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Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

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Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#101

Post by falcolas »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #8

This is so disheartening. I work as an admin in a school that serves all grades, and the impact that this stuff has on kids is very real. I've witnessed first-hand a grown in sort of a "gambling" culture amongst kids, as early as elementary school. While loads of us may have had fun experiences trading cards and whatnot, this all still happens with kids but with a much more overt monetary component. Part of me, thoug…

One thing FIFA has that MTG never did: it effectively destroys you collection of cards every year. You can’t carry over cards between their yearly releases, and you can’t get updated rosters without getting the latest release.

It is, at least for sports games, incomparable to MTG or Pokémon.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#102

Post by [deleted] »

Thaxll wrote: post #21
jmyeet wrote: post #3

This makes me sad. I think loot boxes with RNG rewards are a disgusting practice. It's gambling that minors are allowed to do. One of the things I respect Epic Games for is they didn't follow this profitable path for Fortnite. In Fortnite, you want the skin, you buy the skin. You don't buy a ton of boxes and hope to get lucky. Gambling with an immediate result is bad. It's particularly bad for children. But it's also…

Fortnite has way more kids playing than Fifa and makes more money, so they're "more" evil, it does not matter if it's a skin on a store it's still a lot of money and kids are hooked to it. Lootbox issues are no the problem, games like Fortnite, Roblox, CoD are on the same level.

[deleted]

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#103

Post by [deleted] »

mFixman wrote: post #39
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #8

This is so disheartening. I work as an admin in a school that serves all grades, and the impact that this stuff has on kids is very real. I've witnessed first-hand a grown in sort of a "gambling" culture amongst kids, as early as elementary school. While loads of us may have had fun experiences trading cards and whatnot, this all still happens with kids but with a much more overt monetary component. Part of me, thoug…

I'm sure my parents would disagree that Pokémon trading cards weren't a giant money sink designed to take their money. I can see a lot of problems with giving children access to credit cards, but I honestly fail to see how loot boxes are different from trading cards marketed to children. My high school enacted and enforced a ban on all card and board games because some parents were worried about child gambling; I'm s…

[deleted]

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#104

Post by leetcrew »

oneoff786 wrote: post #68
speeder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selling cosmetic things is literally the best way of extracting money from this. Humans are social creatures, and clothes, real or virtual, are part of social display, some people (me for example) don't care about it, but they are exceptions, most people care deeply about using clothes for social display, and "threatening" them with not having a potentially high social status piece is a good way to make these people…

Why would a fortnite skin become high status? Aren’t they all available in unlimited quantity for a fairly standard price? That sounds like the opposite of scarcity. If something is popular then it will be the most common and thus the least interesting. Surely you’re not saying people buy skins because they might turn out to be unpopular and thus cool to wear… I’m sure there’s a niche culture around always buying the…

the supply is unlimited, but the number of skins "in the wild" is limited by price. apparently the most expensive Fortnite skins cost hundreds of dollars. not everyone (or more realistically, their parents) can afford to drop that on a digital texture.

"popular" can mean "widely desired", not necessarily "owned by many people".

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#105

Post by leetcrew »

arrosenberg wrote: post #31
oneoff786 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have any interest in fortnite but I don’t follow why this is bad. These are just skins right? Like no differentiation besides personal aesthetic preference? Couldn’t these be sold with no ambiguity, never ever coming back, and have literally no impact on your desire to buy? Have you ever felt a desire to buy a shirt because it won’t be available to purchase again? Is there really a world where they say “this…

Introducing artificial scarcity on digital goods seems incredibly anti-consumer. Consider a different scenario where someone wants the skin both now and later (for whatever reason - value is driven by the desire of the purchaser), but doesn't have the financial wherewithal to purchase frivolous things at a whim. In that scenario the consumer has to make a choice between purchasing an artificially scarce good or makin…

meh. selling cosmetic-only items is a pretty good way to fund a low/zero purchase price game imo. no one is priced out of the core experience, and the people that really care pay for everyone else to play.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#106

Post by nemothekid »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #4
jmyeet wrote: post #3

This makes me sad. I think loot boxes with RNG rewards are a disgusting practice. It's gambling that minors are allowed to do. One of the things I respect Epic Games for is they didn't follow this profitable path for Fortnite. In Fortnite, you want the skin, you buy the skin. You don't buy a ton of boxes and hope to get lucky. Gambling with an immediate result is bad. It's particularly bad for children. But it's also…

Fortnite is its own evil. They only show an extremely small fraction of the items available each day, with no indication of whether they'll return, so that you feel you have to buy things now in case you never have the chance again.

