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Belgium Denounces Loot Boxes as Gambling; Hawaiian Legislator Calls Them 'Predatory' (arstechnica.co.uk)
Peter Bright, writing for ArsTechnica: Belgium's Gaming Commission has ruled that loot boxes -- in-game purchases where what you receive is randomized and only known once you open the box -- are gambling. The country's minister of justice, Koen Geens, has said that he wants to see them banned Europe-wide, reports PC Gamer. Amid outcry over the use of loot boxes in Overwatch and Star Wars Battlefront 2, the Belgian Gaming Commission decided last week to look into the issue, with Commission Director Peter Naessens specifically saying that the combination of paying money and receiving something "dependent on chance" prompted the investigation. Rather swiftly, it seems, the Commission has made its decision. In October, the US' Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) rejected calls to classify loot boxes as gambling. It told Kotaku that since players receive some reward from opening the loot box -- even if it's useless or unwanted -- that it's not gambling. As such, loot box games will receive neither ESRB's "Real Gambling" nor "Simulated Gambling" labels, the former of which automatically gives a game an "Adults Only" rating. Many retailers refuse to sell A-O games, so giving every title that uses loot boxes such a rating would likely be harmful to their sales. The question of whether loot boxes are gambling may see some new scrutiny in the US. Hawaiian Democratic State Representative Chris Lee has described loot boxes as predatory behavior.
It is unregulated gambling. Just because you can't cash out, doesn't make it not gambling.
These Loot boxes, gachapon, etc are rigged against the player so they spend as much as possible to get whatever "rare" thing is in it.
If it was simply "buy this skin" no RNG involved, people would not be having a shit fit. But this RNG "slot machine" type of behavior is exactly designed to bilk players out of money and hand out as few valuable items as possible. You know where like a real slot machine pays out 93-97% of the time. Loot boxes may never pay out.
We've also had this argument for years, as Nexon Corp has been doing this for at least a fricken decade in their Maple Story and Mabinogi MMO games.
Captcha: Jackpot.
Well, if the ESRB's reasoning of "if you receive a reward, even if useless, then it's not gambling" than any business that is considered and regulated under gambling laws can simply provide their players with rewards points which can be redeemed for prizes (even if useless). Most if not all casino's have rewards programs, I guess they'll be able to claim exemption from gambling laws for any players who collect rewards not based on chance (i.e. if you gamble for $1000, you get a free complementary drink).
If you are interested in this topic, or if you have children, you must read this:
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Quote from the maifesto:
"If you are playing a game for next to nothing – or free – and you find out people are spending thousands, or tens of thousands, or in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars – there may be a problem."
I felt awful after reading this,
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
In Team Fortress 2 you would have the same, you'd find boxes that may or may not contain something valuable and you have to buy the keys to open them with RL money.
I don't know what's different this time. Is the stuff you get from those loot boxes game changing? Is it decoration, fluff and textures or are there actually different stats involved?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because you don't know what cards you get, and some are worth a lot of money while others are worthless, is this not gambling? Magic the gathering is the prime example as cards are so much more expensive than similar games.
Do you mean (a) "is it gambling" or (b) "is it unlawful gambling according to the particular laws of my jurisdiction"?
Ans:
(a) You're paying for the pack in the hope that it contains items worth considerably more than what you paid - of course it is bloody gambling.
(b) Go pay a lawyer to give you the answer you want - and if that doesn't work, go pay a local politician to change the law.
The next question is: is it a problem - considering we've had trading cards for years - compared with the type of "stealth" gambling that is now being concealed in computer games targeted at children. Apart from any "think of the children" issues, "free to pay" (hmm. that was a genuine typo...) games are a pox on the face of gaming, since they are inevitably designed to maximise in-game revenue rather than provide a good game.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I can *maybe* see it being a lottery if you can buy the same things that you get in the loot box for specific prices in the game so each has a definite monetary value.
Thousands of games already had loot box equivelants, going back more than a decade. They are in almost every mmorpg and many first person shooters. They definitely are a form of gambling as they tend to induce the same kind of over consumption. The worst games force you to buy all the end game content/gear directly instead of earning it. I've seen people spend up to ten thousand dollars on a shitty mobile game with bad graphics to simply be the one person with the best stuff, one of the saddest being some kid who stole his parents card.
