Seriously? If everyone wanted to regulate everything they didn’t like that existed - that would be utter insanity.
Except it needs regulation because they are preying on costumers. Vice is an unfortunate part of humanity and they are preying on it. So yes, it needs regulation.
And i have to care because this crap is spreading to every game. More and more companies are starting to put this crap, it’s gonna reach a point that is pretty much everywhere. Remember when people were saying this wouldn’t go out of hand? Guess what happened, it go out of hand.
Again, these games ask for 60 bucks upfront and then have the gall to put this crap in the game. That is sleazy as shit.
This type of passive attitude seriously pisses me off. The “don’t buy it or don’t play it” crap some people like to use, basically telling me to stay quiet, while this crap spread to other games. If no one tries to push to remove this crap, then it keeps existing. People aren’t just gonna stop buying on their own vollition, other people need to inform them.
Talk about passive. You line up and buy it, while complaining about it.
I don’t see how they are preying on people. Playing a video game is not a requirement for living. You won’t die if you can’t/don’t play a video game.
If people stop making choices and relying on governments or others to make their choices for them, where does that lead?
I’m not against regulation, and regulation has its place, but you can’t regulate everything.
In the end, people have to make their own choices.
Also, you would have a better chance of regulating this is you take it up with whoever it is that is in your government to do it, than you will have a “discussion” on a gaming forum.
I agree with you. I really totally pissed off by majority ignorant passive attitude people like you mentioned. It really made me feel like I’m the one who is exaggerating stuff and who idiot person like to imagining impossible. But in the end, it turns out reality and then they just turn tail and pretending don’t know anything on what they had said last time.
Even Jim Sterling and Angry Joe(Deus Ex mankind Divided review) foresaw this future of gambling, buuuuttt… No one give a F***. Later, Star Wars Battlefront II appeared.
that same argument can be made for almost anything else, including many things that are being regulated / banned
Again, who the hell said i’m buying games with this crap? My concern is that this will spread to games i want to buy. Read what i actually post and don’t cherry pick certain parts or completely ignore what i said and say lies, i never said i’m buying these games.
EA said themselves they now plan to put them in every game they make from now on. I can see Take Two Interactive putting lootboxes in Red Dead Redemption 2 because of the insane amount of money they made with them in GTA 5.
Cocaine and meth is also not necessary for living but yet people can be addicted, in the same way as lootboxes. It preys on the basic nature of addiction, the only difference being that lootboxes don’t kill you but do leave you broke all the same.
Last, i don’t think everything need regulation, but this needs it, bad. Companies are literally doing billions of dollars from addicted players and this is ruining games for people who don’t want to buy these because they always make the balance of their games around them. Look at Battlefront 2 and Shadow of War.
You realize that you’ve just made the case for banning video games, right?
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Like I said, majority of people are passive attitude. When passive people meet with active people like us who are concerning the dangerous impact of domino, butterfly or ripple effect, they will always viewed us as weirdos and idiots who caring too much on something that is not important or relevant. Then when it becomes reality, they will just turn tail and avoid that particular reality as much as possible. You are not the only active person one, even myself being viewed as idiot on being over exaggerating on every little thing.
Yes, banning predatory practices from games is a case to ban games. :rolleyes:
What the hell kind of logic is this?
Games haven’t had lootboxes for literally decades, so i don’t know where this logic is coming from. Games themselves aren’t predatory, ways to make you spend more money than you already have are.
Also, what do you gain from this? What does this passive attitude gain in anything? Do you like games you want to buy to be flooded with lootboxes? To have the entire balance of the game to be made around them? Because this passive attitude is all it accomplishes.
And a response to arguing about lootboxes in this forum instead of complaining to the companies, i wasn’t even arguing in the first place. I was just stating my opinion that lootboxes need to be gone from 60 dollars games. You’re the one that started to argue.
well said, plus in the case of shadow of war, when lootboxes were finally removed, people did struggle with the balance, as lootboxes were pretty much required to play the game. I dont know if the game has been rebalanced after, but still, people pay full price and still need / forced to pay money to play a game that they brought.
