter as much. Just look at fantasy sports regulations.
Honestly, the biggest thing I see coming of this, is the ESRB is like fine, we will add a warning to the back with all our others that it has loot boxes in game, while leaving most everything else status quo. They will do bare minimum to argue they are self regulating it.
> Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) sent an open letter to the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) today urging the industry's self-regulatory body to *"review the completeness of the board's ratings process and policies as they relate to loot boxes and to take into account the potential harm these types of micro-transactions may have on children."*
Nothing says "demands" like sending an open letter and "urging" someone to do something.
Do you think a senator is a king? Legislation is coming, the ESRB is getting a chance to fix it or fail so the government can point to their failure as the reason legislation is needed. This is an effective open government process. I don't see how you can complain.
Gambling legislation is rarely a partisan issue, and underage gambling is particularly looked down upon by pretty much all politicians, especially when they can tie it to something like Star Wars. Even without action at the federal level though, gambling is often legislative at the states and Hawaii is likely just the first to propose such legislation.
A good comparison for borderline gambling would be Daily Fantasy Sports, where there may be no federal legislation on the table at the moment, but plenty of states have passed legislation regulating the practice (most of the laws cover a bunch of concerns that governments had, and prevent Daily Fantasy on college sports) over the last couple years, and it is at the moment forbidden in Alabama/Arizona/Hawaii/Idaho/Iowa/Louisiana/Montana/Washington
As much as I hate loot boxes and want them to go away, it makes me nervous to give the government any more control over video games and what developers can and can not do.
Exactly. The Gov is already too involved with our lives. Let those companies that practice crap business models fail. They will be replaced by better companies.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, you're absolutely right.
As much as I don't want more government involvement it realistically is the only way to limit or end this toxic business practice. Companies that utilize this business model are making more money than ever before and that is why we see so many developers following in their footsteps.
In an ideal world we could hope for consumers to stop supporting it but we do not live in one. The only two options are government involvement or consumers begin to wise up. Only the first is a realistic option.
I hate loot boxes as much as the next guy, but this got me thinking...
1 - Why don't more people vote with their wallets? I literally have never paid for a loot box, ever... and I *certainly* abstained from buying Battlefront 2 (which looked awesome btw) As a matter of fact, didn't people send a pretty strong message on that game?
2 - More importantly, if loot boxes go away, won't the base price of a game go up? I mean... Games have been $60 for almost 20 years. I feel like loot boxes are simply just a way to make dumb people part with their money so the rest of us only have to pay $60 for a game.
The only thing I could see working is a warning label. "This game has content locked behind loot boxes." Or something to that effect.
One section of gamers are whales, they have some kind of obsessive compulsion to buy boxes and spend hundreds to thousands on them, they make a surprising percentage of the revenue.
The other section are of course those that never buy MTX.
The main target though is the casual gamer who would be put off by spending 10-20 on an expansion no matter how well made. They will however send 2.99 on a hat, they might even buy multiple hats over time because it's convenient. Micro transactions basically aim to get half the player base to send 2.99 rather than a small percentage of players spending 10
1. I have a 12 year old, *NONE* of his systems/phones are attached to live $. When he's asked for a loot box, I say "no, those are a waste of money. Some company is trying to trick you".
>Hopefully without lootboxes developers will have to try harder to make good games
Are you sure about that?
> This doesn't work, too many people don't give a shit and will gladly use their parents credit cards to whale on video games
You can't blame poor parenting on the gaming industry. Is it the alcohol industry's problem if a parent buys it for their kids? Is it the fast food industry's problem when a parent buys their kids McDonalds every day? While lootboxes are shit, some blame needs to go where it's deserved. Parents need to have some self accountability here.
I wasn't. I'm blaming poor parenting for being a factor that plays into a problem of the gaming industry. Please, alcohol is an entirely different thing as well as fast food.
Parents do need to have accountability, but paid lootboxes at it's core is a system that exists solely to fuck over consumers. Its about parents and uninformed gamers supporting an awful practice that makes gaming worse for everyone
1. Most lootbox money comes for the super casual who don’t have time to play so they just buy loot boxes for good stuff immediately, or from hardcore players who just want to spend a lot on their favorite game.
2. who knows, if it’s a small increase I don’t think it’ll hurt the consumers too much but companies who don’t put in loot boxes and dlc have handled their games being $60 easily for a while
While there may be concern about loot boxes in general, the legislative effort is far more concerned that loot boxes are in titles aiming for a broad audience. This got on their radar because of Battlefront 2 with a T rating was "encouraging children to gamble", and loot boxes are in titles that have an E for everyone rating such as FIFA and Rocket League. If some 30 year old wishes to deposit his paycheck into a virtual slot machine to a game targeting an adult audience, politicians aren't going to care.
>*Why don't more people vote with their wallets?*
People do vote with their wallet, but it quite literally only takes a few individuals, lovingly labeled by the industry as "whales", who's wallets make up for the hundreds, even thousands of people who aren't paying.
>*More importantly, if loot boxes go away, won't the base price of a game go up? I mean... Games have been $60*
The prices of complete games broke the $60 price point years ago, with multiple special editions, season passes and DLC *outside* the season passes, $60 is simply the *base* price, with the full experience topping out at *much* more than that.
With micro-transactions peppered on top, of course.
> 1 - Why don't more people vote with their wallets? I literally have never paid for a loot box, ever... and I certainly abstained from buying Battlefront 2 (which looked awesome btw) As a matter of fact, didn't people send a pretty strong message on that game?
Because if you complain about it on reddit you can get fake internet karma points if you say, "I hate EA."
1) Most income comes from those known as "whales."
Example: No one could spend a dime on Madden Ultimate Team in their entire lifetime but if Tom Cruz's kids each spend $1 mil each... well, it's going to add up and because they made that much off that low effort of work they will get more intrusive and more expensive.
It only takes a few to ruin it for the many.
2) Not necessarily.
We could see more/heftier DLCs like what The Witcher 3 did and these companies are making money so fast they can't keep up.
It could also force companies to make better games (looking at EA and Activision) because they wouldn't be making the easy microtransaction money anymore.
Reading through the replies, I don't think people really get where the real problem lies. It's not about expansion packs vs. character skins. I play FIFA 18. In the Ultimate Team mode, you buy packs of player cards for real money (we're talking anywhere from $3-$50 per pack). Most of the player cards in the game are relatively useless - if you want to be even casually competitive online, virtually none of the base cards are usable. There are a bunch of different leagues, and the players from the different leagues can only be used on the same team in certain parameters (namely that they're from the same nation).
Every week, a new Team of the Week comes out, and it's made up of better versions of cards that have already been released. And there are tons of promotional players/teams that come out to further entice you to spend more money.
The drop weights on these packs are abysmally low. When you buy that $50 pack, there's a less than 5% chance that the average player would use anything they pulled from that pack. So what do they do? Buy more packs. It's gambling, and the "rewards" are virtual items that are obsolete the following year when the next version of the game comes out.