Remember that the ESRB is owned and operated by the game publishers themselves. They are obviously not going to kill one of their own biggest cash cows.
Thas for your phenomenal post which is like Nexter. This post is related to gambling in Belgium which is so informative to me.
Japan has that with pachinko parlours. Take your payout of prizes. Go next door, exchange your prizes for money. Ta-da! No gambling involved.
Well, if the ESRB's reasoning of "if you receive a reward, even if useless, then it's not gambling" than any business that is considered and regulated under gambling laws can simply provide their players with rewards points which can be redeemed for prizes (even if useless).
Those reward points aren't considered a payment that is given to the player for playing the game, though they are considered to be cash and the casino is responsible for making sure that the player gets rewarded at some point. If they have an outstanding points balance for a player who doesn't bother to redeem them, they ask the player what they want and then they will go out and spend their cash value on something that they actually want, like a car, and deliver it. In my former life, I wrote Crystal Reports for a casino...
It does however raise the question of precisely where the line in gambling is. If I overcharge you for an item and give every hundredth customer thirty of them, is that gambling? Obviously it is, but is it legally?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Assuming this is the same fake story, someone made a google translate mistake and it accidentally read as being ruled this way. It absolutely was not.
Are Kinder eggs going to be banned in Belgium?
- Poker is generally accepted as a game of skill. You need not have the best hand to win a pot. OTOH, Cribbage forces you to show your cards, so it's gambling (and people pay cribbage for real money). Yet Cribbage requires some skill in discarding and playing the hand. By this definition, it seems Contract Bridge would be gambling. Tell that to skilled players that know what it takes to negotiate a clever bid.
- D&D has been using 'loot boxes' forever. Admittedly, few people pay to play D&D, but some do. Yes they do. So a commercial, for sale D&D game would need to give this up? What?
- Surprisingly, did no one actually understand the terms of this game? You feel cheated because the rules leave you with the risk of getting substantially less for your money than you were hoping for? This is the complaint of ever, every game I've known of since Counter Strike. Grow a set, snowflake, and accept that these and other games are just intended to part you and your money. You didn't get value? Were you mislead somehow? Yea, I thought so...
Whiners.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Belgium has the highest suicide rate in Europe, 18 per 100,000 people. Which is almost double the rate in the U.S. and Canada at 10/100k. Which I never thought of, but you never hear people say "I'm going to Belgium for my holiday." or "You should go to Belgium, it's so beautiful there."
ESRB is a industry self-regulatory organization. EA is part of it. Obviously, according to EA, EA is not engaging in predatory gambling targeted at minors.
Time to regulated the shit out of these c*%*$@&#$s.
When videogames had gambling in them, you never could've paid real money to play, and the trick was mostly about finding the right one-armed bandit. And it wasn't bad - you got to enjoy some chiptunes and you would eventually get a sweet Porygon for your effort.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Are Kinder eggs going to be banned in Belgium?
No, just in the US, because US children are stupid.
Anyway. Kinder Eggs are not gambling because they always contain something of similar value. There are not a few eggs with luxury products in them that you can win, because that would already be illegal in the EU.
I'll be the first to agree that real-money loot boxes in gaming are a terrible thing (if they're only available with in-game currency, I don't give a stuff). At their most benign (e.g. Overwatch), they are an inducement for people to continue to sink cash into a virtual slot machine. At their worst, when used as part of a pay-to-win system, they fundamentally corrupt a game's mechanics.
And yet...
I really, really wish that gamers (of all people) had not been jumping up and down and begging for Government intervention. Should you boycott games for containing loot box systems? Yes. Should you take to social media and cause as much brand damage as possible? Definitely. But bringing Government into things? Not going to end well...
Popular authoritarianism and censorship is on the march at the moment, driven by both the religious right and the snowflake left. Do we really think that Governments poking around with one area of video-game regulation are going to limit themselves to that particular area? That this won't turn into some kind of "think of the children/think of the trans community" moral crusade.
There's a real risk here that games are rushing headlong towards a cliff that could see German, Australian or even Chinese-style censorship of games spreading worldwide. The US might be at least partially protected due to its First Amendment, but here in the UK, with an authoritarian Government faced with an even more authoritarian opposition, I'm getting properly worried.
