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"Free-to-play" misleading advertising in Europe

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Re: "Free-to-play" misleading advertising in Europe

#221

Post by MichaelGG »

vidarh wrote: post #186
brudgers wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was working as a City Planner and an elderly black man was sitting in the visitor chair across the desk and looking out the window. He'd come there so I could say "no". He wasn't a first time developer. He'd known he'd get no when he'd been sent to the office with my desk. That's why he hadn't come there first and now that we'd gone through the motions and. the anticipated "no" had been said he asked if I fished. A…

Same still applies, though: You're jumping to conclusions about what is important to others. I play video games with my 4 year old. He loves it, and he loves doing it with me more than the games themselves. We take him out lots too, but I have equally fond memories of times I've spent playing games with him as the ones I've spent with him on outdoors activities.

I can second this. My 7-yr-old daughter and I started playing some RPGs on the Xbox360. She enjoys it, but only if I'm playing with her. She almost never plays by herself, and half the time she'll have me do difficult parts. She'll often crack jokes about parts of gameplay. Or when looking at the save game list, look back at a part we played months ago and exclaim "Wow, remember that place!" (Eternal Sonata has great scenery.)

On a tangent: She's very sensitive to the gender of the characters in-game and really insists on playing girls. We were both rather disappointed that GTA V shipped 3 player characters, all male.

Re: "Free-to-play" misleading advertising in Europe

#222

Post by baddox »

djur wrote: post #219
baddox wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The nation I'm a citizen of has a government that renews the consent of the government on a regular basis with free, fair, universal elections. At best, that just renews the consent of those who do consent. If I didn't vote, or voted for the losing candidate or option, then I am still governed despite not consenting.

"Consent of the governed" refers to consent of the polity (by some form of majoritarian process), not to individual consent. Individuals do not have the unrestricted option to remove themselves from society; universal consent is unnecessary, unworkable, and undesirable.

> "Consent of the governed" refers to consent of the polity (by some form of majoritarian process), not to individual consent.

That's precisely my point. It's a linguistic trick to make it sound like an exchange is justified despite there not actually being consent. The analogy would be Apple forcefully taking x hundred dollars from you, giving you an iPhone, then saying the exchange is justified because 50.1% of the smartphone market consensually buys iPhones. (I made up that number, obviously.)

Re: "Free-to-play" misleading advertising in Europe

#223

Post by joesb »

vidarh wrote: post #190
joesb wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> initially incapable So teach them? Isn't that what the parent post was saying?

Teaching them is not an instant process. And given the number of these in app purchases that manages to lure in parents, that's totally unrealistic in any case.

What's unrealistic about not letting your kids buy IAP? You set parental control and tell them they are not allowed to buy IAP and that's it.

You also have to teach kids to brush their teeth every night. That's 365 times a year. Is that unrealistic to teach them, too? Or is teaching them to brush their teeth an instant process?

Re: "Free-to-play" misleading advertising in Europe

#224

Post by ZoFreX »

baddox wrote: post #215
alkonaut wrote: post #120

I wholeheartedly agree with this. The point for me isn't so much "protection" against unforseen expenses it's just that I want to know up front what costs money and what doesn't. When I browse for a free app I don't want to see the crippled in-app-unlockable app next to the truly free app. Strict rules for prices in marketing is a prerequisite for a functioning market, my other pet peeve is the contract phone. Not on…

> The point for me isn't so much "protection" against unforseen expenses it's just that I want to know up front what costs money and what doesn't. I also prefer to know up front what things cost or might end up costing. I guess the difference between us is that I make a distinction between my preferences and what policies I think should be forcefully implemented by governments.

Are you opposed to all legislation on pricing? We have quite a lot in the country I live in and I've never before considered it to be a negative thing. For example, if someone advertises something as "£1 per month" but then actually charges my credit card £10 per month, they could get in trouble. Are you opposed to that legislation and think that I should avoid such charges... well, I'm interested in knowing what you think I should do in absence of legislation.

Re: "Free-to-play" misleading advertising in Europe

#225

Post by peterashford »

baddox wrote: post #215
alkonaut wrote: post #120

I wholeheartedly agree with this. The point for me isn't so much "protection" against unforseen expenses it's just that I want to know up front what costs money and what doesn't. When I browse for a free app I don't want to see the crippled in-app-unlockable app next to the truly free app. Strict rules for prices in marketing is a prerequisite for a functioning market, my other pet peeve is the contract phone. Not on…

> The point for me isn't so much "protection" against unforseen expenses it's just that I want to know up front what costs money and what doesn't. I also prefer to know up front what things cost or might end up costing. I guess the difference between us is that I make a distinction between my preferences and what policies I think should be forcefully implemented by governments.

