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You are wrong and therefore stupid.
Words have meaning. If I am wrong I am ignorant. This is neither necessary nor sufficient to prove stupidity, which means diminished intellectual capacity. This is not an example of language mutability, this is lack of precision. Lack of precision leads to unclear thinking. Unclear thinking is frequently associated with stupidity.

Data supporting this hypothesis.
Again, words have meaning. Data should be observable and incontrovertible, only interpretation is open to debate. Allow me to provide some data to enhance your grasp of this word.

- You don't have to pay anything to play LoL. Ever. There is no "pay to win" component either.
True if you play in the free rotation , but I do not know many very successful players who do this. In fact, their business model refutes your data directly. They absolutely do sell champions and boosts, as you should know if you played this game 5 minutes.

- Grinding is irrelevant in LoL. There is no gear. Mods are not allowed.
Gear that is irrelevant, yet comprises the skill tree which you of course use to win. Abundant strategies are on the internet for how to best work that skill tree for various scenarios by player. Additionally there are runes which you acquire by grinding out battles. Not to mention both player and character levels which are also increased by, you guessed it, grinding constant and usually inconsequential battles.

- Mutability of language is one of the characteristics of language. Development of jargon is proof of advanced use of language, not the opposite.

Changing the meaning of words on an individual basis is not language mutability, it's simply incomprehensible. What we have instead is jargon, which will not significantly mutate language, but which is simultaneously incomprehensible to speakers of that language. There are ways to express their ideas succinctly and clearly without making up mean down.

You are wrong and therefore stupid.
Words have meaning. If I am wrong I am ignorant. This is neither necessary nor sufficient to prove stupidity, which means diminished intellectual capacity. This is not an example of language mutability, this is lack of precision. Lack of precision leads to unclear thinking. Unclear thinking is frequently associated with stupidity.

Data supporting this hypothesis.
Again, words have meaning. Data should be observable and incontrovertible, only interpretation is open to debate. Allow me to provide some data to enhance your grasp of this word.

- You don't have to pay anything to play LoL. Ever. There is no "pay to win" component either.
True if you play in the free rotation , but I do not know many very successful players who do this. In fact, their business model refutes your data directly. They absolutely do sell champions and boosts, as you should know if you played this game 5 minutes.

- Grinding is irrelevant in LoL. There is no gear. Mods are not allowed.
Gear that is irrelevant, yet comprises the skill tree which you of course use to win. Abundant strategies are on the internet for how to best work that skill tree for various scenarios by player. Additionally there are runes which you acquire by grinding out battles. Not to mention both player and character levels which are also increased by, you guessed it, grinding constant and usually inconsequential battles.

- Mutability of language is one of the characteristics of language. Development of jargon is proof of advanced use of language, not the opposite.

Changing the meaning of words on an individual basis is not language mutability, it's simply incomprehensible. What we have instead is jargon, which will not significantly mutate language, but which is simultaneously incomprehensible to speakers of that language. There are ways to express their ideas succinctly and clearly without making up mean down.

You are wrong and therefore stupid.
Words have meaning. If I am wrong I am ignorant. This is neither necessary nor sufficient to prove stupidity, which means diminished intellectual capacity. This is not an example of language mutability, this is lack of precision. Lack of precision leads to unclear thinking. Unclear thinking is frequently associated with stupidity.

Data supporting this hypothesis.
Again, words have meaning. Data should be observable and incontrovertible, only interpretation is open to debate. Allow me to provide some data to enhance your grasp of this word.

- You don't have to pay anything to play LoL. Ever. There is no "pay to win" component either.
True if you play in the free rotation , but I do not know many very successful players who do this. In fact, their business model refutes your data directly. They absolutely do sell champions and boosts, as you should know if you played this game 5 minutes.

- Grinding is irrelevant in LoL. There is no gear. Mods are not allowed.
Gear that is irrelevant, yet comprises the skill tree which you of course use to win. Abundant strategies are on the internet for how to best work that skill tree for various scenarios by player. Additionally there are runes which you acquire by grinding out battles. Not to mention both player and character levels which are also increased by, you guessed it, grinding constant and usually inconsequential battles.

- Mutability of language is one of the characteristics of language. Development of jargon is proof of advanced use of language, not the opposite.

