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Sweden is looking into classifying loot boxes as gambling in 2019
- Thread starter Tracygill
- Start date
Good news. Opening lootboxes is gambling and it is addictive to some people. I hope more countries follow suit.
Panini football cards are for collectors and you can send away for any card you are missing. With kinder, happy meals etc it's a free toy with food.
These are not the same thing as lootboxes. Here in the UK there are calls to severely limit casino machines in bookmakers but no one is trying to shut down seaside amusement arcades. You can gamble away your wages in both of them but only one of them is a massive problem.
I do believe that TCG/CCG fit the definition people were saying before, but the scale is completely different. Since those are a physical product, they hardly cause the same issues seen in lootboxes. I want to see what kind of laws they will create, if it will be regulatory or going straight out for a soft ban.
It was! I hate this shit, it doesn't effect me but my god some people just can't see this as gambling or don't care that the support comes at a cost of others addiction.
Yup thats good. Fuck loot boxes.
They are as exploitive as gambling and purely exist to exploit as many people as possible.
They are as exploitive as gambling and purely exist to exploit as many people as possible.
Spot-on.
The world's top grossing games, as well as the games with the highest LTV and ARPDAU, are all non-lootbox games.
I've yet to see evidence that lootboxes are any more addictive than other monetization methods. People who have issues spending in games aren't going to stop because lootboxes are gone.
It always depends on the implementations of such systems. People will have a hard wake-up call if they think the issue is just with lootboxes.
From a design standpoint it's very easy to bypass any legislation that regulates the mechanism.
Depending on the specificity of the legislation (I've not read any yet; this is just speculation), developers could remove the monetary gates but gate something else instead:
- Gate the opening mechanism (similar to CSGO, TF2, PUBG)
- Gate the drop rate (what you described)
- Gate a pathway (buy a key to run a short dungeon that awards a lootbox at the end)
- Gate rerolls (monetized upgrades/rerolls; already commonly attached to in-app ads)
People will of course still spend money. This whole issue is about the nefarious act of masquerading it behind the lottery mechanics that has been proven time and again to exploit the people with addictive personalities. Developers want to keep selling loot boxes as a lottery becuase most lottery "wins" are utter trash that noone wants. Having to be upfront about selling junk will probably sort that out.
As a developer, I like loot boxes. They're easy to implement, easy to tune, and proven to work. I'm obviously biased in that regard though.
Personally, I think the kickback against loot boxes is more about the hardcore crowd (note: if you're talking about video games with strangers online you are considered hardcore) disliking the uncertainty of randomized MTX. I understand; I grew up gaming in the 90's and I don't do loot boxes either. So people tend to be quick to jump on the gambling/addiction argument.
But as I said, gaming addiction and monetization addiction have been around, and have been problems, long before loot boxes became an industry standard, and will be long after.
As an American, I'm imagining a weird future where I need to import games from the EU because they don't have lootbox mechanics.
I don't know how it is in other countries, but here in Norway you should not only uphold laws technically but also the spirit of the law. So if the law is intended to curb addiction to micro transactions in games and you still do this even if technically upholding the law you are in violation.
One way you could probably still sell micro transactions under such a system would be to limit the amount you can spend in a set amount of time like most state sanctioned lotteries and slot machines here. Those require ID to make sure you are within the limits though, a national gambling card.
https://www.norsk-tipping.no/spilleregler-og-betingelser
The limits here are very high though, 20.000 NOK a month (about $2500). The government both run the gambling and set the limits, probably not ideal.
http://fortune.com/2017/12/09/lawmaker-working-to-ban-sale-of-games-with-lootboxes-to-minors/
There is some momentum here in the States as well.
I can guarantee you that no developer is thinking "how can we exploit people with addictive personalities" when they're deciding on how to monetize their games. They're thinking "how can we design a monetization system that maximizes LTV, ARPDAU, and conversion".