And while its easy to say, we as customers maybe to blame for this continued escalation in lootboxes. But in a few games, like SOW, they were a central part to the game. Don’t pay and your going to be crippled, or your progress will be a lot slower.
So it really depends if the game is balanced around lootboxes, or totally optional, but in many cases, they were weren’t optional. that is the problem.
Yeah, EA had to rebalance Battlefront 2 after Disney forced them to remove the lootboxes. Because the entire progression of multiplayer was balanced around the star cards.
This is the main issue i have with lootboxes, balance in games is more and more being made around this crap, in an attempt to make you spend more money on something you already spent 60 bucks on. Which is made worse by the fact that it preys on people’s addiction, a lot of people can’t help it.
Look at the Portugal and drugs… They handle the problem differently. Laws are needed but in my opinion it is better to teach people to avoid temptation by free will through education ethic, etc. Avoiding temptation through free will is much more powerful than any law ever. It is law independent. If some underage person reject something unlawful not because of fear of jail or trouble from police but because she/he doesnt want to from principle itself that is the key.
Children should be educated how to use free will and it is a matter of family, school to handle that. Free will is the most powerful thing. No law will replace family or school. Never.
BtW
If you legalize drugs to certain extent then you get less crime that is bind to this kind of criminality. Look at the Mexico and drug cartels… It is totally insane…
I agree that not everything should be legislated. There is something called free will, self reliance, tolerance, self respect and self responsibility. However…what I see is that a lot of people these days are lacking in multiple aspects. More and more people are emotionally/mentally unstable, weak of will and mind, have low tolerance and easy to manipulate. Especially a certain country with 330million citizens where propaganda and indoctrination is the core of their daily lives. Its so integrated into their society they don’t even notice it.
At some point a line has to be drawn where people are protected against their own weakness and stupidity. Its not legislation everything that I don’t like or am against. It is about preventing people from harming themselves. And indirectly ending up being a burden on society.
In the case of drug addicts for example. In the Netherlands there are institutions for re-hab. However there are people who don’t want, or constantly fail, at cleaning up their act. Instead of them becoming a liability and starting to do (petty)crime… the government gives them drugs, for a price just like medicine, and thus controls the situation. No harm to the economy, no additional crime. Compared to the costs of repairs and what not there is very little economic pressure as well.
People are fairly weak these days. Both in mind, will, emotional development. 30%, and increasing, amount of people are addicted to their smart devices. And its only getting worse. Leading to people not paying attention to their environments. Especially dangerous when participating in traffic. We should just let that go as well as per the passive examples? No we make legislations that make it illegal for people to use phones in traffic unless they have a car set. However those seem to still cause a ton of distraction from people. Meaning there now is talk about banning any phone usage during traffic at all in order to prevent accidents. Which has been gradually increasing the past few years since less people pay attention beyond their phones. You just have to protect the weak against themselves. Before they cause harm to others.
There are clear laws for what is acceptable gambling practices and what is not. In Europe any form of “preying” is not allowed. Preying meaning psychological methods to manipulate people into participating/spending money. That is simply illegal whether it be in games or at a casino. Sure playing a video game is not a requirement to live, but that doesn’t mean they’re not applying illegal practices within the game.
As for people needing to make their own decisions. If the gamer in question is 23 years or older then yes. They are responsible for their own decisions and should be expected to have matured enough to understand the possible implications of their decisions. But a ton of gamers are teens. They’re still developing. They’re still easy to influence and manipulate. Thus in long term developing the wrong habits.
Sure you can slap on an age rating on a game and call it quits. Saying its up to the parents after that point. That’s not how it works. Even a well willing and informed parent can NOT keep track of what their kid is doing 24/7. That would be like they’d be living in a police monitored state. And no one wants to live in that.