Changing the meaning of words on an individual basis is not language mutability, it's simply incomprehensible. What we have instead is jargon, which will not significantly mutate language, but which is simultaneously incomprehensible to speakers of that language. There are ways to express their ideas succinctly and clearly without making up mean down.

I am not, in fact, a lawyer, but I do know how to use Google (unlike so many here). For instance, I can, without any adult help, open up my web browser, and type in http://www.google.com/ and go to a convenient search engine. In the search box for that search engine, I can type in "eula struck down as unconscionable" and click on the button labeled "Search." And get results such as

this, which talks about Bragg v. Linden Research, Inc., in which Linden's TOS (specifically, the arbitration clause) is struck down as unconscionable not once, not twice, but at least three or four different times and ways ("procedural unconscionability" and "substantive unconscionability" in two different ways, and then again on the latter after Linden amended it).

Wired also covers Gatton v. T-Mobile, again on an arbitration clause, and ruled unconscionable both procedurally and substantively. Also unconscionable for prohibiting class action lawsuits, because "that form of litigation is often the only means of stopping and punishing corporate wrongdoing." It also discusses Douglas v. U.S. District Court, which is about changing the terms of a contact after it has been signed, and which was ruled unconscionable. Gatton is often cited as recognizing that all click-wrap license have an element of unconscionability that must be considered by the court.

This has a link to this", which is a ruling on McKee v. AT&T, ruing their arbitration clause unconscionable.

Note that these are the first three results on the search, and the fourth is on McKee v. AT&T again.

Also note that these are all different courts, state and federal, all over the country.

Unconscionability is an affirmative defense - the defendant has to demonstrate why the contract is unconscionable, but it does, in fact, happen, and more importantly, it took me, literally, less than ten seconds to find example (and five of that was waiting for the browser to open.)

To quote the third link, you may now feed my cats for a week.

I have nothing against playing games -- I have a thing against paying people to watch them do it

So I assume that's a "no" on eSports?

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/...

So the dedicated traffic for LoL wont be allowed?

I guess West Coast players remain fucked.

http://boards.na.leagueoflegen...

Riot has had a system like this for some time, the Tribunal, and they allege it works pretty well. It used to have an in-game based reward (absolutely minuscule amount of IP, the in game currency), but they have since removed it, and last I checked it still had high numbers. I don't know if Riot is the originator, but I know it's a pretty major part of their abuse/harassment control.

I really don't know if a Tribunal style method would carry over to Twitter - I remember that part of the reason that people liked Tribunal was just the absolutely ridiculous stories you could read about players and the crap they pulled, and the in-game jokes made it worth it. Riot also made a mini-game of the system, insomuch that you get ranking based on how often your suggested ruling lines up with the actual ruling made on the case. You don't get anything in game anymore, nor does it affect your game profile, but people seem to like it. Likewise, Riot's punishments aren't just pardon/ban, but a range of punishments which can be administered by the admins there.

One thing that does make me kind of worried is that there's not a lot really holding people to the abuse Twitter accounts; in Riot's case, having a Level 30 account (necessary level to participate in the game in full) takes a bit of time, and while many users have accumulated quite a few spare accounts, eventually those pools run dry -- on top of that, primary accounts tend to have in game purchases tied to them, so loss of the account represents a financial loss. With Twitter, you can make a spoof account in seconds with no penalty, and harassment accounts are able to participate immediately and by necessity for Twitter to work. Without the time commitment or something tying people to the account, I'm not sure that this will have as great of an impact.

"DRM is not supported anywhere."

Steam DRM
http://store.steampowered.com/

League of Legends (F2P)
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/

Mechwarrior online
http://mwomercs.com/

All MMO's are DRM (world of warcraft, Guildwars 1 + 2, etc).

And this is not a minority of people. More and more games are coming with online tethers/trojan horse.

DOTA = "Defense of the Ancients".

The basics of the game are that you control a single unit (a hero), and you work with a team of people (normally 5 other players). So it becomes a 6 vs 6 battle where you are trying to destroy the other teams base. This game style has been dubbed ARTS (action real time strategy).

  It originally started as a Warcraft 3 mod. Since then, numerous companies have copied the style.

1) You have Blizzard creating a DOTA mod for Starcraft 2.
2) You have Valve creating DOTA 2. (note that Valve and Blizzard are having a trademark war right now over DOTA). Dota 2 is a stand-alone game.
3) LoL (League of Legends) is a DOTA style came released back in 2009. It's a stand-alone game with persistant characters.