I'd love to see any evidence that lootbox games have higher incidence of harmful addiction (of the financially-ruinous kind) than non-lootbox games, or that it's the loot box mechanism itself inducing addiction, rather than the game mechanics.
My issue is not so much about the addictiveness (wich is a serious issue on it's own) but on the dishonesty about it. There's only one reason for a developer include lootboxes - to hide what you buy, and that's because they're selling things you don't want. This is why gaming and the market in general needs regulation.
I will be shocked if the US takes the lead on this, especially given who currently controls the government. It goes against corporate interests.
If this happens, it will happen in the EU first.
The problem I see is that the practice in how to maximize those has become exploitative and dishonest to the consumers. Somewhere the concept of "fair trade" has been lost.
I'm particularly interested in Nordic legislation because Finland is home to Rovio and Supercell, both market leaders in mobile monetization. As I've alluded to in my other posts, neither are dependent on loot boxes (Supercell's Clash Royale being the exception). So it'll be interesting to see if Finland follows suit, and how these developers will react. I do think that attacking the mechanism (loot boxes and random rolls) is the incorrect method of resolving the addiction issue. Putting a blanket monthly limit on microtransactions is simultaneously more effective and less restrictive on developers, but I don't think that'd fly in most countries.
I don't know if you know this, but the EU isn't some perfect system. It has its flaws. Not saying it's not better but just look at how Germany handled Volkswagen as far as corporate interests go. I just thought you may want some relevant information regarding something that happened in the States since you mentioned that :/.
Are you familiar with Game of War or Clash of Clans?
Just Clash of Clans alone has probably ruined more lives than any other game in recent history; do yourself a favor and Google "Clash of Clans addiction".
Both games don't have loot boxes, yet feature insanely high LTV and ARPDAU; more than any loot box games you've probably heard of. To achieve this, they put immense social pressure on players to spend time and money.
What you're failing to understand is that developers are always going to be chasing these sorts of numbers; loot boxes just happen to be the simplest, most easily-understood implementation of it.
Yeah, it sucks when there's a bad implementation of it (see Destiny 2 or Mass Effect Andromeda), but can you imagine a bad implementation of the social pressure model?
I know people get addicted to games and gambling. That's kind of a moot point - just because one game is harmful it's ok for others to be?
Also, you don't address the point I'm making. Loot boxes aren't used because they're "simplest, most easily-understood implentation" of microtransactions - having an item and charging a set price for it is(like you know, a regular store). They're used because they make customers pay and not recieve what they want, hoping they pay again and still not recieve what they want. It's a dishonest transaction and ethically undefendable.
This is where you're wrong. Loot boxes are implemented for a variety of reasons.
- They're simple to implement. There's a wide body of knowledge regarding best practices, prices, and standard KPIs to look out for when implementing them.
- They're easy to maintain. You can change drop rates on a whim, whether it's to balance your economy, or to fix errors.
- It keeps all new content relevant. You don't have to worry about one piece of content overshadowing another.
There's a world of difference between knowing what you're buying and paying to roll a die to maybe, possibly get what you want.
Yes, finally! I hope it will end up under gambling laws, and that other countries follow. Gambling law should include games with loot boxes/gacha and everything else with RNG and monetization included.
It's thanks to EA, Bungie, Activision/Blizzard and Warner (with Shadow of Mordor) with their scummy practices. I hope they get hit hard with this.
It's thanks to EA, Bungie, Activision/Blizzard and Warner (with Shadow of Mordor) with their scummy practices. I hope they get hit hard with this.
For real, lol.
Why people try to tiptoe around that logic is rather amusing.
Selling accounts and virtual items on websites like ebay has been happening for over 20 years. Claiming that virtual items do not have any real world monetary value is disingenuous and in many cases completely false.
You left out the final sentence of that post, where I say that environments like the Steam marketplace, where virtual items can be traded, should be heavily regulated.
When I'm talking about virtual items with real monetary value, I'm referring solely to closed economies with no trading--which encompasses the majority of loot box games.
