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Other than being digital, how are loot boxes different than being M:TG cards or baseball card packs?
Ultimately, most publishers will probably handle it like Valve, who have found a brilliant workaround: Show players the contents of the next box they buy, which makes it not gambling. I hate it, but it's a very elegant solution to avoid any legal problems.
Not being familiar with their system myself, I have to ask - does this imply that there's 2nd order gambling? I mean, the same gambling "kick" then arises from seeing what they would get after paying for the following big, right? I suppose they could also make the boxes transparent all the way down, but that would just shift the gamble to the account creation phase. Oh, or is it just the exact same boxes for everyone…
Practically speaking, it's a brilliant move because it works around laws without removing the addictive gambling feeling.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that in their pursuit of profit they are creating slot machines with the actual game on the side. Then they are crippling the game so that you have to use the slot machine to have any sense of fun while playing the game. Therefore there are two choices: Either they get regulated as other slot machine makers around the world, including being taxed as both a slot machine maker and as a slot machine opera…
Which games are you talking about that require you to open loot boxes in order to have fun in the game? The most popular games that I can think of with loot boxes, Hearthstone, Dota 2, Overwatch, CS:GO, PUBG, all either have strictly cosmetic items in the loot boxes, or have ways of getting the loot boxes free through gameplay. Saying that major developers are creating games that require you to buy loot boxes in orde…
Card games are gambling. True, you can get gambling credits by grinding a lot in Hearthstone, but I feel this is despicable especially for a card game catering to mostly underage or very young people.
This applies to non-virtual card games too (e.g. Magic, Pokemon, Yugiho). Pack-opening is kid's gambling. They are made to encourage people to open more packs/make a deck/etc. At least in real-life card games you can trade cards (EDIT: hearthstone has dust - which acts the same).
Other than being digital, how are loot boxes different than being M:TG cards or baseball card packs?
With MTG you can skip the whole booster buying and just get the cards you want from people who have them. The rarest most desirable cards in standard are $10-$50 at most. If you want a rare overwatch skin you have no option but keep buying boxes until you get it.
I’m the parent of a teenager who has struggled with an unhealthy obsession with features like this. A kid who is 14 or 15 is able to intellectually understand how to use these game systems, but at the same time he or she is often lacking the type of sophisticated understanding that an adult would have (e.g. that gambling can be addictive and therefore restraint and self-observation is required). They greatly overesti…
This is another area where the arbitrariness of the 18 year majority limit is exposed: 18 year olds are not neurologically adults. That doesn’t happen until like 25-29.
I'm so happy with this, it will create a precedent. I know people that have spent a lot of money in counter-strike boxes, it works like slots machines, designed to keep you exited while you get a reward. The worst thing is now is the rule in every game (pubg, heartstone and so on..). Good job Belgium!
Hearthstone is pretty reasonable imo. You get a fairly consistent amount of dust per pack and even like a ‘lucky’ pack isn’t that great. Just saves you from having to dust a few extra cards to get the one you want. I wish the prices were lower given how many cards they release a year now, but it’s not very much like gambling.
I'm a FIFA player and this is a complex situation. "Packs" in FIFA are not solely used for cosmetic items but for actual virtual players with distinct play characteristics. EA are trying to turn FIFA into a eSports game (see the recent FIFA eWorld Cup) and the majority of play takes place in the "Ultimate Team" mode. To get the high calibre players you'd use to build up your experience and reputation in UT you either…
I don't see how they can have it both ways. Either the game is an eSport where the most skillful person wins, or they can have lootboxes where the person that spends the most wins. So in the first case there is no super significant difference between the players on the field, which means there is no point to buy loot boxes to get better players. Or in the second case it isn't really an eSport because the person that…
I’m the parent of a teenager who has struggled with an unhealthy obsession with features like this. A kid who is 14 or 15 is able to intellectually understand how to use these game systems, but at the same time he or she is often lacking the type of sophisticated understanding that an adult would have (e.g. that gambling can be addictive and therefore restraint and self-observation is required). They greatly overesti…
This is another area where the arbitrariness of the 18 year majority limit is exposed: 18 year olds are not neurologically adults. That doesn’t happen until like 25-29.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not just the Belgians, if it stands up there that will be the thin edge of the wedge. The issue is the one of random drops for real money. It’s easy to see that has a gambling element to it.
Yes, it's easy to drop money on packs and either get a pack of duds or (less often) an amazing player. I tend to get quite lucky spending a few hundred pounds in total, but there are videos of YouTubers dropping £1000+ in a day and barely getting anything interesting. A workaround would be for EA to simply officially sell the game's "coins" instead of packs in affected territories.. but then you'd have the opposite e…
Preventing this kind of workaround is already part of many gambling laws. They usually define the payment/stake/wager as a very generic term like "anything of value". For example, in NV (as a stereotypical representation of a locale allows gambling), the law defines[1]:
>> “Representative of value” means any instrumentality used by a patron in a game whether or not the instrumentality may be redeemed for cash.
>> “Wager” means a sum of money or representative of value that is risked on an occurrence for which the outcome is uncertain.
Any type of in-game "coin" still represents value to the people playing the game, so trading them for lootboxes with uncertain contents is still a "wager".
The gaming industry could solve a lot of this mess if they simply *sold people the game (or game pieces) directly as a defined product. Of course, that wouldn't exploit the human weakness to operant conditioning[2]... ~sigh~
[1] https://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-463.html#NRS463Sec01862
Mandatory disclosure: I am a programmer working for EA and the following are my personal opinions. I do not represent EA in any official capacity. It's my strong opinion that the whole loot box phenomenon makes games as a whole worse. For me, it's not the gambling aspects of it, per se. I am an avid Magic: the Gathering player and never decried the way its loot boxes (boosters) work. It's the fact that, the way these…
I tried playing Quake Champions, because I remember enjoying Quake 3 as a mid-to-late teenager, and on paper, that type of game should be incredibly up my alley. I found the experience of the initial load screen dumping you directly into the daily loot box screen so offputting that I actually couldn't even enjoy playing the game proper. The very act of just opening the game was so nakedly manipulative and felt so unfun that I simply uninstalled it; I just cannot be assed to expend the energy trying to ignore the loot box mechanics to play the game on it's own merits.