I expect the market to correct the model of $5 DLC for one hour of play to occur before $60 for 40 hours of play. DLC, hats, and paid content with regards to Free-To-Play will do well in the market....but there is a lot to be said for a level playing field and flat initial cost for people that play in even casual/competitive games. Knowing another player can drop $20 and get a BFG-2000 that insta-nukes his opponents may encourage griefing kiddies to play...but eventually drives away the core market.

That being said, it Riot Games has done an excellent job with balancing Free-To-Play competitive gaming with League of Legends.

Hypothetical - If I'm an independent game developer who relies on game purchases to finance myself to make future games, what do you expect me to do?

Let's look at the not-hypothetical-at-all practical and functional answers to this question, which has already been handled quite adroitly by that community...

Fund them upfront -- granted this seems to work a lot more for Board and Card games (too many examples there to list even a significant fraction of them), but there's no specific reason it couldn't be used by indie video game developers (and maybe they'd get better at estimating costs after a project or two).

Let people decide how much they think your work was worth -- hey look, you could buy them all for $0... but people don't.

Free-To-Play -- provide services, cosmetic add-ons, and bonuses for revenue

Those are just your basic answers. Handing out your game for free isn't the end of the world... and in many cases has proven to be a far better business model than actually trying to sell it!

P.S. It also works for music -- give it away, sell performances and physical copies worth actually owning.

RIOT, makers of League of Legends, with somewhere over 35 million players. http://na.leagueoflegends.com/ They had something like 35 million accounts in the fall, and are making a CRAZY amount of money.

While microtransactions aren't inherently evil...

[citation needed]

No problem.

I disagree with your black-and-white view of microtransactions, and cite my experience in League of Legends as an example. The game is free to play. There are no ads on their website, annoying or otherwise, or in the game. About the smallest useful "microtransaction" would be around $2, which you could use to unlock a very cheap champion or skin for a champion. Other skins cost what would be close to $10. However, the skins have no bearing on the gameplay whatsoever, and nothing that does impact gameplay cannot be purchased with the currency you earn for playing and (at a faster rate) winning games.

I think $10 is a little much for a single champion skin, but that's me. I did buy one skin so far for ~$5. So far, I've probably enjoyed 200-300 hours worth of gameplay. That's a WAAAAY better ratio of dollars spent to hours of fun than almost any other game I've ever played. If they were to stop their system of microtransactions tomorrow, then ... Riot Games would cease earning any money at all, development would cease, servers would go down, and the game would be dead. In the interest of keeping them alive and well, I feel no compunction whatsoever about choosing to support Riot by buying the various boosts and vanity items they offer that appeal to me. It's an absolutely *fantastic* implementation of microtransactions.

So yes, I believe there is a "non-evil" way to do microtransactions, and I'm grateful that at least one company has found it.

Incidentally, if anyone wants to try it out, you can sign up for your own free account and help me out in the process by going to http://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4ceace9718e1b841855707

On top of that, a bunch of guys made this mod a stand-alone game, with a pretty bitching "subscription" model. Check out League of Legends. It's the same old DoTA, new characters, graphics, and items, because they couldn't mooch off any of the original artwork, free to download and play. The profit part? The heroes rotate through a lineup of like 10% of the heroes every week. If you want access to your favorite one all the time, you need to unlock it with money or in-game earned points. (Mostly money, at this point I think.) There are skins to buy, and a "rune" system that adds a few pct to various character attributes. While you can get all the runes with in-game earned points, it's far more efficient to purchase them. For the hardcore gamers, that's the way to go.

Having played a lot of DoTA, I have to say, LoL is vastly superior. You can shop while dead, the menu and game search blows the old DoTA one out of the water, and with levels and ranking, you actually get semi-evenly matched games a good percentage of the time. It's a very focused, polished game. I'm not sure that Valve can do any better. It will be interesting to see, however. Although I doubt they can beat the price of LoL.

A "F2P" standalone of this already exists, more or less. http://wwwl.leagueoflegends.com/

Not trying to advertise but League of Legends is a very solid clone of DOTA. There is no Linux (sorry slashdot) but it is fairly well balanced.

Why no mention of League of Legends? They both sound like the same game made by different people, only LoL is made by guys that work on DotA (Icefrog included) http://www.leagueoflegends.com/index.php