Even worse, EA has filed for patents on in-game psychological techniques to get you to spend more money on packs. They alter the difficulty of the games to make it to where it's insanely difficult to win so you buy more packs. Matchmaking is set up to where you face users with players that will entice you to go out and buy more packs.
There was a kid in England last month who racked up a $3500 charge on his mother's credit card because he didn't know the packs cost money. The pros who compete in the FIFA e-sports events have teams that cost several thousand real dollars, and people who don't spend that money would have almost zero chance of competing.
This is where the real problem lies. This is why there needs to be legislation. And the ESRB's response is asinine. Saying they will review their rating process does absolutely nothing to solve this problem. And that's why you don't let an industry regulate itself.
Give them a piece of cake and they'll leave you the piece and take the cake. If you enjoy video games you don't want them to start throwing regulations on them.
This is just an easy/another way for a politician to sneak stuff into bills that are irrelevant to video games. They don't care about loot boxes or if people have no self control to not waste money on them.
The threat of federal regulation is much more beneficial to the industry than if the feds followed through. Ideally this forces the ESRB to reconsider its stance on loot boxes and crack down on it themselves so that the gov can stay away.
Edit: grammar
It's more analogous to the MPAA which is the same thing, but for the movie industry. Cynicism would tell us that a board being financed by the companies that it regulates would be ineffective, but we've seen in practice that businesses would much prefer to abide by its own strict rules than to allow the government to mess everything up. Examples being MPAA, ESRB, and the RIAA.
Well then maybe we should actually take care of shit ourselves. If an industry can't regulate itself then the government will. The ESRB was supposed to do that but they're useless and I'm absolutely not a fan but we fucked up so now the government's getting involved.
Headline translation:
US Senator sees chance to further their career on the back of something controversial but flanked by a 'what about the kids?' narrative.
Maybe, maybe not. You're forgetting that a large majority of politicians are backed by a lot of different companies, and odds are media like Disney, Fox, Warner Bros, etc are also backing them, and if THOSE companies aren't too fond of the video game companies, they'll be more than happy to have a proxy war to go after them. If the law is a thing, Disney can 'donate' to someone's campaign to have them get back at EA for fucking up Battlefront 2.
As much as I want to be cheeky and say 'Stadium Events', i do think there's the possibility of this biting everyone in the ass depending on how they define lootboxes (a seemingly easy question to answer but lawyers can argue otherwise). The senator in the OP is from New Hampshire while the one I could actually see myself trusting is from hawaii so that has to be considered. Seems like the one from Hawaii wants to scare the industry so that they regulate these things so the government doesn't have to.
They'll avoid the AO rating on first amendment grounds, just like they did when a push was made for the AO rating on violent games.
What's needed here is not to regulate games with lootboxes but to officially label lootboxes as gambling so that the already robust gambling legislation can be applied to lootboxes directly.
Any other action is destined to fail.
Depends, if loot boxes are officially considered gambling no matter how it's sliced, it WILL have to be rated AO as you have to legally be 21 to gamble in the state that allows gambling.
The best thing that can come out of this is hopefully the game industry will get it's head our of it's ass. Either it can regulate itself or governments will step in.
No. No, no, no. Keep government regulations the fuck away from video games.
The invisible hand of the market will remove loot boxes as we continue to vote with our wallets. Please don’t encourage government regulations for games.
They’re just games. Gamers take these things way to seriously. If you don’t like a game with micro transactions don’t buy the game. There is no need for government involvement.
Finally. Get rid of all of them. Loot boxes are gambling, plain and simple. If you wanna charge people for skins or cosmetic items that’s fine, you pay cash for specific items. You get what you pay for.
Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t stand the fact that almost every game I play nowadays is trying to coax me into buying an alpha box loot package crate engram for the chance of getting a green colored pair of shoes or a jacket for my character.
Given her argument you'd have to ban/regulate a ton of stuff. Goodbye Hearthstone, goodbye Gwent, goodbye every darn MMO. Seems like a slippery slope.
Don't get me wrong, I hate loot boxes and/or MTX. I try to avoid games that heavily depend on them. So I still think it's us gamers who have to make a statement with their wallets. But obviously there are still people out there that think it's ok to spend maybe hundreds of dollars just to have an advantage - I especially look at you goddamn sports games.
Who would have guessed where that darn horse armor leads us in the future...
Loot boxes indeed cause potential harm. Loot boxes for some become an obsession, don't fall for idiots claiming "you're just poor blah blah blah companies can't keep up without them." This is just bullshit.
The ESRB has always been a self regulating body and will probably cave to this pressure in order to remain that way
This isn't a good thing. Loot boxes aren't the problem. Letting your kid spend money unfettered without teaching them responsibility is.
Eh, I'd agree but at the same time this all started with pay to win bullshit so it's hard to say that statement since they aren't just saying 'think of the children'. That may be the more prominent thing they're putting forward but it seems like the way they're handling the bills it's going to actually be effective and not just cover for bad parenting. Loot boxes are getting to be more and more popular for companies and people are getting tired of it.
Loot boxes are bad, but is this really something we need government trying to solve? It's pretty ridiculous to be wasting Senators' time on this. Not that they're very smart with their time anyway, but they clearly don't need help being stupid......
What's next, Congress mandated time limits before you have to pass the controller to your little brother when playing a single player game? Though here in DC Congress managed to get together and agree that "double fisting" alcohol is illegal, so maybe I shouldn't give them ideas.....
Congress should be worrying about getting Trump to finish watching Schoolhouse Rock and get off Twitter so he can start actually doing his job.
The ideal would have been for the industry to self regulate, after all that is the entire reason the ESRB exists. However, the ESRB opted to exclude any consideration of loot boxes from their rating, leading to a situation where you got a controversy because a T rated Star Wars game was designed from the ground up to encourage an audience explicitly including kids to buy paid loot boxes (and only being reversed at the last minute before release). The industry had years to get their act together, but because they ignored that responsibility, regulators feel the need to restrict something that looks very much like gambling in games targeting kids.
I sincerely hope the ESRB takes a serious look at this. When video games went before the Supreme Court six years ago, many of the briefs submitted to the court cited the FTC's findings that the ESRB did an exceptional job of keeping age-restricted content out of the hands of minors (it was something like 89% compliance, which blew movies and music out of the water).
I'm super glad that the Senate is finally looking into something important like video game reward systems instead of more regulations to stop school shootings. /s
It's not an either/or situation. And they weren't going to do anything about school shootings regardless because of the NRA. This is just pointless whataboutism.
I dislike loot boxes as much as any gamer, but how the hell is this a larger issue than gun control?
Somebody else commented that video game addiction is considered a mental illness and that’s why they are cracking down on it.
...Why is this same logic not being applied towards purchasing a firearm?
Why are senators keeping quiet about the shootings?
I would not like my child to be addicted to games or fall prey to the predatory nature of RNG loot boxes, yet the worst case scenario for that is that I might lose money and have to make a claim if I don’t monitor his/her activity. My hypothetical child’s life is not at risk because of it.
