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Polygon: Anti-loot box bill gathers bipartisan support in Senate
- Thread starter Sectorseven
- Start date
Better for executives and shareholders. Not better for developers and consumers.
It's equal parts hilarious and horrifying.
Truly no one has figured out a way to sell things without cramming them into randomized blind boxes.
The ESA screwed themselves by not self regulating. Yes Congress will screw it up but only after they've done so.
I can. The personal responsibility types are all over the place when it comes to gaming.
.....So, what draconian garbage completely unrelated to loot boxes are the Republicans scribbling into the margins to get their support?
It's absolutely better for me, as someone who enjoys more content for games as opposed to less.
games industry executives are making a disgusting amount of money right now, they'll be fine
Trading cards are regulated.
Trading cards are limited by physical avaiability.
The contents of a booster pack can't be changed after they are sealed, nor can the odds.
Booster packs don't have several audiovisual traps to make opening them exciting and addictive.
Trading cards have trade and resale value.
If they do, it should be opposed.
And if they go really, really too far, such as banning paid DLC, the courts will have something to say about it.
But right now, it looks like the proposal is just paid loot boxes and "pay-to-win".
This checks out. Games before the proliferation of monetized loot boxes were so plain. The industry really started as a fleshed out art form the moment players could pay for a chance of lots of content like camo skins for guns and victory dance styles. The monetized lootbox brought a creative renaissance of content and high art. I shudder to think of the day when I can't pay for the chance of a poka dot oversized cowboy hat. That's the day democracy and the art will die. Protect us Andrew Wilson.
This is all I ask for. The whales will still buy every piece of content available. Other people will pick and choose what they want. The developers still get our money when there's content we want.
Good.
Some devs took advantage of the absence of regulations, the industry never lifted a single finger except saying "ThIs Is NoT GaMbLiNG!", took things too far and didn't look back. Now is the consequence of this.
This very forum has people fearmongering other with higher retail prices and comparing this to TCGs all the time, this is a stark look of how the consumers were conditioned to this shit: they defend it now. Won't people think about the poor executives??!!
Lol, this industry lives by creativity, people will find other means to generate cashflow that isn't fucking random content locked behind a blind box.
Some devs took advantage of the absence of regulations, the industry never lifted a single finger except saying "ThIs Is NoT GaMbLiNG!", took things too far and didn't look back. Now is the consequence of this.
This very forum has people fearmongering other with higher retail prices and comparing this to TCGs all the time, this is a stark look of how the consumers were conditioned to this shit: they defend it now. Won't people think about the poor executives??!!
Lol, this industry lives by creativity, people will find other means to generate cashflow that isn't fucking random content locked behind a blind box.
Be facetious all you want, but more content is still better than less content. Plus, it doesn't have to be monetized. Plenty of times we get stuff for free, all sorts of updates. And not all cosmetic, although of course you're so right to universally dictate what people can find value in. Sounds good to me. Being opposed to DLC in the broad sense is moronic. All downloaded content? As in, literally everything that we get post launch, as long as it's delivered over the internet? That's all bad? Or even mostly bad? Please.
The game industry got too greedy and now they will pay the consequences.
Good. They deserve whats coming.
Good. They deserve whats coming.
Loot boxes are just making games worse. I would rather pay for DLC, or have cosmetic microtransactions that you directly pay for, not roll a digital dice for the chance to get a specific item.
Pay to win mechanics, loot boxes.. It degrades the quality of a game, even if it does fund 'free' content releases.
Pay to win mechanics, loot boxes.. It degrades the quality of a game, even if it does fund 'free' content releases.
Casinos have regulations. Adults can still spend as much money as they choose to on a casino floor. If you can keep kids off the virtual casino floor? Do it.
Don't assume I'm up all night worried about the fate of loot boxes. Loot boxes can be dumb. Banning them outright would also be dumb.
If the movie stinks, just don't go. There have always been bad games. There will always be bad games. By all means, wait until there are reviews to tell you whether the gameplay experience suffers to support microtransaction sales.
So the majority of the hate in here with lootboxes is paying for the box not knowing whats in it? So if instead of loot boxes you earned nothing but the Overwatch currency and can just buy which outfit you wanted with the Overwatch currancy or you could buy the items with real money outright...this is acceptable?
Good. The games industry has gone basically completely unregulated for far too long. I can't believe the batshit insanity of the hands off-ness that people give these billion dollar corporations for the sake of "mah games". That's nonsense and part of the reason the world is as shitty is it is - everyone who refused to regulate the shit out of corporations fucked up hard.
Video games are long overdue for more oversight. People who are for a completely free market are burning the world down and you're just part of the damned problem if you don't reign industries in.