>Fortnite is its own evil. They only show an extremely small fraction of the items available each day,

They're skins. They have no in-game effect. If your need for social validation is so great that you would spend your life savings on skins then that should be a personal problem. Unlike lootboxes, the transactions is clear as day and there's no gambling aspect. I wouldn't call Nike evil because they refuse to re-release Jordan 1s.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#107

Post by Gigachad »

icu wrote: post #12
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #8

This is so disheartening. I work as an admin in a school that serves all grades, and the impact that this stuff has on kids is very real. I've witnessed first-hand a grown in sort of a "gambling" culture amongst kids, as early as elementary school. While loads of us may have had fun experiences trading cards and whatnot, this all still happens with kids but with a much more overt monetary component. Part of me, thoug…

I don't think you're way off the mark, or being a "grumps" on the subject. Young minds can be heavily influenced which is why many societies regulate experiences that may cause harm. I'm sure there are children who aren't impacted by EA lootboxes, as I'm sure there are children who are. It's the ones that are I'm concerned about, and the families that will end up dealing with the fallout. I don't see why it's not pos…

I'm of a mixed opinion. I think lootboxes for kids could actually be good. Kids are in a position where they can spend every dollar they have on useless boxes and still have a place to live, food to eat, and resources for school. And I think that these games eventually give them a realization about how much of a waste of money it was. I saw people I went to school with spend all of their after school job money on loot crates and then realize they got very little from it in the end so they stop.

On the other hand, if it turns out they don't cause many kids to have this realization and it instead turns it in to a habit they don't grow out of, then yeah it could be pretty bad.

But without knowing that, it seems like kids are the only ones able to safely gamble since they can't truly lose.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#108

Post by oneoff786 »

leetcrew wrote: post #104
oneoff786 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a fortnite skin become high status? Aren’t they all available in unlimited quantity for a fairly standard price? That sounds like the opposite of scarcity. If something is popular then it will be the most common and thus the least interesting. Surely you’re not saying people buy skins because they might turn out to be unpopular and thus cool to wear… I’m sure there’s a niche culture around always buying the…

the supply is unlimited, but the number of skins "in the wild" is limited by price. apparently the most expensive Fortnite skins cost hundreds of dollars. not everyone (or more realistically, their parents) can afford to drop that on a digital texture. "popular" can mean "widely desired", not necessarily "owned by many people".

Google suggests fortnite skins cost at most $20

With a few niche edge cases where you need a specific phone to acquire them as a promo for the hardware.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#109

Post by klyrs »

mFixman wrote: post #39
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #8

This is so disheartening. I work as an admin in a school that serves all grades, and the impact that this stuff has on kids is very real. I've witnessed first-hand a grown in sort of a "gambling" culture amongst kids, as early as elementary school. While loads of us may have had fun experiences trading cards and whatnot, this all still happens with kids but with a much more overt monetary component. Part of me, thoug…

I'm sure my parents would disagree that Pokémon trading cards weren't a giant money sink designed to take their money. I can see a lot of problems with giving children access to credit cards, but I honestly fail to see how loot boxes are different from trading cards marketed to children. My high school enacted and enforced a ban on all card and board games because some parents were worried about child gambling; I'm s…

It was Magic the Gathering for my age group. Thankfully(?!) my school had bigger problems to deal with vis a vis gang activity including actual drug dealing; we were just a few quiet mostly-white nerds that played Magic in a math teacher's room at lunch. But, I never spent my parents' money. I earned my dollars-a-week allowance doing chores, and started blowing it on Magic cards. My parents did grow concerned when they noticed my bank account was dropping, but when I showed them, my mom was enchanted by the beautiful pictures on the cards and my dad was glad that I wasn't doing drugs.

Loot boxes kinda suck by comparison. Loot boxes are pretty straight gambling, mostly for decorative skins. Magic, Pokemon, etc., cards are different. There's some gambling, but deck-building requires a lot of strategy -- they're good for the brain. Where there might be some value (I don't see it) to playing stuff like FIFA and Fortnight, it isn't in the loot boxes.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#110

Post by stodor89 »

falcolas wrote: post #101
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #8

This is so disheartening. I work as an admin in a school that serves all grades, and the impact that this stuff has on kids is very real. I've witnessed first-hand a grown in sort of a "gambling" culture amongst kids, as early as elementary school. While loads of us may have had fun experiences trading cards and whatnot, this all still happens with kids but with a much more overt monetary component. Part of me, thoug…

One thing FIFA has that MTG never did: it effectively destroys you collection of cards every year. You can’t carry over cards between their yearly releases, and you can’t get updated rosters without getting the latest release. It is, at least for sports games, incomparable to MTG or Pokémon.

Hmm, aren't MTG releasing new sets every year? And don't they only allow cards from the last few years in tournaments?
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