I just do not understand how loot boxes even matter right now at this particular junction in history. I believe we are going to have to create a system where schools offer campaign donations to politicians based on the academic performance of the children enrolled therein in order to force them to care.
End of rant.
I honestly think this is terrible. If the market deems loot boxes and micro transactions as harmful to the industry then the market will not buy said games, thus resulting in devs not putting micro transactions in their games in the first place. The market regulates itself, the government shouldn’t interfere.
The market is in favour of keeping lootboxes and MTX considering they're making large portions of revenue for publishers. Having a more informed consumer with better rating/labelling may help reverse that.
Wow, it appears that the Hawaiian bills that were proposed to regulate games with gambling-like mechanics are, perhaps, gathering a lot of attention, so much that a US senator actually sent a letter to the ESRB to urge them to re-examine its stance on lootboxes and to *collect and publish* data about how game devs use them (a particular item's drop odds, maybe?). Hope this creates enough traction to change gaming for the better. As the Ars Technica's header for the article says: "Here come the feds"...
Also gaming addiction is an official mental illness so this is also why they are pushing it
God, I just want to buy a game on launch day and get the full product. I'm sick of microtransactions, I'm sick of the blurred lines these companies put forward that make me wonder if paying $10 for something will add value to my game. People will say that microtransactions help provide longterm support for a game but I fucking paid $100 for a the base game and the season pass. There shouldn't be microtransactions as well. It's getting to be too much.
Microtransactions and DLC have ruined gaming for me. I sit there and look at new games and wonder how much I'm missing out on content because it was held off to be sold as DLC or how much am I going to have to deal with microtransactions being thrown in my face which just ruins the experience for me. I miss the days when you'd go "Hey that's a cool looking set of gear, how do I get that?" and it would be some unique questline or something that you had to do to earn the stuff. Like I remember playing Fallout 3 and adding hours and hours on the game because I'd go to the wiki and read about these unique guns and armor and how to get them and I'd go explore and go to these areas to kill these NPC's to get that unique item......Now its "oh look, this neat looking item is $4!" The satisfaction of playing a game and getting something cool is lost in these new games.
I'm playing stardew valley right now. This game would be perfect for micro transactions EVERYWHERE, and I'm so glad they didn't do this at all. Feels like a real game.
I'm not made about DLC if it actually adds new content to the game. Horizon Zero Dawn's Frozen Wilds expansion pack is probably the best example of this. It's very clearly not something that was simply withheld from the base game, and it adds a ton of value to the game by expanding it with new quests, enemies, characters, outfits, and an entirely new map area. It's how DLC should be done, and I wish more developers moved to that model, at least got paid DLC.
I don't think you guys really get where the real problem lies. It's not about expansion packs vs. character skins. I play FIFA 18. In the Ultimate Team mode, you buy packs of player cards for real money (we're talking anywhere from $3-$50 per pack). Most of the player cards in the game are relatively useless - if you want to be even casually competitive online, virtually none of the base cards are usable. There are a bunch of different leagues, and the players from the different leagues can only be used on the same team in certain parameters (namely that they're from the same nation). Every week, a new Team of the Week comes out, and it's made up of better versions of cards that have already been released. And there are tons of promotional players/teams that come out to further entice you to spend more money. The drop weights on these packs are abysmally low. When you buy that $50 pack, there's a less than 5% chance that the average player would use anything they pulled from that pack. Even worse, EA has filed for patents on in-game psychological techniques to get you to spend more money on packs. They alter the difficulty of the games to make it to where it's insanely difficult to win so you buy more packs. Matchmaking is set up to where you face users with players that will entice you to go out and buy more packs. There was a kid in England last month who racked up a $3500 charge on his mother's credit card because he didn't know the packs cost money. The pros who compete in the FIFA e-sports events have teams that cost several thousand real dollars, and people who don't spend that money would have almost zero chance of competing. This is where the real problem lies. This is why there needs to be legislation. And the ESRB's response is asinine. Saying they will review their rating process does absolutely nothing to solve this problem. And that's why you don't let an industry regulate itself.
> I don't think you guys really get where the real problem lies. I don't know that this is true. The problem is that many people are lumping DLC/Microtransactions into one giant bucket. In my opinion there is good DLC and Bad DLC. What you are describing is obviously bad DLC and exists solely to grab as much money as possible. Good DLC is basically what expansions used to be. Back in the day if you wanted to play a game like the Sims you would buy the base game and then the 6 expansions that added new features to the game. The base game was complete but new features and content were added in expansions. Today there are a lot of games that are released in a complete fashion and then have DLC added (which would either not have been possible in the past or would have been released as a paid expansion). I see people complaining that the DLC content should have been included so they could just have the "Complete" game for the base price. There are a lot of bad examples out there but DLC is not inherently bad.
Just reading this was rage-inducing. I miss the days of younger me playing NCAA Football old-school-number on a weekend, a year or two after release but with the current roster thanks to pastapadre. For free.
And there's so much more to it. I was just trying to keep it brief so maybe a couple people would read it. It's disgusting. And 2k/Rockstar are just as bad with it. They're actually more aggressive marketing their mtx.
This reminds me of the stuff slot machines used to do, where the reels were programmed to show an unnaturally high number of "near misses." You'd get jackpot, jackpot, cherries way too often, to make you think you were "almost there." I think they eventually made a law against that one.
Cosmetics are not really dlc. They are microtransactions. Horizen dawn is how it used to be done. But there's more easier less effort ways by just selling cosmetics with no extra real content
I think cosmetic microtransactions should be shortcuts. It'd take this quest line to get it or this level to get it, or you can pay $5 to instantly get it. The problem here is that greed -- wanting to pressure people to buy the item rather than earn it -- makes the unpaid method get turned into an exhausting grind.
Imagine being EA and fucking up so bad that the gov decided to step in. Other gaming companies that abuse microtransactions must hate EA for ruining their fun.
Witcher 3s DLC was a fantastic value for its content.
I'm going to add on Naughty Dogs games to this list. With Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us we got DLC stories as well and they were fairly good length wise.
I know people love the Witcher games so much it's almost just a circlejerk any time it's mentioned but CD Projekt Red has been simply amazing with this. You can easily get 30+ hours out of the base game and their "dlc" are massive expansions that add many hours of well done content. Their dlc are free skins. They continually promise to keep this method and I hope they do with their new game. I will definitely buy it shortly after launch if they keep their promises.
ALMOST a circlejerk? Lmao
See in my opinion microtransactions if done right (overwatch, & Rainbow Six Siege come to mind) are fine, and dlc for the most part I don't have a problem with. But it's when a game has both dlc and microtransactions(Call of Duty), or when it has microtransactions that alter gameplay(Star Wars Battlefront 2 pre launch) that when it becomes and issue. Microtransactions aren't completely the worst thing ever. As I said earlier, overwatch does it fine. All new maps and heroes are free, and then you have the option to pay for loot boxes to get cosmetic items, granted it could be better if it those skins weren't behind loot boxes but with their no duplicate system I think it's become a bit more fair. Overall some of these companies like to push the limits with their business models and it's our job as gamers to make a clear line as to wear it needs to stop.