Video games are long overdue for more oversight. People who are for a completely free market are burning the world down and you're just part of the damned problem if you don't reign industries in.
Also all this 'boo hoo poor big publisher' crap is frankly disgusting.
They are so poor they pair all their executives exorbitant wages and massive bonuses.
They are so poor they don't pay their taxes and even get tax money refunded.
They are so poor they continually boast of record profits while discarding employees like dirt.
Cry me a freaking river for these greedy scumbags.
They are so poor they pair all their executives exorbitant wages and massive bonuses.
They are so poor they don't pay their taxes and even get tax money refunded.
They are so poor they continually boast of record profits while discarding employees like dirt.
Cry me a freaking river for these greedy scumbags.
I agree with 5, that should be the bare minimum as far as regulations go.
They can be completely and totally worthless once the game goes away, there is no guarantee of holding any kind of value. They also prey on "rarity" and "you can only get this card in this pack." The companies deliberately phase out old sets in tournament play, which not only supresses the value of old cards but also forces players to upgrade constantly. The one thing that is problematic is that you can buy a ton of digital purchases without leaving your couch, but as far as supply goes you can buy as many boxes of modern tcgs online as you want (but you obviously have to wait for them to arrive). It's also hard to argue that stuff like Pokemon TCG isn't aimed squarely at kids.
If the stance is really "we have to protect the kids" then I said it before, but force all consoles and phones to input the credit card every single time you make a purchase. It cuts down on convenience. If the kid is stealing a credit card from their parents to buy it, then that's another matter entirely and won't be stopped by whatever regulation they make on rating systems and such.
If the stance is "we have to stop this predatory behavior" then let's do it, but the recent study that is oft quoted is mainly for non minors, isn't it? The people who are addicted but are old enough to use their own spending money and waste it all on microtransactions; now that's a problem. There's a ton of predatory behavior there, from the insidiousness of ads to credit cards, to who knows what. But it seems like it's mainly targeted to "protect the kids" and I haven't (yet) seen conclusive evidence that minors spending inordinate amounts of cash without their parents permission is a big problem.
And I'm certainly not saying there isn't another way they could support those updates financially, or that loot boxes are the best way to do that.
I'm just kind of surprised at the outright hatred toward the concept. And hatred towards microtransactions and DLC in general, that seems quite prevalent in this thread.
It's like you're slowly approaching the crux of why loot boxes are problematic.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box
Loot boxes are considered part of the compulsion loop of game design to keep players invested in a game.[8] Such compulsion loops are known to contribute towards video game addiction and are frequently compared to gambling addiction.[1][8][40] This is in part due to the use of a "variable-rate reinforcement schedule" similar to how slot machines dole out prizes.[41] While many players may never invest real money in a loot-box system, such addictive systems can bring large monetary investments from "whales", players who are willing to spend large amounts of money on virtual items.[30] Gambling concerns are heightened in games that offer loot boxes and are known to be played by children.[42] Video games have generally been considered games of skill rather than games of chance and thus are unregulated under most gambling laws, but researchers from New Zealand and Australia, writing in Nature Human Behaviour, concluded that "loot boxes are psychologically akin to gambling".[43]
No let's call a spade a spade. For a lot of people, they have no issue with other people fronting the money for games like Overwatch or whatever.
I'd be fine with that, as long as you didn't have the option to buy a random amount of coins.
It's almost like the industry has a reason they don't do this. Hmmm I wonder if it's something appallingly cynical.
This argument seems hollow, especially given these comments:
Honestly, it just sounds like you just want stuff for free regardless of the tactics used or the ill effects on the industry or others essentially subsidizing your free content.
I think that's what a lot of the arguments from players against regulation comes down to.
Pretty much, yes.
The big problem with lootboxes are the blind purchases. It is both unfair to the customer and psychologically manipulative to obscure the contents of a lootbox. It is the central reason for their addictive and dangerous nature, and why they are effectively gambling.
In comparison, there is not much wrong at all with traditional transactions.
He wants other people to pay for stuff so he doesn't have to. That's what it comes down to for people, they don't care who else is hurt by this because they are getting an advantage.
Except that's it's very specifically not analogous to renting, because the games are designed around the format.
Arcade game design is specifically oriented around getting players to pump quarters into the machine. The default difficulty is tuned to encourage that.
If you've doubted that, look at how boring the home versions of arcade side-scrollers usually are. The difficulty is off the charts to where you need a bunch of continues and extra lives, and if the home version tackles that problem by allowing unlimited continues or lives, you get to see very quickly that the game becomes a lot less fun because you're just churning through a bunch of lives. It's why the weird XBLA-era renaissance of coin-op brawler ports faded pretty quickly, when you realized that The Simpsons and X-Men were basically just designed to get you to keep feeding quarters and weren't that fun without the challenge that was invoked by the idea that a handful of more lives was going to cost you real money.
