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.

Comments

Absolutely is Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Absolutely is Gambling

[Kiuas]

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.

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 $! Or, alternatively, without money, it takes over 4500 hours of gameplay to unlock everything!

The greed of EA is beyond disgusting. The SW license is one of the strongest out there, and heavily liked by kids and teens, and they purposefully use it to design a grind-marathon which is designed to incentive people at throwing money in the hopes of getting something useful. The business model is even greedier than most of the free to play models it's been copied from, and we're talking about a 60 to 80 dollars full-price release. Even more pathetic are the weak excuses the asswipes at EA tried to conjur up to defend this racket by saying it's desgined to 'give players a sense of accomplishment and pride', when the in game progression doesn't even relate to player skill in any way. It doesn't matter if you're a top player or a rookie, the rate at which you progress without microtransactions is simply tied to time in game. Skill and accomplishments have nothing to do with it. It's a 100 % pay-to-win system designed to do nothing but drive sales of the lootboxes.

This is why I prefer the game commentator/youtuber Jim Sterling's (whose made several videos about microtransaction BS this year, including this recent one about this EA/Battlefront situation) terminology for these 'triple AAA' releases with lootbox shit: 'fee-to-pay'. It's absolute BS and I do hope these shitty developers end up getting burned. Wanna include gambling mechanics to your full-price release? Fine, but can't sell it to underaged people then. And I do hope Disney ends up force chocking the license out of EAs hands if and hopefully when the sales of Battlefront II fall short of their expectations because of this.

As a longtime gamer and a SW fan I plead all here: do not buy this game. Don't buy it for yourself, don't buy it as a gift, don't even buy it at a discount. It's the only way the companies will ever learn. Don't be fooled by the decision to disable them for now, Dice admitted already that it's a temporary measure while they're 're-adjusting' the system. Meaning. they tried the waters out, now they're waiting for the holiday sales to pass and the dust to settle before introducing a watered down version of the same bullshit.

Compare this to proper publishers like CD Projekt Red: like I just recently picked up Wicher 3 with both of its expansions from a steam sale at 20 euros, and I do have to say CD Projekt Red are doing it right: you buy the game, you get all the content straight out of the box. And before someone points out that it's somehow 'different' for single-player games I remind you all that in this Year of the Lootbox WB included a shitton of mictrotransactions and grinding in Shadow of War's single player campaign.

This behavior is destructive and antithetical to the whole point of quality games, because introducing intentional grind-fests that are meant to bog the player down with menial repetitive tasks is sending a message of 'yeah, we know the base gameplay sucks, we intentionally designed it to suck, but hey, you can skip it by paying us more money and get to the good stuff'.

Fuck. These. Publishers. They need to fall and be replaced by companies that actual develop stuff gameplay first.

Re:Absolutely is Gambling

[TheRaven64]

Or, alternatively, without money, it takes over 4500 hours of gameplay to unlock everything!

So, what you're saying is, if you pay $2100 then you get to play the game a lot less, and the more you pay the more you get to avoid playing the game? If that's an incentive then I've got a better deal: for $0, you can not play the game at all!. How many other black-friday sales save you 100%?

Re:Absolutely is Gambling

[GNious]

The intent of the regulation is to keep stupid people from doing stupid things, another debate in itself.

Is a sad day when addiction is called "doing stupid things."

Re:Absolutely is Gambling

[mrsquid0]

The intent of the regulation is to keep amoral people from preying on stupid people.

Re:Absolutely is Gambling

[Kiuas]

So, what you're saying is, if you pay $2100 then you get to play the game a lot less, and the more you pay the more you get to avoid playing the game?

The point is precisely that you need to pay to skip content which is in the game just to waste your time and is not enjoyable. EA is saying that in order to enjoy the full-experience you need to pay more money or you're stuck with a sub-par experience for thousands of hours. The standard gameplay experience is designed to be not worth playing, which illustrates how fucked up their business logic is.

If that's an incentive then I've got a better deal: for $0, you can not play the game at all!

Exactly. And that's precisely what I'm doing and encouraging everyone else to do!

Re:Absolutely is Gambling

[TheRaven64]

The point is precisely that you need to pay to skip content which is in the game just to waste your time and is not enjoyable

If there is enough boring content in it that paying $2100 to skip it seems to make economic sense, then that's a great argument for not buying it in the first place. I don't care so much about the loot boxes, but if a game developer is willing to spend effort intentionally making their game not fun (EA normally manages that accidentally) then that always seems a pretty good reason to avoid it.

Re:Absolutely is Gambling

[AmiMoJo]

Is PTSD smart? Is depression stupid?

I don't think you can characterize illness in those terms. And that's what this is - these companies are deliberately trying to cause a mental illness to increase profits.

Re:Absolutely is Gambling

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

You guys are arguing the wrong stuff. They are letting kids gamble with real money for desirable (and usually resellable) virtual items. It takes advantage of the same mental issues of gambling addicts, while hiding the real costs.

It's one thing to say, "Here is a cool outfit skin, price $10." and "Here is a cool outfit skin, buy 10 keys for $10 and maybe you will unlock the gloves, or the boots of one of a dozen other outfits, or some consumable powerups, or a rare mount."

This hides the true likely costs, just like gambling. The house, so to speak, knows the real odds, and relies on confusion and ignorance of the gambling addict, or child in this case.

So it's not gambling if you get *anything* back?

[misnohmer]

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).

Manifesto by Developer of Magic: The Gathering

[grungeman]

If you are interested in this topic, or if you have children, you must read this:

https://www.facebook.com/notes...

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,

Re:Manifesto by Developer of Magic: The Gathering

[RobinH]

For those of you who can't (or won't) go to a Facebook like, here's another link to the manifesto.

I get why people are upset, but...

[RogueyWon]

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.

Re:I get why people are upset, but...

[thegarbz]

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...

As a matter of interest when have the former options ever worked? I mean the single shittiest companies in the industry causing these problems ultimately became the most wealthy and far more alarmingly also became the largest corporate consolidators. We've been calling out bullshit DRM for years only to see the problem continue to get progressively worse to the point where you can now buy a game and not go home and play it on release day. We've been calling out pay-to-win for the garbage it is for years only to have that start hitting the news over and over again. We call out companies for providing additional DLC only to see companies provide DLC on day of release, on the disc, and without discounting the original title. We've called out shoddy and buggy garbage on release only to see games get more and more unplayable for an ever increasing duration from release.

Government should exist to exert the collective will of the people. It's not like alternatives haven't been tried, and it's also not like all governments suddenly break out into overreach making crazy decisions of censorship. Americans may not understand because they are used to happily bending over for corporations but in much of the rest of the civilised world governments can be a great tool for the people, not for the corporations.

Re:What about real world blind boxing?

[ceoyoyo]

Of course it's gambling. The question is only whether or not to set an age limit or other regulations. Baseball cards were originally distributed in cigarette packages... aimed at adults.

Personally, I think that when baseball cards left the gum wrapper and started being sold as a product on their own they should have been restricted according to regular gambling regulations.

So why is it being considered gambling?

[Computershack]

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.