The EA FIFA and Madden franchises include an Ultimate Team mode which allows players to purchase packs to build a team. The packs contain players, fitness cards, contracts, etc. There are tiers of cards (bronze, silver, gold, elite, and legendary). Packs are purchased using real money or in game coins that are earned by playing games and auctioning players. Interested in /. thoughts on the Ultimate team mode.
Is this gambling? Is so - why?
In the US.
While I tend to agree, where do you draw the line? What about real world items that are sold with random distribution? Things like blind-boxed collectable figures or even trading cards? "Sorry kid, you have to be at least 18 to buy baseball cards. It's gambling."
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Making a payment with the result of a basic award plus a bonus is still a game of chance.
Right. For the past three years (not this year), Buffalo Wild Wings offered a mystery bonus gift card when you spend $25 on gift cards. That mystery bonus was guaranteed to be worth $5, but could be worth $10, $20, $50, or $100.
And since it qualified legally as a sweepstakes, they were forced to offer a no purchase necessary method of entry. And I took advantage of that each year, mailing in four self-addressed stamped envelopes and getting four $5 gift cards in return.
It comes down to whether you know what is in the pack before you buy it, or whether it is unknown and open-ended. For example, if the packs self-limit themselves to players you don't have already, then it isn't open-ended as there is a full set that will be acquired in a fixed time/cost. But if there is a reasonable chance that you'll get 100 Renaldos in a row and none of the other legendary players, and you can't trade with other game players, then it is likely open-ended and therefore gambling.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
that is not correct. There is a collector market for kinder egg items, also mcdonald's toys, and they have placed different values on various prizes. Kinder tends to get away from it because that market is so small no one cares.
The better example would be card collecting games like magic the gathering which requires you to purchase packs of cards with the hopes of getting a good card.
Because every time the EU Parliament opens, we never know what we'll be getting either.
Have gnu, will travel.
You've obviously never played M:tG before, then, because the entire thing made sense to me with regards to the OP statement.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Actually, the original rules for M:tG stipulated that you put a card up as a bet before the game. There's the real gamble.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I just recently have started playing Star Wars Battlefront II, and so far I really don't see an issue with the loot crates, apart from my spending the first ten minutes or so in the game just opening up crates and looking to see what the items did.
To me the option to spend money is only mildly compelling, because the benefits you gain are marginal. It's not like you absolutely need anything the crates hold, I don't see any desire to spend real money on getting more at all.
Some of that is because after the beta there was an outcry about how hard it was to "earn" enough in game to buy a crate, and they did some tuning to make it much more easy to simply play and get free crates. But even then I never felt like the crates were such a draw that was an issue.
What people seem to be overlooking is the other side of this whole equation - yes companies are doing this for profit, but mostly not in the way everyone is thinking. Rather than raking in money from people buying Loot Crates, the real money they are after is simply trying to pry paying customers away from Overwatch - and who can blame them? If so many people are playing Overwatch and enjoying the game then is there really a problem here? For most people I don't think so, just a few people with addiction problems are hurt by these systems but if 99% of people just find them amusing or fun then why demand companies stop a practice that people by and large seem to enjoy?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Mortal Kombat X mobile is even more expensive.
You can buy 2000 souls for $99. Average cost of gold characters is about 390 souls. Each character can be fused to upgrade it 7 times (8 total purchases). There are almost 60 gold characters. So for $99 you can't even buy 1 character and upgrade him to max .
60 * 390 / 2000 * $100
$11,000 to buy every character and upgrade them to max level. That is if you could directly buy all characters which you can't.
Some characters can only be obtained through packs (lootboxes per say) and they are random when you get a rare carachter out of them. You don't get them very often at all. To get every character and upgrade the to max, I don't know how much it would take but if I were to guess I would bet it is probably over $80,000. This is not including silver characters some of which are also only obtainable in packs.
I think the distinction needs to be made between the mechanic being used as a randomized reward from in game play vs. purchasing them from the developer's on line store.
I have no problem with the 'gambling' of items earned from just playing the game. I know Overwatch throws out plenty of loot boxes just from leveling up your account as you play.
But the type where you spend money for the loot boxes - those do indeed fit exactly into the definition of gambling. ESRB needs to stop being in the pocket of the gaming industry and do what's best for the consumer like it was meant to. How come every entity set up to protect consumers seems to end up just being a hidden hand of the industry it's trying to guard?