I've never understood the American stand point that all government intervention is presumably bad a priori.

Re: "Free-to-play" misleading advertising in Europe

#226

Post by xerophtye »

smsm42 wrote: post #175
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Need' is tricky to define in this case. Many 'freemium' games are very different experiences based on whether or not you pay via additional IAP. From what I gather, not having actually played it, Dungeon Keeper is about the most extreme example of this. It sounds like you really do need to pay in order to play the actual game , as opposed to playing something which many would describe as not really being the game .

Do you really want EU bureaucrats examining each game and deciding how playable it is with or without certain item? If the game is that bad - uninstall it, write one-star review for it and be done with it.

Uh, who said that legislation would mean that every game would first go to a govt dept to verify genre? I thought the whole point of such legislation is to be a deterrent. So that WHEN someone violates it and is deceptive in their marketing, you can take them to court for it.

Yes, I also first read reviews to know if the game requires regular payments etc, and it is reasonable to expect this from consumers. But the law should be there to protect those who do not.

"If you don't want to be mugged, don't go down dark alleys" is sound advice, but that doesn't mean that mugging doesn't need to be labelled "illegal"

Re: "Free-to-play" misleading advertising in Europe

#227

Post by DanBC »

joesb wrote: post #165
DanBC wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is about transparency of pricing and being able to compare the actual cost of games. Apple has featured a game today that they have listed as free. The largest IAP is $55, but that price is hidden behind extra clicks. This means that when a consumer is comparing two apps they have extra work to do to compare true prices. This hidden pricing has cause harm. Developers cannot advertise a game with an honest price. A…

True price of IAP-enabled app depends on whether consumer use that IAPs. What's a true price of "free" e-bay bidding app? What's true price of "free" Amazon shopping app? And you don't need to buy IAP to beat most game. This is like saying I can't list my shop as having "free" shipping because people prefer to pay more for overnight delivery.

Ebay took measures to prevent people shifting the cost of tems from the item to the post and packing. If the seller pays £1.99 for p&p they can charge £10 and reduce the cost of their item by £8.

Your point about overnight delivery is reasonable. Some games are playable without IAPs. But some games have a degraded experience without IAPs - timers that the player need to wait for is one example - and some games are going to be unfun without IAPs.

Re: "Free-to-play" misleading advertising in Europe

#229

Post by baddox »

ZoFreX wrote: post #224
baddox wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point for me isn't so much "protection" against unforseen expenses it's just that I want to know up front what costs money and what doesn't. I also prefer to know up front what things cost or might end up costing. I guess the difference between us is that I make a distinction between my preferences and what policies I think should be forcefully implemented by governments.

Are you opposed to all legislation on pricing? We have quite a lot in the country I live in and I've never before considered it to be a negative thing. For example, if someone advertises something as "£1 per month" but then actually charges my credit card £10 per month, they could get in trouble. Are you opposed to that legislation and think that I should avoid such charges... well, I'm interested in knowing what you…

I'm not exactly opposed to all legislation on price. I do think that unapproved credit card charges constitute fraud, but in-app purchases (as far as I have experienced them on Android and iOS) do not work this way. They all require explicit confirmation, after the "free" install.

So a better analogy would be a theme park with free entry (or some constant entry price) that then offers optional "in-park purchases" like food, special events, or expedited roller coaster lines. I wouldn't consider this fraud, but for non-free theme parks, I do think a court might eventually have to make a decision based on what exactly you're agreeing on when you pay for a ticket. To avoid legal ambiguity, I suspect theme parks could simply have a document describing what services are included with the base ticket (though not necessarily listing all optional services which cost extra).

Re: "Free-to-play" misleading advertising in Europe

#230

Post by baddox »

peterashford wrote: post #225
baddox wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point for me isn't so much "protection" against unforseen expenses it's just that I want to know up front what costs money and what doesn't. I also prefer to know up front what things cost or might end up costing. I guess the difference between us is that I make a distinction between my preferences and what policies I think should be forcefully implemented by governments.

I've never understood the American stand point that all government intervention is presumably bad a priori.

That is far from "the American stand point." Most Americans ridiculed the moderately libertarian policies of Republican candidate Ron Paul. Even the broad ideas of fiscal conservatism and low corporate taxes is mocked by one major party and usually only given lip service by the other. The Libertarian Party, despite being the third largest party in the US, is at best a joke to the vast majority of Americans. And on top of that, the view that all government intervention is bad would be considered extreme even among these candidates.
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