Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

ruetir.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 141 posts

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#131

Post by SkyBelow »

q-big wrote: post #119
SkyBelow wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel they are very similar, but do have a few key differences. If these differences matter enough to make a moral difference is something we can discuss. A few of the key differences, in no particular order: 1. Trading card games come with base sets that have guaranteed cards and are useful for playing the game. This makes it TCGs better. 2. CCGs can be traded to others or sold. This one I'm unsure about. 3. Loot b…

> 5. Loot boxes are often purchased through currency systems made to separate the buyers understanding of how much they are paying. This is why games often make you buy some currency and then use that currency to buy loot boxes, with some games have layers of currency in between. Compare this to TCG boosters which are sold in stores for specific dollar amounts. This make loot boxes worse. Converting between currencie…

>Encourage bad spending habits: sounds like classical advertising.

Extremely targeted, omni-present advertising with more techniques used to maximize the impact.

It's a bit like asking where does kids rough housing turn into assault and battery. If you took 100 different situations that fall in-between these two points and ordered them, each one would sound like the ones next to them, yet the one furthest on one side would be categorically different than the one furthest on the other side.

Or a bit like the example where you start a paragraph with a red word and ever letter you shift the smallest amount possible with RGB towards blue. Eventually you end up at blue, but every letter looks almost identical to the letter next to it.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#132

Post by me_me_me »

cinntaile wrote: post #129
me_me_me wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah as a grown adult you dont. Do you know what is an insult for kids these days? "Default" Meaning you are too poor to buy skins in online games. Your argument is poor at best,actually its broken at so many levels. "You don't need to take heroin you can just stop." In fifa you need to buy them to have a equal chance vs other players (pay to win)

> "You don't need to take heroin you can just stop." This analogy doesn't make sense. An addiction can't be compared to social pressure. > In fifa you need to buy them to have a equal chance vs other players (pay to win) Lootboxes are usually cosmetics instead of pay to win, I'm talking about the cosmetics kind to be clear.

> An addiction can't be compared to social pressure.

Some people get addicted to the adrenaline rush of opening the lootboxes. It 100% falls under addiction for people susceptible to it.

There is even term for it 'whale', person that spends on micro-transaction so much money that it hurts reading about it.

> I'm talking about the cosmetics kind to be clear.

Social pressure and FOMO tactics are still harmful and predatory, no matter how you put it and defend it.

At this stage you are splitting hair in order to defend some niche example of a lootbox in order to defend something vile in most of cases. Whats the point?

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#133

Post by raxxorrax »

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…

This is another level. Developers like EA know the potential of earnings and use psychologists to incentivize people to spend money. The barrier is much lower too.

Sure, a smaller form with trading cards always existed, but it wasn't a billion dollar industry with support from specialists to maximize exploitation.

You cannot really generalize the problem to loot boxes though. There are exceptions where it just provides a form of monetization that isn't necessarily predatory and it will not affect everyone negatively.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#134

Post by barbazoo »

icu wrote: post #87
barbazoo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all really sad and I wonder how I'll ever protect my child from what these cooperations will come up with 10 years from now. I know probably every generation has lamented about this but I wonder if childhood these days is as fun as it used to be. Yesterday we overheard two kids, maybe 9 years old, discuss the local real estate market and how one house across the street went for a million bucks to which the ot…

I hear what you're saying but my conclusion was that I'm never going to be able to protect my son and all I can do was prepare him in stages as best as possible. Change is inevitable... and in the past I used nostalgia as a mental point of origin to judge situations today. However I've come to see that change creates both negative and positive opportunity but it's just a matter of perspective. I'm sure there are posi…

Interesting perspective, thank you for sharing!

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#135

Post by GaelFG »

SkyBelow wrote: post #58
mFixman wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I feel they are very similar, but do have a few key differences. If these differences matter enough to make a moral difference is something we can discuss. A few of the key differences, in no particular order: 1. Trading card games come with base sets that have guaranteed cards and are useful for playing the game. This makes it TCGs better. 2. CCGs can be traded to others or sold. This one I'm unsure about. 3. Loot b…

A bit off topic but as a game developper I see surprising often the opinion : "This is why games often make you buy some currency and then use that currency to buy loot boxes" ,it's even in my google search top :

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-games-make-you-convert-real-wor...