Absolutely. The math has been done and the apprximate amount of money one has to spend if you wish to unlock all of the content (in the game you've already paid good money for) is 2100 $ [vg247.com]! Or, alternatively, without money, it takes over 4500 hours of gameplay to unlock everything!
...but is (saddly) not how things are considered.
In most jurisdictions "gambling" is clearly defined, and thus companies have found way around it, some ways even predating video games.
Basically, for something to be considered "gambling", you need :
- to put money in in order to participate (you need to bet cash, or buy chips, or whatever).
- the RNG being the sole determinant of the outcome (the actions of the player don't have any influence on outcome of game : no matter which numbers one bets on at the roulette or which team a sport gambler bets on, these bets won't change which number the ball of the roulette lands on, or which team will be victorious - well unless underhanded mafia influence was involved).
This has been circumvented by marketeers making "contests" to win prizes :
- the contest has a very small tiny note explaining that there's no mandatory buying to take part into the "contest" (e.g.: if bottle caps need to be collected, you can send a post card to ask for free)
- the randomness is usually only a second step to discriminate among contestant. Usually, there's some trivial stupid quizz to answer (whose answer sometime is literally a few lines above the paragraph with the contest). Thus winners are actually winning by playing a game (of skill), randomness only comes into play to select among the winners because it "happens" that there a lot fewer prices than "winners" (than anyone with 2 brain cells) but those who couldn't answer the quizz because they lacked the necessary skills (a pulse ?) aren't taking part in the second random round.
And lootboxes, as despicable as they could be as a practice, have already a built-in circumvention around being considered "gambling".
- Most of the online games, specially those relying on lootboxes for income, are following the "freemium" model. (even the game that cost an initial price for the game purchase, one could argue that you don't need an aditionnal purchase *per lootbox* the money you put buying the game doesn't correlate to the number of time you're pulling the "lootbox slot machine lever"). As the study mention, you could instead be spending time instead.
Playing the "lootbox slot machine" can be considered free
- You are playing a game (or could be playing one, in games where paying cash for a loot crate is an alternative to going on quests to get them). The RNG only comes into play as a way to handle (artificially) scarce prizes.
In other words :
- you put money in -> some steps happen, the only influence is external (apparent randomness) -> you might get something of value (e.g.: money) out.
That is gambling, legally.
- you do NOT need to put money in -> lot of steps happen, some might be under random influence, but other are under the influence of player's actions -> you might get something of value (e.g.: an object with commercial value that could be sold for money)
That is what "contests", "quizzes" and online games go for.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Here's the reason why.
My wife plays Farmville type games on her tablet. She can earn things through gameplay or she can choose to buy items. Say she wants a tractor. She can either play for so many hours to earn enough in game credit to get a tractor or she can buy in real cash so many game credits and use those to buy a tractor.
Now here is where it differs. In COD:WW2 I can choose to earn supply drops through game play or I can buy COD points to purchase supply drops. Same as the game my wife plays so all good so far yes? The problem is that when I open those supply drops what I get is chosen at random. I cannot buy a supply drop to get a specific weapon or upgrade I want, I get what is randomly assigned to it. At the point I am in the game the ones I earn through gameplay mostly contain duplicates of what I have so I get a paltry amount of armoury points awarded for the dupes. Therefore I buy $40 of COD points, use those to buy supply drops and I could find myself getting mostly duplicates and not getting the stuff I wanted or need.
If you could buy the points and choose the items you wanted as you can with my wife's games then there would be no issue but you can't, what you get is random. And that is the whole problem with it and why some look on it as gambling.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
1) there is some skill in using the toy grabber to get something, it's not pure random chance and 2) you can see what it is you are trying to get.
Loot boxes are random chance and you don't know if you're getting a +10 Sword of Destiny or a poop emoji.
The line is pretty clear. If the average rate of return for the customer is less than what they on average paid, then it's gambling. If the average return is higher than what they paid, then it's investing.