As for a gaming forum. We’re actually having one in October 15th related to any form of digital gambling ranging from what’s happening in games to digital casino’s etc.
Norzan isn’t making a case to ban all video games at all. Just as we in The Netherlands, don’t find all lootboxes breaking the law either. Its decided on a case by case study. Some are implemented within the boundaries of the gambling law and others do not. Those who do not need to fuck off. Then again on a personal note I do find all lootboxes should go and games should be made fun again. Instead of having boring gameplay with the promise that lootboxes somehow magically make the game fun o.O I stopped buying games from EA/Activision/Ubisoft a long time ago. Their games are not fun in any stretch of the imagination.
So its really simple. There are gambling laws. EA is breaking them.
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Then there is the case of companies trying to justify Lootboxes by stating “making games has become really expensive”. Which is a bullshit statement as well if you think about it.
- Technology to make more complex games has decreased in price
- More and more AAA games lack content and are multiplayer focused games. Needing less resources to make them
- AAA games spend most of their budget on trying to get the best most hyper realistic graphics out there. Which indeed costs exponentially more for negligible returns. Which to me means wrong priorities/miss management.
- Most rational people in business would do market research and know their product will sell x units for y price. Take of the profit margin and you know how much you can invest in the creation of the product. No instead we get companies that spend money and then complain they only sold 5 instead of 8 million copies…in a market where the 8 million units is not even realistic. Once again miss management.
- That said AAA industry loves doing research and gathering analytics about pretty much everything else though. Meaning they only make safe decisions. If a certain success formula, like Undertale, can not be reproduced then they stick to the safe options. That’s why you get a dime a dozen boring copies of the same game in a different skin.
Now I made some calculations a few months ago. I used numbers provided by friends and teachers that work in the games industry. Also for companies like Ubisoft and EA. Its obvious games at AAA companies don’t cost 50-60 million euro’s to make. A project is more a tenfold of that these days in regards to a Battlefield/Call of Duty. Those games do sell 20 million units a year after all. But most AAA games are more along the 200million mark for creation with another 100million for potential marketing. Even with the price set at 60 euro per unit they make a fair amount of profit. But that isn’t enough. Shareholders push to make MORE profit. And if that isn’t achieved the shareholders can sue the people in charge of the company for sabotaging their progress. Which is where the problem lies. That said. Developer studio’s often don’t go free themselves either. Its not just shareholders who want to see money. The studio’s themselves want it as well. So they often even come up with ideas like lootboxes and other ways to make money. Because they think its sound “design” and “business”.
Then we have another aspect to consider. Which is the actual price of each individual unit. its 60 euro for a base version. The exact same price as games costs were in the 80’s. No inflation has been applied to games. You can argue that lack of inflation is because the price of development and distribution went down over a period of time. The tech was understood better, easier to create and that might be why there hasn’t been any inflation yet. Not to mention the amount of gamers went from a few 10.000 across the world to several 100 million. Which also means more sales, more income to off set any need to increase the price per unit. We’re currently reaching a point of satiation. You can’t get many more new gamers then there currently are. So new ways too deal with natural inflation has to be considered. The solution currently used is not good in any way. A 60 euro base game that suddenly lacks content. In order to motivate gamers to buy the 80 or 120-140euro version which is the complete game. However I can still accept this since it does feel more in line with increase of pricing as expected. What I don’t accept is that gameplay is deliberately being made unfun in order to manipulate people into buying lootboxes. Which brings in money on top of the acceptable inflated price of 120-140 euro for a complete game. At which we still have our own decision whether to wait for a discounted Goty Version a year later. Whereas the lootboxes, and its impact on the game design for the game, is not free of will at all.
at no point did I say you should not properly educate people. I am however saying that free will alone is not enough to stop people from doing something, that is why we have laws (not that those stop everyone, but I’d say they stop more people than free will alone would)
If you legalize drugs to certain extent then you get less crime that is bind to this kind of criminality. Look at the Mexico and drug cartels… It is totally insane…
of course, if something is legal, there is less illegal activity around it literally by definition. Look at the US and prohibition 
Nothing will stop people to do evil things. And still IF laws are lets say “better” than free will I will still prefer to do “right” decision by free will not because of law.