In a very real way, microtransaction-oriented gaming is often considered to be a throwback to arcade design, because it pumps the player for money in similar manners.
I don't think I've actually seen that opinion expressed. The discussion earlier was that if the legislation somehow overreached and ended DLC as a concept in the process of purging pay-to-win microtransactions and loot boxes, that would be preferable to the current scenario where loot boxes are virtually unregulated. The ideal (at least for me) would be focused legislation that leaves that stuff alone.
Ok...?
What does that have to do with my view of "being opposed to DLC in the broad sense is stupid"?
Even if it go as far as no guns in games rules, I'll be kinda disappointed, but this is what happens when you're given ample time to regulate yourself and you keep choosing greed instead. Do your worst to these publishers and developers. They'll never learn if they never have to face consequences.
It's not really the argument against loot boxes. It's really rather irrelevant.
It's up to the publisher if they want to devalue their properties like that. Nintendo hardly puts anything on sale, and consequently they don't nickel and dime nearly as hard.
Someone said they wanted all DLC gone. I pointed out this was dumb.
The industry refused to police itself on children ringing up hundreds of dollars of fees on thinly veiled gambling tricks and manipulation. The revenue was just too great, it was just too easy, and this wasn't a narrow group of bad actors, this was small mobile game publishers all the way up through to major publishers like EA, Activision, and others.
Even on this community, a community of informed gaming enthusiasts, once every few weeks or months we have a post of someone saying something like, "Goddam, my kid rang up $450 in microtransactions on [X]... what are my options here?" And we're informed about videogames and the threat of microtransactions. We had a thread like this ... like a week ago.
When the top industry trade groups like the ESA continually say "There's no problem here," and it is obvious to even enthusiasts that there is a problem here, eventually people raise that concern to their state's attorneys general and their representatives in government. This isn't free speech, artistic impression, or expression of violence from the 90s; this is monetizing your games through psychological manipulation and preying on an audience who is not mature enough to make sound decisions for themselves. Most people are simply not informed, and you can't blame the consumer, because the videogame industry has done nothing to inform people about how they've been monetizing their games through secondary purchases.
That all said, Congress almost never destroys major revenue sources. If some congressman's constituents and donors are making tens of millions of dollars a year on a cash cow, even if that cash cow is manipulating children into selling them worthless crap for prices that they don't understand, the American government is not going to get in the way of companies making money.
Even on this community, a community of informed gaming enthusiasts, once every few weeks or months we have a post of someone saying something like, "Goddam, my kid rang up $450 in microtransactions on [X]... what are my options here?" And we're informed about videogames and the threat of microtransactions. We had a thread like this ... like a week ago.
When the top industry trade groups like the ESA continually say "There's no problem here," and it is obvious to even enthusiasts that there is a problem here, eventually people raise that concern to their state's attorneys general and their representatives in government. This isn't free speech, artistic impression, or expression of violence from the 90s; this is monetizing your games through psychological manipulation and preying on an audience who is not mature enough to make sound decisions for themselves. Most people are simply not informed, and you can't blame the consumer, because the videogame industry has done nothing to inform people about how they've been monetizing their games through secondary purchases.
That all said, Congress almost never destroys major revenue sources. If some congressman's constituents and donors are making tens of millions of dollars a year on a cash cow, even if that cash cow is manipulating children into selling them worthless crap for prices that they don't understand, the American government is not going to get in the way of companies making money.
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Most blanket statements are. Here's one that isn't: loot boxes are terrible.
Apologies I probably should have followed your conversation with them better.
This bill may destroy mobile gaming as we know it: no more apple/android store. In the end, we could see portable gaming like gameboy making a comeback... let's wait and see.
Apple is already planning for the F2P demise by going subscription with Apple Arcade. Google has Stadia and no doubt they are working on a subscription service for their Play store as well.
It's going to be fun to see what happens.
LOL, Android/apple store won't disappear just because loot boxes get removed.
And mobile gaming still has plenty of other schemes they use to get more money for nothing (premium currencies, time gating, progress boosters, etc.)
Not gonna lie, it is hilarious to me that a lot of people Resetera usually love government intervention and laugh at the idea of industries govern themselves, but when it impacts games we have a lot of responses in this thread be the exact opposite.
overall, this probably have some unintended consequences ad usually happens when the big g gets involved.
overall, this probably have some unintended consequences ad usually happens when the big g gets involved.
why would that be the case? you can make and sell a mobile game for a set price