That's the key thing to understand here. Positive economic activity comes from productivity being increased by each transaction (on average). This increased productivity translates into a larger monetary return than what was originally invested. The refinery buys $1 worth of ore and turns it into $2 worth of steel. The tool company buys $2 worth of steel and turns it into a $4 hammer. The hardware store buys the $4 hammer and sells it at retail for $8. The carpenter buys the $8 hammer and uses it to increase his carpentry business productivity by $16. The customer buys a dresser from the carpenter because its organizational value to him (time saved not having to find stuff in a big pile) is more than the purchase price. In each case, despite the previous buyer increasing the price, because of value added by that person (ore to steel, steel to tool, tool in a warehouse in Wisconsin to one on the shelf at your local store, pile of wood to dresser), the increased price is worth it to the buyer because they're getting more value out of their purchase than what they paid. They're not gambling that they can sell what they buy for more. They're investing because they're adding value and thus confident they can sell for more than they bought it.
Any activity which on average results in less return than the original investment is a bad economic transaction at best (i.e. a waste of money), or a scam/fraud at worst (subprime mortgages repackaged as collateralized debt obligations). Gambling on average results in less return than the original investment.
The only time gambling works is if the average return exactly equals the investment. If two people decide to bet on a football game, then the transaction is zero sum. One person gains exactly what the other person loses. But the moment you add a bookie or a casino to the mix (i.e. try to turn it into a business), it becomes negative sum because the bookie or casino is skimming a little off the top of each transaction.
...as opposed to pay-to-win DLC. And there's no way for Magic to know how close you are to completing a set and making your remaining items much harder to find....which would be trivial to do for EA.
So lets say Battlefront II was a card game, and you had a 1-3 chance of each card set containing a Kyber Crystal, or a Star Forge Robe, or a Circlet of Saresh. You have an equal chance of finding each item, and you can trade/sell to complete this particular loot set. As opposed to EA's game where, after finding the robe and the circlet, they jack up the odds of finding the crystal to 1 chance in 200.
So Magic had a predatory system set up - but EA's is on another level entirely.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
Article I, Section 8 explicitly authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce:
Since these are online games and the location of the servers and clients do not matter, it is reasonable to assume that buying loot boxes falls under interstate commerce. Courts in the U.S. have consistently agreed with this view in the past.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Any purchase of a consumable item has a negative average return, it doesn't make it gambling. I think your definition doesn't work here, to the loot boxes in games, or any in game purchases.
Ok, but if the casino simply deposited $0.01 into your account per $1 spent, then it would be a direct payment and then it wouldn't be gambling? Another way to think about out, what if instead of a lottery someone starts a "lootery", where instead tickets customers purchase virtual loot boxes, say for $2 each with a guaranteed win of $0.01 for each, but could also win up to a $1,000,000 (1:14,000,000 chance) Is that gambling from a legal point of view? Not according to ESRB's argument.
If ESRB's argument holds, I'm thinking online lootery and other legally non-gambling enterprises, say online poker - as long as you win something each bet, even if useless, say for each bet made you your level goes up by 1 - level being just a number displayed next to your username so you can boast how many bets you played.
Ok, but if the casino simply deposited $0.01 into your account per $1 spent, then it would be a direct payment and then it wouldn't be gambling?
As I recall, it's actually accounted differently than winnings. Like, it's reported on another form. And that is essentially what the casino does. You swap your cash for chips, then for every chip spent at a given game which is associated with your loyalty card, they give you a percentage back. There are sometimes other ways to get points (like attending events) but since those things cost money they are essentially the same thing. They are offering you a small percentage of your money back in exchange for tracking all your play, which produces information they can use to adjust their games for maximum profitability. Like any other loyalty card, the people who have them are not working against everyone else's interests in the immediate term, but also against their own interests in the long term — unless to them, the casino is simply a retirement plan, a way to spend some vast amount of money they have accrued in their lifetime that they lack the imagination to dispense of in any other fashion. Even in remote tribal casinos, individual players have lost over ten million dollars following this plan.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
True... but WotC doesn't profit from that. The gamble on what cards you are going to get or the actual worth of a pack of cards compared to the investment in them is a gamble that generally profits WotC because the number of really good cards in a pack can vary quite substantially.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Governments are funny sometimes.
These prizes in the "loot boxes" are virtual things, right? Like virtual money usable in-game, and magical weapons, and other virtual things that can be sold for virtual money?
I wonder if Belgium and other governments that might take this interpretation of loot boxes, and what's inside them, consider Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to be money?
If not, it seems rather inconsistent.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
" but WotC doesn't profit from that"
Not directly, but that loss of card probably means they're buying another booster pack in the hopes of re-obtaining that card, which benefits WotC.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.