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

and so on. I'm confident it's a purely anecdotical side effect, they are tons of reasons to use a virtual currency. Manipulating money on internet if awfully complicated AND Costly. Each transaction cost a lot (when dealing with microtransaction like in games), currencies are complicated and their value change a lot, simply reimbursing someone for low amounts can cost you more than the transaction total, and convincing someone to spend the time to fill a payement form is aldready complicated,asking to do so each time you want to spend less than the cost of a coffee is doomed to fail. In the (frequent) case of working with multiple store/processor, it also help you to abstract things : painfully make your currencies pack once in each store/platform, and them internally code your in game store using this currency, like 'standard' game currency.

"Tricking" users who can't apply a rule of three seems like anecdotical.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#136

Post by cinntaile »

me_me_me wrote: post #132
cinntaile wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "You don't need to take heroin you can just stop." This analogy doesn't make sense. An addiction can't be compared to social pressure. > In fifa you need to buy them to have a equal chance vs other players (pay to win) Lootboxes are usually cosmetics instead of pay to win, I'm talking about the cosmetics kind to be clear.

> An addiction can't be compared to social pressure. Some people get addicted to the adrenaline rush of opening the lootboxes. It 100% falls under addiction for people susceptible to it. There is even term for it 'whale', person that spends on micro-transaction so much money that it hurts reading about it. > I'm talking about the cosmetics kind to be clear. Social pressure and FOMO tactics are still harmful and preda…

> Some people get addicted to the adrenaline rush of opening the lootboxes. It 100% falls under addiction for people susceptible to it.

You're moving the goal posts here. You were talking about kids that succumb to social pressure because of a default character and that is what I replied to.

> At this stage you are splitting hair in order to defend some niche example of a lootbox in order to defend something vile in most of cases. Whats the point?

I don't get what you mean, what am I splitting hairs about? You don't NEED to buy lootboxes, that's a fact. Lootboxes are almost always cosmetics, that's also a fact.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#137

Post by arrosenberg »

oneoff786 wrote: post #130
arrosenberg wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would still exist. The difference is the artificial scarcity is gone, so customers aren't under time pressure to purchase them. They are free to do so as they are reasonably able to afford it.

If it’s a social prestige thing then you’re likely to want the latest fashion though. So… the time pressure is still there, because the value of yesterday’s fashion quickly falls.

If we assume you are correct, then the makers of these games shouldn't care if we ban exclusive distribution periods, since the results should be exactly the same.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#138

Post by oneoff786 »

arrosenberg wrote: post #137
oneoff786 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s a social prestige thing then you’re likely to want the latest fashion though. So… the time pressure is still there, because the value of yesterday’s fashion quickly falls.

If we assume you are correct, then the makers of these games shouldn't care if we ban exclusive distribution periods, since the results should be exactly the same.

I’m not arguing it doesn’t work. I’m arguing it’s not predatory.

Devil’s advocate, which seems likely to me, is that having a small catalog that is frequently updated is a lot easier to make a sale on for its simplicity and expectation of finding something novel every time you look.

100 options is overwhelming. 5 is easier for the consumer. And if 95% of people who would ever buy your new skin will do so within a week of its release, it makes sense to just ship a new catalog next week and never bother with the old one again.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#139

Post by Doxin »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #17

(For anyone going just by the title: this is the purchase of loot boxes.) I’m personally against this for moral reasons having to do a lot with corporate greed and and then some to do with gambling in general, but I do want to point out this isn’t remotely new and isn’t something that the digital gaming/entertainment industry came up. When we were kids, we all used to gamble by buying Pokémon booster packs for $4 or…

> I have no clue if the Netherlands allowed the sale of Pokémon cards to minors in the first place?

They did. Technically you can't sell anything to a minor since they aren't allowed to enter into contracts. In practice everyone all over sells shit to minors and just crosses their fingers their guardians don't show up for their money back. Seems to work in practice.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#140

Post by Xorakios »

mFixman wrote: post #80
BrS96bVxXBLzf5B wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This definitely isn't a universal experience and there are definitely a lot of trading card horror stories, but for me + friends growing up the purchase of trading cards had a different place in life. They were like one of life's small rewards you had a chance of rolling whenever going into a shop with a parent/guardian. Being at the checkout, putting on the little kid puppy-dog 'pleaseeeeeee' and the adult deciding…

Did we have different childhoods, or do you not really forget yours? Children used to steal trading cards and have violent fights over them. Only a few dedicated nerds played the game; the rest just collected the cards and showed them as a proxy of self-worth. This is perfectly normal child behaviour, and I'm sure it was much worse than whatever's happening right now with lootboxes. The main difference between them i…

That is not even remotely normal child behavior.
Post reply on HN