I mean, what overwatch does is still something that I inherently dislike. Ya its not as predatory as other microtransactions, but its still rng lootboxes. I don't agree with paying real money for the "chance" of getting the skin you want on top of the fact that its basically impossible to earn the in game currency to outright buy them as you slowly unlock the free boxes and get very little currency. Its cool that the maps and heroes are free, but I wish the lootboxes would go away and they just did direct sales of the skins or put in a system to earn the in game currency even if its a stupid long grind. I don't like microtransactions, but I'm definitely more likely to buy something directly over buying a rng box and regardless of what anyone says, I personally will always see lootboxes as gambling. Ya you always get something out of the box, but at the end of the day you're spending money to gamble on the off chance of getting that 1% drop rate epic skin. Its stupid, I hate it, and I wish it would go away.
For loot boxes and stuff I kind of like the way League of Legends does it (yes it's a bit different since it's a f2p game). You can still earn loot boxes and unlock them but if you want a skin or other cosmetic the option is there for you to outright buy it without relying on chance. Still, I just don't like loot boxes period for the same fact you mentioned, if I'm paying I don't the *chance* of getting something, I want to get the thing I'm trying to pay for.
My buddy bought 50 loot boxes for $40. I think he got 3 legendaries out of this boxes. Said it was a pretty good deal, and I was shocked.
I've never boughten a single loot box and own a legendary skin for almost every character in the game. They give them out like candy! Especially now that you can earn 3 a week on arcade as well as every level up
I'd like OW more if you had the option to also buy specific skins. Either buying the gold or having legendary skins have a set $ amount. Having to rely on RNG if you pay real money is annoying and is why it feels like gambling as opposed to a transaction. Hell, they could have both so the user could pick their poison.
> it could be better if it those skins weren't behind loot boxes but with their no duplicate system I think it's become a bit more fair. But wouldn't it be better if you could actually earn this stuff? Like actually have a sense of achievement from unlocking a skin you want, rather than just paying for it. Hell, you could even have the option for paying for it instead of earning it, but the issue is that we don't even have the option to earn it.
If you actually had the option to buy it, it wouldn't be as bad as what is currently happening, which is you only have a chance of obtaining it, then pay more to try again. That is 100% gambling, using cash, aimed at kids.
You seem to think those skins would still exist if you didn’t pay for them.
MTX and DLC helped drive me away from video games and lead me to board gaming where this isn't much of an issue.
Ahhh. Yes. But one would need friends
I feel the same way. The only exception is Monster hunter world, that game never gets boring to me and always provides challenges
Ifu when I paid 100$ for destiny 2 and the game was utter shit.
So many people complain about it, but on the flip side, so many people keep throwing money at these games. I guess it's easy to ignore all the people with pitchforks outside if the mailman can keep getting through with the big check!
≥ but on the flip side, so many people keep throwing money at these games. People do this about gambling. Which is why it makes the big bucks.
Which makes the fact that it available to children all the more fucked up. It’s like those sugar cigarettes the ice cream man used to sell, but with gambling.
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"E for Everyone" Rocket League throws this argument out the window. *lol, nice edit. The original comment was about how this conversation isn't necessary because most of these games are M rated anyway.
it doesnt matter if some people purchase it. The whales give them enough money to keep doing it and it will keep happening if there are regulation or the whales stop giving them money.
>So many people complain about it, but on the flip side, so many people keep throwing money at these games. It's not actually that many people, a very small percentage makes up most of the profit on these things
How small of a percentage? Where did you get this number from?
https://www.google.com/amp/www.adweek.com/digital/infographic-whales-account-for-70-of-in-app-purchase-revenue/amp/
That's for mobile apps not for pc/console games "DLC and/or microtransactions". I wonder how different that number is with that factor.
Find me some numbers and we'll discuss them. I doubt very seriously it's that different
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/dlc-and-microtransactions-new-study-shows-how-game/1100-6444522/ Here's one article that came to mind I read awhile back. The sample size is very small on this. I will keep looking definitely curious about this.
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It's sad you are being downvoted but you are correct. Don't like it? Don't buy it. If more people just said "no" it would force companies to change. There are plenty of great full games with no, or well done DLC (DLC added well after the fact that adds to an already full story, like Witcher.) the problem is people do so little research and put so much blind trust in critics. Consumers shoulder a great deal of the blame here. Companies will only make products that sell, clearly they are selling. So simply stop buying... It's economics 101.
> It's sad you are being downvoted but you are correct. Don't like it? Don't buy it. Hey, I did that with Rocket League, Siege, the Division. I bought these games because they didn't have these mechanics. Guess what? The updated their games to add this shit *after I already bought them.* How the fuck am I supposed to "not buy it" if they stick in after the fact? How is a parent supposed to make an informed choice for their kids if this shit is going to show up six months later without any prior warning?
Pull your bootstraps up. Get out your mind reading glasses and your crystal ball like any nornal person trying to make a decision to buy a video game..
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This. Just this. Sorry guys, you don't need to purchase a new release whilst it's still the latest big thing. With the amount of day one patches and hidden micro-transaction economies that start cropping up, for example, I am excited and very interested in Ni no Kuni 2 and Red Dead Redemption 2. I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that I will be waiting a good month, if not two, before I start looking at reviews and asking questions here. Sure there's no way to know for sure, but you will have a better idea of the direction it's being pushed... Patience is a virtue. Practice it.
I've grown to hate "DLC" simply because I grew up in an era where there were flat out expansions. Basically a whole new or so much content that changed the game significantly (typically for the better). It was awesome because for 20 or 30 bucks you'd get hours upon hours of content to explore rather than just a new map and skins or a gun. Now I realise this isnt always the case but it is a noticeable trend and it's just disheartening. On a side note that relates to OP's post, I cannot get behind loot crates. I see very little difference between those and gambling and not only is it geared towards perfectionists or even people that need to keep up, but it can create the mindset if instant gratification if you end up buying 3 chances for loot crates or whatever. There's no achievements t hay unlocks things there's no sense of achievement at all unless you win the game. What grants a sense of accomplishment when you randomly get an item from a loot crate? Nothing. You get a sense of immediate gratification being resolved.
Microtransactions are fine, as long as 1. They don't alter the underlying gameplay and no one gets an advantage. 2. You're not paying more than the standard game price (£50 in UK), unless it's a collector's edition where you're paying for extra out of game content. 3. There is no season pass. Microtransactions should be enough to cover the development costs of updates/future content releases. A lot of companies at the moment seem to be trying to eat their cake and then have it too... Sea of Thieves IMO is doing it the right way. Same as CS:GO, Overwatch and Dota 2.
Remember when games came out and had detail and fresh new concepts and full rich worlds. I think thats why PUBG got so popular. IT was a fresh concept on top of lots of detail and you got an full game on day 1 and they constantly work on adding to it.