Law doesn’t make a person “better, smarter, educated”. The core of the issue is in human being. That is the way how to improve things, improve human beings. But it is a very hard path. Much harder than Lets “solve it” by implementing the law. Again, I am not against laws, it is definitely a MUST.
Then legalization of something evil should be always a thing to consider, not strictly throw it away.
Pretty much this, because if people are really that stupid and weak, etc.; as mentioned by Gibly
Then what about the people writing the laws, the people enforcing the laws, etc. Are they also weak in mind, will, and emotional development? How would we asses that if we all are? What else should we regulate, everything? Where does it stop?
We should be educating people and encouraging them to be smarter consumers, and people.
Note: As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m not against regulation, but you can only regulate so much.
I feel Local Laws is the important notion here:
It is surprising that EA refuses to comply with Local Regulations, Belgium in this case. Unlike Blizzard (Overwatch) 2K Games (NBA 2K19) or Valve, they want to Rambo their way into the market making their own rules. Now who’s supposed to make the rules? It is (ideally^^) Those who have been elected democratically. The fact that EA is dismissing this essential notion makes them look (even more) bad. ^^ And in term of image I’m convinced it will cost them.
When doing business, respecting local laws seems a logical approach. When the targeted country has different laws you adapt your products or when you are totally displeased you don’t do business with said country at all. Most actors in the gaming industry have understood this guideline, except EA. They’re on their own in this. 
Also you noticed that depending on countries loot boxes are treated differently. In China for instance regulations allow loot boxes:
China: A Middle-Ground Approach: How China Regulates Loot Boxes…(mondaq.com)
On the other hand Belgium sees things differently:
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in Belgian Law there is the notion of vulnerable groups (Betting Act of 7 May 1999). Local authorities are very watchful about this subject,
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the issue is that Belgian authorities perceive loot boxes as gambling. And if you want to open a gambling establishment in Belgium you need to apply for a license at the “Gaming Commission”,
Edit: for the sake of completeness here is the Report on Loot Boxes drafted by the the Belgian Gaming Commission (translated in English thankfully^^):
Research Report on Loot Boxes (April 2018) (Belgian Gaming Commission)(pdf)
I fully agree, I started with saying free will is not enough (given that even laws are not enough), but an educated, smart person is always preferable to the alternative
Then legalization of something evil should be always a thing to consider, not strictly throw it away.
I agree, you have to weigh the pros and cons and that should inform your decision, not some strong conviction that is not based on facts. Unfortunately basing your decisions on feelings rather than facts is becoming more popular recently, you listen to what matches your feelings and ignore the rest, and with how many differing opinions you find out there these days, no matter how stupid and delusional your convictions are, you find a group that shares them
Well that’s how it should be, but it’s more and more becoming a case of send in the highly paid lawyers/lobbyists and demand the country changes its laws to suit company xyz just because they are rich. :furious::furious:
I’m going to call bs on the Shadow of War comment; I played the hell out of that game and NEVER opened a loot box, and I had absolutely zero issues with the game…and I was playing it on Nemesis difficulty from the start.
One thing I will say is this: I don’t like loot boxes, HOWEVER, a large part of the problem with them is that people buy them. You’re always going to have players who are short on time (or just plain lazy), and don’t want to put the time into the game to get the great gear on their own, so they throw money at the problem. Game company sees this and says “Hey, we just made a lot of money off of those loot boxes, people are buying them. Let’s keep doing that.” Supply and demand. It sucks sometimes, and this is one of those cases.
So in closing, if loot boxes are going to be regulated, I’m fine with it, however, my fear is that they then try to go further and regulate other aspects of video games; that’s when I grab my torch and pitchfork.