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Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

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Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#91

Post by http-teapot »

jiggawatts wrote: post #85
Madmallard wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's simply the best action RPG available. It has limitless depth and tremendous player agency

I have to be the voice of dissent. I played it for a few hundred hours (but nothing like the hours I sunk into Diablo I & II!), and for the first few days of play it was almost more fun finding bugs and little "polish issues" than the actual game itself. PoE is the diametric opposite of the quality you see in a typical Blizzard game. It's fun in its own way, and it is free , but calling the the "best RPG available" i…

Two or three years ago, I played PoE on PS4 and thought it ran great. I came up with a powerful but boring PvE build. I forgot how I did it but the character would spin like a tornado and blades would twirl around it. I kept on tweaking the build and I think too many effects would trigger at once and it crashed the game. I didn't know I could be interested in this aspect of a game and had a ton of fun pushing the limit. Breaking the game was rewarding in some sense.

I didn't have in me to explore more of the game so I stopped. I recently picked it back up on Steam Deck; it runs great and I am getting 6 hours of battery life.

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#92

Post by Lapsa »

Madmallard wrote: post #74
baby wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diablo 3 was really bad if you liked Diablo 2. Always felt like PoE was the real successor but didn’t really try it…

it's simply the best action RPG available. It has limitless depth and tremendous player agency

try playing PoE on hardcore with no prior knowledge. 100% guaranteed your run will flop before you blink an eye. run #10 won't do much better. there's way too much weirdly named crap that gives no warning whatsoever. you just suddenly die. I mean - it's hardcore, all good, right? I'm whining about discoverability - lack of natural path to right information at right time and not just some postmortem googling // still better than diablo 3/immoral

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#93

Post by jayd16 »

wincy wrote: post #60
colinmhayes wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've made it to the end maybe you should pay?

I got probably a thousand hours out of Diablo 2 for $100 total. Somehow I feel like the value proposition of $110,000 to have a maxed out character isn’t so great.

There's a lot of MTX but my guess is that $100k number will change over time. Surely they'll introduce new tiers to reach (or buy). You'll never finish... but on the other hand it's pointless to be maxed out anyway.

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#94

Post by sverhagen »

hetspookjee wrote: post #90

It’s a bizarre scenario that this is not allowed, yet if you’d visit the Netherlands right now. You’d be swarmed with gambling ads since online gambling has been legalised since a year now. Even worse is that if you visit any nice museum there’s a huge chance you’d find some folks there try to recruit people to join the national lottery. It’s a disgrace. Especially as they do it all under the guise of non-profit and…

>You’d be swarmed with gambling ads

Presumably the Dutch government had an agreement with the industry to voluntarily stop the public advertising. Presumably also a number of parties held to that agreement, while some others are still advertising. An excuse I've seen is that they had advertisement scheduled before the agreed-on date, but billboard space and such didn't come available until later. It sounds like the government will introduce regulations if the self-regulation doesn't work. It may still wind down and be fine?

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#95

Post by ralusek »

hh3k0 wrote: post #17
javajosh wrote: post #12

Immortal can be played for the mainline story without spending any money at all. So far, at least up to level 40 (about 12 hours of gameplay) I haven't felt the urge to spend money. It's a little like Path of Exile in that you can enjoy the base game and the story for free; it's only if you "get into it" that you start spending money (I never "got into it). I can't help but feel it's fair to give away a really nice g…

It's not fair, it's predatory behavior aimed at addicts and children. I hope the rest of the EU will follow the fine example set by NL and BE.

Europeans understand that you don't have to play, right? I'm not playing. I don't think I've ever played a game with a lootbox. No part of me feels compelled to legislate away the liberties of my fellow countrymen.

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#96

Post by hetspookjee »

sverhagen wrote: post #94
hetspookjee wrote: post #90

It’s a bizarre scenario that this is not allowed, yet if you’d visit the Netherlands right now. You’d be swarmed with gambling ads since online gambling has been legalised since a year now. Even worse is that if you visit any nice museum there’s a huge chance you’d find some folks there try to recruit people to join the national lottery. It’s a disgrace. Especially as they do it all under the guise of non-profit and…

>You’d be swarmed with gambling ads Presumably the Dutch government had an agreement with the industry to voluntarily stop the public advertising. Presumably also a number of parties held to that agreement, while some others are still advertising. An excuse I've seen is that they had advertisement scheduled before the agreed-on date, but billboard space and such didn't come available until later. It sounds like the g…

To my knowledge the one law introduced was the disallowance of public characters (mostly footballers at this moment) appearing in advertisements. Other than that it was indeed hoped that the industry would regulate itself.

The very odd thing is that a lot of shows still include them. The intent of the Dutch government is to be the largest shareholder in most gambling activities, to not allow the illegal field to take over. Yet you can find it being normalised in so many shows. TOTO has been winning the advertisement prize awards years on end already. And not be targeted to the younger audience yet you find most advertisements especially targeted to them.

The latest change in legalisation of online gambling made it explode to ever more absurd levels. There is very little reason to expect the market to manage itself.

It’s great that these loot boxes are banned and I hope it stays that way, and the severe advertisement industry around these gambling practices is winded down.

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#97

Post by Reason077 »

tempestn wrote: post #70
hh3k0 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not fair, it's predatory behavior aimed at addicts and children. I hope the rest of the EU will follow the fine example set by NL and BE.

I agree. Then hopefully some companies will shift back to the model of making games and selling them. This whole FTP model has horribly misaligned incentives.

To be clear, it's not the free-to-play model itself which is illegal here. There are plenty of F2P games which are fine in these countries. It's specifically gambling-style loot boxes where you pay to have a small chance of winning very valuable items which is banned.

F2P games which are clear about exactly what you're getting for your money in each transaction are fine, and there are plenty of F2P games which do this successfully and legally.

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#98

Post by friendlypeg »

Victerius wrote: post #5

Diablo Immortal faces a backlash as Metacritic user score drops to Blizzard’s third lowest ever https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/diablo-immortal-fac...

Wonder how many people actually played the game as opposed to parroting whatever they heard from YouTubers? Metacritic user score has become useless since people started to doing review bomb.

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#99

Post by fwsgonzo »

ralusek wrote: post #95
hh3k0 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not fair, it's predatory behavior aimed at addicts and children. I hope the rest of the EU will follow the fine example set by NL and BE.

Europeans understand that you don't have to play, right? I'm not playing. I don't think I've ever played a game with a lootbox. No part of me feels compelled to legislate away the liberties of my fellow countrymen.

It is mostly children playing these games, and yes we absolutely should save our children from gambling-based games.

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#100

Post by Reason077 »

oneepic wrote: post #82
javajosh wrote: post #12

Immortal can be played for the mainline story without spending any money at all. So far, at least up to level 40 (about 12 hours of gameplay) I haven't felt the urge to spend money. It's a little like Path of Exile in that you can enjoy the base game and the story for free; it's only if you "get into it" that you start spending money (I never "got into it). I can't help but feel it's fair to give away a really nice g…

The first part of your comment resonates with me, there are certainly freemium games out there that feel great if you commit to not spend any money on them. I put about 100 hours into Destiny 2, and got a lot of fun and immersion out of it before I quit -- I felt like I was "over" the free content. Meanwhile, I see people who are deep into that game (season passes, expansions, etc) and they look like someone you know…

A season pass is quite different to a loot box, however. You're spending a fixed amount each month and hopefully getting entertainment value in return. Not much different to a Netflix or Spotify subscription.

Loot boxes, on the other hand, are tapping in to addictive gambling behaviours. They're like casino slot machines, except unregulated!

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