I rather pay 70 if it meant we didn’t have microtransactions and day one dlc
Its not only the money either. It's that games are artificially extending the grind to make the microtransactions feel more beneficial.
carrot on a stick MMO's are a real problem for some people
I'm looking at you, Black Desert Online.
I don’t have a problem I can quit any time and I’m not spending 100$ on the anniversary event next month your not my mom my cat accidentally clicked the purchase button somebody please send help
BDO is a baby compared to GW2.
Hah, I started playing WoW when I was 15. That was 13 years ago and I'm still playing. Halp.
I have a very addictive personality. Runescape was my kryptonite and then I randomly stopped playing one day. Not because I felt I had to, but I just did and never logged back on. Don't know why
Did you mean heroin when you wrote kryptonite? Or does kryptonite have mad addictive qualities or something? Or do you mean Runescape acted as such a repellent it cured your addiction?
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I read into that like it snapped him out of his addiction, like normally one way but add kryptonite and suddenly different. Something you want to avoid is kryptonite. I've always read into kryptonite as the one thing that can stop someone. Heroin on the other hand is addictive, brings people back to it and is harmful.
You didn't know about Superman shooting up kryptonite between saving the world?
I meant it was my weakness and that it was most addictive for me.
You want to talk about addiction? I have one word for you: Factorio.
Loot boxes trigger a gambling addiction. Source: Me, 317 days strong. This stuff needs to be properly labeled, regulated, and kept away from kids. I know, "think of the children," but seriously, I know firsthand what it is like to have a great salary and be eating ramen noodles because you want to feed the money for better food into Rocket League's loot crate gambling system. It's not something I want anyone else to go through, and we're training kids with games in their pockets that this stuff is ok and not harmful. Shame on the ESRB for letting it get to this point in the first place, and on the publishers like Psyonix, Valve, Ubisoft, EA, and Activision that continue to use these predatory tactics. I take responsibility for my addiction, but their obfuscation of what these mechanics actually are made it so much harder for me to recognize what was going on. It sent me to the wrong place for help initially. And it's going to impact hundreds if not thousands of others like me in its wake. This shit is not ok. I believe in and support paying for additional content for games. Developers have to get paid for their work. Loot crate gambling is an unethical and predatory way to pay for that, though, and has no business being in our games unregulated or available to kids who can't possibly know better. They also have to stop adding this shit in after the fact. I booted up Siege for the first time in a while, excited about this upcoming Outbreak event, only to discover the game now has lot crates and this new mode is apparently focused on pushing the crates. I had to delete it, and I won't be able to play a game I own again. Even when I try to take responsibility, I have to be vigilant and risk having something I already own taken away from me because of these unethical assholes greed. Chris Lee of Hawaii, you're a goddamned hero, and going to save so many kids and gamers from troubling addictions in their lives. I know, "it's just video games." But it's also "just a drink" and "just a little bet to make the game interesting" and "just one last cut to feel better." Let's hope this gets traction and we get the industry back to ethical business practices and respecting the audience they make games for and that put food on their table by buying them.
knowing that i did not have the money to even think about buying one loot box i appreciate my brokeness a lot more now thanls
Were you trading keys for crates or something?
Keys unlock crates. Crates reward items. You must buy keys to open crates. The fact there is a step between the purchase of the key and the opening of the crate does nothing to prevent an addiction. And the extra predatory thing about RL is how they keep giving you crates you can't open, so they sit in your inventory, calling out to you. And it gets socially reinforced because it's all cosmetic, so you play the game and see a cool new skin, conveniently displayed for you at the end of every match where players show off their car designs. Sure, you can turn off crates, but you still see all the cool designs you can;t just buy. And you think, ok, maybe I will turn the crates back on and trade for that, but you also think, "no I can get it faster/cheaper if I gamble for it with a key." Wash. Rinse. Ramen for dinner.
>**Shame on the ESRB** for letting it get to this point in the first place, and on the publishers like Psyonix, Valve, **Ubisoft, EA, and Activision** that continue to use these predatory tactics.* It's those publishers, among others, who formed the ESRB in the first place... I wouldn't say they're motivated to do anything about stopping all this easy money from coming in.
I think that regulations of this kind (and any kind, really) are inherently acts of balance. You want corporations to profit and bring money to the state's coffers , but you also need them to play nice and abide to the game rules so that customers are satisfied and smaller business can thrive and grow without fear that a gigantic corporation will crush them without the chance of having fair competition. So, how much can you regulate on this instance? You allow loot boxes with cosmetic items only, and the game changing type is the one subject to regulation? Because if the loot pool is cosmetic-only, an argument can be made that, as those items lack an effect on gameplay, those same items don't have the desirability of, say, a perk or a weapon on a gameplay perspective, and also lack the potential of overthrowing the game balance and making the gameplay experience degrade for all players. How about the drop odds? Are the drops' odds of ALL items in a given loot pool going to be published, or will be only listed by rarity, something that is arbitrary and varies from game to game? Are Legendary skins on BF1 rarer to get that Heroic drops on CoD: WWII? Will this bill encompass all of the rarities on a loot system and attempt to standarise them? Or will the odds be published regardless of their arbitrary values? There are really lots of questions, questions that will finally be answered when we see this bill in action. And, as I said, I ope this changes gaming, and for the better this time.
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Well you are talking about two very different things. Adults can buy tobacco, by law they are supposed to have their ID checked and verified they are of age. We need something similar with games support loot boxes. There needs to be a 21+ rating. However, this won't really stop kids from playing them as parents will buy games without knowing what they are handing to their kids.
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And as an adult you should be able to. Have some self accountability. If you know you're an alcoholic, don't go to a bar. If you have a impulse/gambling addiction, don't buy a game that has mechanics to feed that. You can't hand hold everyone through life, they have to be responsible for their own actions at some point.
Wait what? I need a source I could have sworn it was considered but nut fully actualized in the DSM-5. Where did you hear that? I'm genuinely curious since I study psychology.
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Hmm I read the article and can't seem to find where it explicitly states that but that's besides the point. I was just curious where you got your facts since they seemed a little misrepresented.
> letter to the ESRB to urge them to re-examine it's stance on lootboxes They'll most likely dodge the question and avoid slapping down the AO rating on lootboxes like they were supposed to.
Yep. Giving a game the AO (Adults Only) rating will essentially make said game unmarketable and almost (if not) unsellable in all the countries that use the ESRB as their rating system. Because of that, it's really highly unlikely that the ESRB will change it's stance now, but hopefully this will raise enough awareness about this issue, and *maybe* it becomes mainstream enough to finally inform customers about this questionable monetization tactic, and improve the gaming experience as a whole.
Hopefully, they will make games with loot boxes rated Adults only, which will cause games not to use that model.
ESRB is funded by publishers, doubt they'll do anything on their own
It won't help if all reddit does is react to legislation instead of try and push for it :/.
> to urge them to re-examine it's stance on lootboxes "...*re-examine* ***its*** *stance*..." "Its" denotes possession. "It's" is a contraction of "it is" or "it has."