Why when loot boxes aren't? This seems to be case of watering your garden to fix the shed. There's no apetitite for that because there's no point. The only reason you'd bother is because of items like loot boxes. If that's the reason why should steam marketplace be regulated then just regulate the loot boxes themselves.
Addiction is a thing and these companies are preying on people's inability to control themselves. That is where the unethical part comes in. But again, corporate interests trumps consumer interest for some people here.
With DICE being in Stockholm, it would be very weird if they kept loot boxes for next Battlefield or Battlefront
There are may ways to obtain items in games outside of paid loot boxes. For example, the Diablo series never had loot boxes but had a thriving gray market until D3's updates came around.
Contrarily, I'd argue that it's personal interest that drives the argument against loot boxes. Hardcore players aren't open to the idea of paying for randomized loot, so they take up anti-addiction as a cause.
I've yet to see anyone respond with any evidence that it's the lootbox mechanism that drives addiction over generalized game addiction or even monetization addiction. As I've pointed out several times in this thread, non-lootbox games anecdotally not only have more addiction issues, but also draw better metrics than lootbox games.
The developers themselves ban them because it's against the EULA that not what steam marketplace is even slightly. If valve and participating games didn't want items to be trade on the marketplace the marketplace itself would not exist. Your talking about something else entirely.
Honestly, I think I'm just having trouble parsing what you're saying. So I'm not sure how to respond to that.
Your talking about illegal tradiing of Diablo items and comparing them to legal Steam marketplace trading.
So then it's corporate interest (i.e. personal interest of those financially invested in the companies) vs personal user interest + addiction issues?
I think that tips in favor of the latter.
How much evidence is necessary though? I think it's disingenuous to claim that they don't operate using the same physiological hooks as gambling. It think that's pretty clear.
I may not have personal addiction issues with them, but it is a thing on top of it being an overall a manipulative (and insulting, imo) way to sell content to consumers. I'm happy to pay for content I feel is worth the money, but I don't like being jerked around and made to waste my money in order to do so. For me that's enough to want to see them go. The possible gambling addiction issues that they add on top of whatever already existing ones with game is just the icing on the cake.
Let's be clear about something here--there's nothing illegal about trading Diablo items.
The corollary I'm drawing is that when virtual items are given real money value--especially considerable real money value--that changes the perspective of the loot box and monetization conversation.
From my perspective (not the legal perspective, which I'm not familiar with), gambling occurs when you input money with the chance of outputting some random amount of money. By this definition, games with closed, internal economies cannot be gambling, and should not be regulated like gambling, because any user who transacts does so with the explicit knowledge that this money is going into a hole, and will never be seen again. Rather, he's getting some intrinsic or social value within that closed economy.
Now, if a game's internal economy is tied to the real world economy, such as with the Steam marketplace, eBay, or any other gray marketplace, that's a different story. There's a whole different world of motivations that goes into buying into these economies, and that's why it should be regulated, because a user is inputting money with some expectation of real world monetary output.
This is an important distinction to make because almost all of the arguments against loot boxes (certainly the ones in this thread) decry the mechanism.
This means that core systems in games like Diablo, Destiny, or Borderlands, are also subject to the same arguments against mechanism addiction.
So if you're really against loot box addiction, are you also against random rolls? Or does it only matter when it's monetized? Does addiction by itself not matter, or only when addiction is tied to money? What are you really against?
I know the point is one is against the companies eula the other was encouraged. I stated it that way since you seemed to miss the first time.
In regards to the rest of your none of that effects the end result for the consumers taken advantage of by the system. Games of chance are regulated. Trading cards, toy claw machines etc. They're all regulated. That's why people arguing aginst regulation seem to miss or ignore your not providing reasons as to why loot boxes should not be regulated.
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The bolded is the most compelling argument against loot boxes, and I agree there. It's why I won't ever purchase them myself.
But yes, I think evidence is necessary if governments are going to draft legislation. I'd expect that, no matter the subject.