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Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

polygon.com

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Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#231

Post by josephcsible »

kbenson wrote: post #217
csharptwdec19 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: Actual Gambling machines are also audited on the reg. A college friend works for my state's gaming commission. During a 'drinking talk' about digital signatures, she told me an interesting part of her job; not just going through the slot machines and validating the payout settings, but also checking the EEProms MD5 Hash* to make sure that it was in a list of 'approved' code hashes. * - This was 15 years ago…

Yeah, I've hear as much before. That's one of the things that makes this worse, these cabinets are (were?) a loophole that allows fleecing people without oversight. It's not like gambling is in your favor when you do it at a casino, but you can usually trust that the state has kept it from being egregiously unfair. > checking the EEProms MD5 Hash* to make sure that it was in a list of 'approved' code hashes. > This w…

"something better" was referring to the MD5 algorithm in particular. It'd be really easy today to make a fair firmware and a rigged firmware with identical MD5 hashes.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#232

Post by cortesoft »

nkrisc wrote: post #226
Caylio wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody said that skill was sufficient to win, I am simply pointing out the obvious fact that it's still required (in response to nkrisc who claimed that no skill was required at all, only luck).

My point is the skill component doesn’t matter if it’s ultimately down to luck.

It does matter. A person with skill has a higher probability of winning than someone without skill. There are two sequential checks... first, the check that the user is not in control of, the "will the game let you win" check, then the "did the player use enough skill to win?" check.

Let's say the game only allows 1/100 tries to have the chance to win. Player A has the skill to win 50% of the time, player B 25%.

Player A will end up winning 1/200 times, while player B will win 1/400.

Skill matters.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#233

Post by cortesoft »

Karunamon wrote: post #85
cortesoft wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because if you really suck, you can’t win at all. It is like poker, which is a combination of skill and luck.

Okay, I can accept that. But poker is still considered gambling, and we wouldn't allow arcade owners to target poker games at children. Why should this be allowed?

I 100% think this is a gambling game and should be outlawed in places gambling is illegal.

I was only saying that there is skill involved. Gaming laws never classify gambling games as those that require zero skill. Otherwise, poker, blackjack, even craps wouldn't be gambling, because all bets do not have the same odds, and therefore skilled players do better than unskilled.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#234

Post by cortesoft »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #86
cortesoft wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because if you really suck, you can’t win at all. It is like poker, which is a combination of skill and luck.

Skill when the machine decides to let you win, no chance when the machine doesn't want you to. It's not at all like poker and very much like the well-known shell game with a pea.

It is like poker.... you can play the correct 'skill' move and still lose the hand because of bad luck (losing in the river, for example)

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#235

Post by kbenson »

josephcsible wrote: post #231
kbenson wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've hear as much before. That's one of the things that makes this worse, these cabinets are (were?) a loophole that allows fleecing people without oversight. It's not like gambling is in your favor when you do it at a casino, but you can usually trust that the state has kept it from being egregiously unfair. > checking the EEProms MD5 Hash* to make sure that it was in a list of 'approved' code hashes. > This w…

"something better" was referring to the MD5 algorithm in particular. It'd be really easy today to make a fair firmware and a rigged firmware with identical MD5 hashes.

Ah, that's true. I was thinking less of the specific hashing used, but MD5 is problematic so that's likely what they meant. I thought they were referring to the process in general.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#236

Post by BrissyCoder »

Aeolun wrote: post #227
BrissyCoder wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair, kids don’t care about cheap plastic, and they love flashing lights and sounds. People love all kinds shit that is objectively bad for them... sugar, heroin, gambling, cryptocurrency. > Expensive plastic toys have the same flashing lights and sounds. The cheap adjective was unnecessary.

> The cheap adjective was unnecessary. Huh, no it was. I wanted to distinguish between cheap <$5 plastic toys and brand name $10+ (expensive) ones.

No I meant in my original comment.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#237

Post by spike021 »

jacobkg wrote: post #66
spike021 wrote: post #47

At least in Japan for their UFO Catcher and similar games, it's still pretty fun because you tend to be able to get childhood memory goods (pokemon/digimon/etc. stuffed animals). Plus while there can be a rigged factor to the machines, you can still pick up some mechanics that help you shortcut to getting the item to drop. Of course it costs money and you don't always "win" but if you can pick up the pattern, it does…

What’s ironic is that when I visited Tokyo a couple years ago I didn’t play any of these games because I assumed they were rigged like in the US. Now that I know the payouts are more favorable maybe I will give them a try next time

They are definitely still rigged. It's just that IMO the prizes and challenge still make it decently entertaining for me. But don't get me wrong, many 100y coins are lost in the pursuit of trying to win.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#238

Post by cwillu »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #97
cwillu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Abusable" is an interesting word choice.

From the view of the business. A pure skill gambling game could cost them all their money.

It's still an interesting word choice: the one offering an exchange considers being taken up on it by an informed counter-party to be "abusive".
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