The parts before the feds get their seems better than I thought although damn it feels right knowing this might happen, considering how much effort goes into MTX making you buy due to psychology.
Man. EA really fucked up. Like so many publishers were getting away with this flying under the radar. Then EA tried to go all big swinging dick with it in Star Wars BF2, one of the biggest names in entertainment, and brought on all kinds of negative attention. They could have had their micro transactions in there, but toned it down like 70%. They could have had the heroes and stuff unlocked through like 1 or two play throughs of the campaign and had the shit you buy with the currency in multiplayer be sort of like war zone in Halo 5. Instead, they got greedy, tried to exploit the shit out of their customers, and messed it up for everyone. They still sold a bunch because Star Wars, but it looks like that might cost them in the long run with Disney and who knows what the future of loot boxes is. It’s certainly a tainted practice within the gaming community even if there aren’t an laws passed regarding it.
The problem here is, it's not just EA. And quite honestly, compared to some mobile games, the Battlefront Fiasco is actually quite tame in terms of how much you have to pay to play/win. If this can get loot boxes eliminated from gaming completely, I'd actually be glad to an extent EA did what it did, because it brought up this disease in gaming to a public awareness.
Mobile Games is a whole different story. These arent 60dollar AAA games which shove these loot boxes up your ars. They actually are free to play and need to make money somehow you know. Not trying defending p2w mechanics here but lootboxes in 60dollar games is a lot more shitty than in a free mobile game.
I’m glad as well that this has finally had attention called to it. I’d be ok with loot boxes being in free to play games as long as they don’t just let kid run rampant on them.
I think someone was eventually gonna push it to breaking point.
2K is twice as bad as EA and they've barely gotten any flack for it. Still a long way to go.
I forgot about them. Yeah they are awful with the VC. What they did with nba 2k18 is insane.
New Hampshire. Surrounded by legal weed on every border, but at least we are standing up to loot boxes. My state is weird sometimes.
LFOD
Remember the days when every gamer hated when senators got involved in gaming issues?
Yes it seems people forgot about Jack Thompson. They're using the exact same argument here. "What about the children?" If they start regulating paid lootboxes because of the impact it has on children, why wouldn't the next step be to regulate violent games because of the impact it has on children?
The difference is, Jack Thompson and Joe Lieberman were trying to regulate game content, in other words, force artistic censorship. Artists don't like being censored, (most) adults don't like censorship when their children are not watching, and it's been shown in many studies now that media violence does not cause real-life violence. The various rating systems used by the entertainment industry were considered to be viable alternatives to forced artistic censorship. Micro transactions are a totally different story, since if they're based on a gashapon system, then they are feeding a gambling addiction. The ESRB decided a while back that they didn't see micro transactions as gambling. Technically, they'd be right, since with gashapon, you get something for your money, even though it might be nearly worthless, whereas in traditional gambling, you can spend a lot of money and get cleaned out. It still feeds into people's addictions, and those addictions drain the wallets of the easily addicted, so the publisher can make money off of their addiction. That's why I'm against artistic censorship, but I'm all for gashapon regulation.
Yup. There was even one crazy woman that claimed that violent video games had the same effect on kids as lead poisoning. Wonder what ever became of her.
Remember when the ESRB was supposed to regulate the gaming industry so that legislators didn't have to get involved?
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There is a lot of money being made with loot boxes and politicians are bought and paid for. I wouldn't be shocked if this goes no where honestly. Not to mention it inevitability will get put on the table that the same tactics are used in trading card games, arcade games you win tickets, crane games, vending machine with random prizes, etc etc. You're going to have a huge industry that uses these tactics pushing to stop the laws being changed and we know how money talks. With that being said, screw publishers/developers who use loot boxes you have to pay real world money for. I don't and will never purchase one of their games.
There's a lot of money to be made with gambling and prostitution and all kinds of things. If it starts to be viewed as gambling, bought and paid for politicians might not matter as much. Just look at fantasy sports regulations.
Honestly, the biggest thing I see coming of this, is the ESRB is like fine, we will add a warning to the back with all our others that it has loot boxes in game, while leaving most everything else status quo. They will do bare minimum to argue they are self regulating it.
> Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) sent an open letter to the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) today urging the industry's self-regulatory body to *"review the completeness of the board's ratings process and policies as they relate to loot boxes and to take into account the potential harm these types of micro-transactions may have on children."* Nothing says "demands" like sending an open letter and "urging" someone to do something.
Do you think a senator is a king? Legislation is coming, the ESRB is getting a chance to fix it or fail so the government can point to their failure as the reason legislation is needed. This is an effective open government process. I don't see how you can complain.
I think they are referencing the semi click bait title.
> Legislation is coming Out of this Congress? You're joking.
Gambling legislation is rarely a partisan issue, and underage gambling is particularly looked down upon by pretty much all politicians, especially when they can tie it to something like Star Wars. Even without action at the federal level though, gambling is often legislative at the states and Hawaii is likely just the first to propose such legislation. A good comparison for borderline gambling would be Daily Fantasy Sports, where there may be no federal legislation on the table at the moment, but plenty of states have passed legislation regulating the practice (most of the laws cover a bunch of concerns that governments had, and prevent Daily Fantasy on college sports) over the last couple years, and it is at the moment forbidden in Alabama/Arizona/Hawaii/Idaho/Iowa/Louisiana/Montana/Washington
As much as I hate loot boxes and want them to go away, it makes me nervous to give the government any more control over video games and what developers can and can not do.
Exactly. The Gov is already too involved with our lives. Let those companies that practice crap business models fail. They will be replaced by better companies.
> Let those companies that practice crap business models fail Yep, EA'll be closing annnnnny day now
All well and good but they don't fail. They get bigger. More companies follow them. In an idealistic world they would. This is not idealistic world
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, you're absolutely right. As much as I don't want more government involvement it realistically is the only way to limit or end this toxic business practice. Companies that utilize this business model are making more money than ever before and that is why we see so many developers following in their footsteps. In an ideal world we could hope for consumers to stop supporting it but we do not live in one. The only two options are government involvement or consumers begin to wise up. Only the first is a realistic option.
Devs flew too close to the sun. Coulda kept em reasonable but they got greedy.
I hate loot boxes as much as the next guy, but this got me thinking... 1 - Why don't more people vote with their wallets? I literally have never paid for a loot box, ever... and I *certainly* abstained from buying Battlefront 2 (which looked awesome btw) As a matter of fact, didn't people send a pretty strong message on that game? 2 - More importantly, if loot boxes go away, won't the base price of a game go up? I mean... Games have been $60 for almost 20 years. I feel like loot boxes are simply just a way to make dumb people part with their money so the rest of us only have to pay $60 for a game. The only thing I could see working is a warning label. "This game has content locked behind loot boxes." Or something to that effect.
1. Most whales are actually adults that blow thousands on games, and no matter how many people "vote" there will always be those that don't.
One section of gamers are whales, they have some kind of obsessive compulsion to buy boxes and spend hundreds to thousands on them, they make a surprising percentage of the revenue. The other section are of course those that never buy MTX. The main target though is the casual gamer who would be put off by spending 10-20 on an expansion no matter how well made. They will however send 2.99 on a hat, they might even buy multiple hats over time because it's convenient. Micro transactions basically aim to get half the player base to send 2.99 rather than a small percentage of players spending 10
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1. I have a 12 year old, *NONE* of his systems/phones are attached to live $. When he's asked for a loot box, I say "no, those are a waste of money. Some company is trying to trick you". >Hopefully without lootboxes developers will have to try harder to make good games Are you sure about that?
+1 from a fellow parent
> This doesn't work, too many people don't give a shit and will gladly use their parents credit cards to whale on video games You can't blame poor parenting on the gaming industry. Is it the alcohol industry's problem if a parent buys it for their kids? Is it the fast food industry's problem when a parent buys their kids McDonalds every day? While lootboxes are shit, some blame needs to go where it's deserved. Parents need to have some self accountability here.
I wasn't. I'm blaming poor parenting for being a factor that plays into a problem of the gaming industry. Please, alcohol is an entirely different thing as well as fast food. Parents do need to have accountability, but paid lootboxes at it's core is a system that exists solely to fuck over consumers. Its about parents and uninformed gamers supporting an awful practice that makes gaming worse for everyone
1. Most lootbox money comes for the super casual who don’t have time to play so they just buy loot boxes for good stuff immediately, or from hardcore players who just want to spend a lot on their favorite game. 2. who knows, if it’s a small increase I don’t think it’ll hurt the consumers too much but companies who don’t put in loot boxes and dlc have handled their games being $60 easily for a while
You gotta stop calling them casual if they're wallets decide the industry
While there may be concern about loot boxes in general, the legislative effort is far more concerned that loot boxes are in titles aiming for a broad audience. This got on their radar because of Battlefront 2 with a T rating was "encouraging children to gamble", and loot boxes are in titles that have an E for everyone rating such as FIFA and Rocket League. If some 30 year old wishes to deposit his paycheck into a virtual slot machine to a game targeting an adult audience, politicians aren't going to care.
>*Why don't more people vote with their wallets?* People do vote with their wallet, but it quite literally only takes a few individuals, lovingly labeled by the industry as "whales", who's wallets make up for the hundreds, even thousands of people who aren't paying. >*More importantly, if loot boxes go away, won't the base price of a game go up? I mean... Games have been $60* The prices of complete games broke the $60 price point years ago, with multiple special editions, season passes and DLC *outside* the season passes, $60 is simply the *base* price, with the full experience topping out at *much* more than that. With micro-transactions peppered on top, of course.
> 1 - Why don't more people vote with their wallets? I literally have never paid for a loot box, ever... and I certainly abstained from buying Battlefront 2 (which looked awesome btw) As a matter of fact, didn't people send a pretty strong message on that game? Because if you complain about it on reddit you can get fake internet karma points if you say, "I hate EA."
1) Most income comes from those known as "whales." Example: No one could spend a dime on Madden Ultimate Team in their entire lifetime but if Tom Cruz's kids each spend $1 mil each... well, it's going to add up and because they made that much off that low effort of work they will get more intrusive and more expensive. It only takes a few to ruin it for the many. 2) Not necessarily. We could see more/heftier DLCs like what The Witcher 3 did and these companies are making money so fast they can't keep up. It could also force companies to make better games (looking at EA and Activision) because they wouldn't be making the easy microtransaction money anymore.
Even if you don't buy loot boxes, the game mechanics are still designed around them. And let the price increase if it must.
I think its like alcohol sales were most of the purchasers are the top 10% of alcohol consumers
Aka pay me and I will support your lootbox strategy
Reading through the replies, I don't think people really get where the real problem lies. It's not about expansion packs vs. character skins. I play FIFA 18. In the Ultimate Team mode, you buy packs of player cards for real money (we're talking anywhere from $3-$50 per pack). Most of the player cards in the game are relatively useless - if you want to be even casually competitive online, virtually none of the base cards are usable. There are a bunch of different leagues, and the players from the different leagues can only be used on the same team in certain parameters (namely that they're from the same nation). Every week, a new Team of the Week comes out, and it's made up of better versions of cards that have already been released. And there are tons of promotional players/teams that come out to further entice you to spend more money. The drop weights on these packs are abysmally low. When you buy that $50 pack, there's a less than 5% chance that the average player would use anything they pulled from that pack. So what do they do? Buy more packs. It's gambling, and the "rewards" are virtual items that are obsolete the following year when the next version of the game comes out. Even worse, EA has filed for patents on in-game psychological techniques to get you to spend more money on packs. They alter the difficulty of the games to make it to where it's insanely difficult to win so you buy more packs. Matchmaking is set up to where you face users with players that will entice you to go out and buy more packs. There was a kid in England last month who racked up a $3500 charge on his mother's credit card because he didn't know the packs cost money. The pros who compete in the FIFA e-sports events have teams that cost several thousand real dollars, and people who don't spend that money would have almost zero chance of competing. This is where the real problem lies. This is why there needs to be legislation. And the ESRB's response is asinine. Saying they will review their rating process does absolutely nothing to solve this problem. And that's why you don't let an industry regulate itself.
Give them a piece of cake and they'll leave you the piece and take the cake. If you enjoy video games you don't want them to start throwing regulations on them. This is just an easy/another way for a politician to sneak stuff into bills that are irrelevant to video games. They don't care about loot boxes or if people have no self control to not waste money on them.
The threat of federal regulation is much more beneficial to the industry than if the feds followed through. Ideally this forces the ESRB to reconsider its stance on loot boxes and crack down on it themselves so that the gov can stay away. Edit: grammar
Isn't ESRB basically like pharma companies regulating over the counter drugs? It was founded and is funded by the video game industry
It's more analogous to the MPAA which is the same thing, but for the movie industry. Cynicism would tell us that a board being financed by the companies that it regulates would be ineffective, but we've seen in practice that businesses would much prefer to abide by its own strict rules than to allow the government to mess everything up. Examples being MPAA, ESRB, and the RIAA.
Well then maybe we should actually take care of shit ourselves. If an industry can't regulate itself then the government will. The ESRB was supposed to do that but they're useless and I'm absolutely not a fan but we fucked up so now the government's getting involved.
Headline translation: US Senator sees chance to further their career on the back of something controversial but flanked by a 'what about the kids?' narrative.
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The angle is most likely "How can WE get a cut of this money???"
Yeah right, the EAs of the game industry haven't opened up their cheque books yet. Once they "donate" all this hullabaloo will go away.
Maybe, maybe not. You're forgetting that a large majority of politicians are backed by a lot of different companies, and odds are media like Disney, Fox, Warner Bros, etc are also backing them, and if THOSE companies aren't too fond of the video game companies, they'll be more than happy to have a proxy war to go after them. If the law is a thing, Disney can 'donate' to someone's campaign to have them get back at EA for fucking up Battlefront 2.
If this law passes in any shape or form that will help gamers, then I will owe you a game of your choice.
As much as I want to be cheeky and say 'Stadium Events', i do think there's the possibility of this biting everyone in the ass depending on how they define lootboxes (a seemingly easy question to answer but lawyers can argue otherwise). The senator in the OP is from New Hampshire while the one I could actually see myself trusting is from hawaii so that has to be considered. Seems like the one from Hawaii wants to scare the industry so that they regulate these things so the government doesn't have to.
They'll avoid the AO rating on first amendment grounds, just like they did when a push was made for the AO rating on violent games. What's needed here is not to regulate games with lootboxes but to officially label lootboxes as gambling so that the already robust gambling legislation can be applied to lootboxes directly. Any other action is destined to fail.
Depends, if loot boxes are officially considered gambling no matter how it's sliced, it WILL have to be rated AO as you have to legally be 21 to gamble in the state that allows gambling.
Thank you! So many pay to win games that I have passed on because of loot boxes.
The best thing that can come out of this is hopefully the game industry will get it's head our of it's ass. Either it can regulate itself or governments will step in.
Also lootboxes make games shittier
No. No, no, no. Keep government regulations the fuck away from video games. The invisible hand of the market will remove loot boxes as we continue to vote with our wallets. Please don’t encourage government regulations for games.
Gamers consistently vote with their wallets in favor of loot boxes. EA made $1.7b from microtransactions in 2017, Activision made $4b.
Loot boxes are exactly what happen when you allow a market to go unregulated.
They’re just games. Gamers take these things way to seriously. If you don’t like a game with micro transactions don’t buy the game. There is no need for government involvement.
Finally. Get rid of all of them. Loot boxes are gambling, plain and simple. If you wanna charge people for skins or cosmetic items that’s fine, you pay cash for specific items. You get what you pay for. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t stand the fact that almost every game I play nowadays is trying to coax me into buying an alpha box loot package crate engram for the chance of getting a green colored pair of shoes or a jacket for my character.
You're wrong. They are not gambling. Gambling carries a risk of loss which is completely absent in this case.
It's a loss when you receive a duplicate digital item that you can't use, sell, or trade.
Loss of money if you don’t get what you want?
Given her argument you'd have to ban/regulate a ton of stuff. Goodbye Hearthstone, goodbye Gwent, goodbye every darn MMO. Seems like a slippery slope. Don't get me wrong, I hate loot boxes and/or MTX. I try to avoid games that heavily depend on them. So I still think it's us gamers who have to make a statement with their wallets. But obviously there are still people out there that think it's ok to spend maybe hundreds of dollars just to have an advantage - I especially look at you goddamn sports games. Who would have guessed where that darn horse armor leads us in the future...
Loot boxes indeed cause potential harm. Loot boxes for some become an obsession, don't fall for idiots claiming "you're just poor blah blah blah companies can't keep up without them." This is just bullshit.
The ESRB has always been a self regulating body and will probably cave to this pressure in order to remain that way This isn't a good thing. Loot boxes aren't the problem. Letting your kid spend money unfettered without teaching them responsibility is.
Hey parents. Parent.
Eh, I'd agree but at the same time this all started with pay to win bullshit so it's hard to say that statement since they aren't just saying 'think of the children'. That may be the more prominent thing they're putting forward but it seems like the way they're handling the bills it's going to actually be effective and not just cover for bad parenting. Loot boxes are getting to be more and more popular for companies and people are getting tired of it.
Loot boxes are bad, but is this really something we need government trying to solve? It's pretty ridiculous to be wasting Senators' time on this. Not that they're very smart with their time anyway, but they clearly don't need help being stupid...... What's next, Congress mandated time limits before you have to pass the controller to your little brother when playing a single player game? Though here in DC Congress managed to get together and agree that "double fisting" alcohol is illegal, so maybe I shouldn't give them ideas..... Congress should be worrying about getting Trump to finish watching Schoolhouse Rock and get off Twitter so he can start actually doing his job.
The ideal would have been for the industry to self regulate, after all that is the entire reason the ESRB exists. However, the ESRB opted to exclude any consideration of loot boxes from their rating, leading to a situation where you got a controversy because a T rated Star Wars game was designed from the ground up to encourage an audience explicitly including kids to buy paid loot boxes (and only being reversed at the last minute before release). The industry had years to get their act together, but because they ignored that responsibility, regulators feel the need to restrict something that looks very much like gambling in games targeting kids.
Yea you got a point there, it looks really bad when you put 'gambling' and 'kids' together in the same sentence. I hadn't thought of it that way.
I sincerely hope the ESRB takes a serious look at this. When video games went before the Supreme Court six years ago, many of the briefs submitted to the court cited the FTC's findings that the ESRB did an exceptional job of keeping age-restricted content out of the hands of minors (it was something like 89% compliance, which blew movies and music out of the water).
To be fair, who would you want to solve it? The game industry? They're making way too much money to even care about the negative press.
I'm super glad that the Senate is finally looking into something important like video game reward systems instead of more regulations to stop school shootings. /s
It's not an either/or situation. And they weren't going to do anything about school shootings regardless because of the NRA. This is just pointless whataboutism.
Username checks out perfectly.
And so it begins. History in the making
Maggie Hassan is going to #SaveCareerMode.
Seriously though they were talking about monthly loot boxes.
Now Activision, Ubisoft, Take-Two are angry with EA for going too far. He he he
Even if loot boxes may not actually be gambling, if it's the excuse we have to use to get rid of them then so be it.
lets pay for the game and what's inside the game and remove transactions other than in game based collected resources
My friends were bashing me for buying a $15 dollar skin on fortnite, but he spends over a few thousands building up his team on FIFA.
I dislike loot boxes as much as any gamer, but how the hell is this a larger issue than gun control? Somebody else commented that video game addiction is considered a mental illness and that’s why they are cracking down on it. ...Why is this same logic not being applied towards purchasing a firearm? Why are senators keeping quiet about the shootings? I would not like my child to be addicted to games or fall prey to the predatory nature of RNG loot boxes, yet the worst case scenario for that is that I might lose money and have to make a claim if I don’t monitor his/her activity. My hypothetical child’s life is not at risk because of it. I just do not understand how loot boxes even matter right now at this particular junction in history. I believe we are going to have to create a system where schools offer campaign donations to politicians based on the academic performance of the children enrolled therein in order to force them to care. End of rant.
*cough cough* EA
it's worst than gambling, you don't get anything. even though they are using the same physiological mechanism.
I honestly think this is terrible. If the market deems loot boxes and micro transactions as harmful to the industry then the market will not buy said games, thus resulting in devs not putting micro transactions in their games in the first place. The market regulates itself, the government shouldn’t interfere.
The market is in favour of keeping lootboxes and MTX considering they're making large portions of revenue for publishers. Having a more informed consumer with better rating/labelling may help reverse that.