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Legislators Take Aim At Star Wars Battlefront II, EA Over 'Gambling In Games' (polygon.com)
dryriver writes: A number of pay-to-win microtransaction FPS games, including Dirty Bomb and the $60 Star Wars Battlefront II, have drawn the ire of legislators in countries like Belgium and the United States. Not only are advanced characters like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader and various weapons and abilities in these games "locked" -- you pay for them in hard cash, or play for them for dozens and dozens of tedious hours -- the games also feature so called "Loot Boxes," which are boxes that contain a random item, weapon, character or ability. So like playing slot machines in Vegas, each time you can get something good, something mediocre or something totally crap. You cannot determine with any certainty what you will get for your real-world dollars or in-game achievements. Angry Reddit users recently downvoted a blundering statement by EA on the topic with a whopping 249,000 downvotes -- an all time downvote record on Reddit, shocking EA into retreating from its pay-to-win model and announcing unspecified "changes" now being made to Star Wars Battlefront II. Legislators in a number of countries have also sharply criticized "Loot Boxes" and "microtransactions" in games, with one legislator in Belgium vowing to have the sale of such games banned completely in the EU, because children are essentially being forced to "gamble with real money" in these games. Forbes has written a great piece about how EA is now essentially stuck with a $60 Star Wars game that cost a lot to make but probably cannot be monetized any further, because there is considerable risk of all games with loot boxes, microtransactions and "pay to win" monetization models being completely banned from sale in a number of different countries now. The morale of the story? Maybe people should not pay a game developer any more than the $40-60 they paid when they thought they "bought" the game in the first place.
As long as the game I paid for has a lot of content included, I don't mind paying more later for additional maps. But the gambling/loot box thing is annoying. I know people who spend hundreds of dollars just to try and level their hockey or soccer team, one of whom is thinking of just walking away from the franchise as every year there's a new update which basically obsoletes all the effort and money they poured in. Will be interesting to see what happens.
The morale of the story? Maybe people should not pay a game developer any more than the $40-60 they paid when they thought they "bought" the game in the first place.
While the closing remarks took care of one aspect, I feel another worthwhile moral point is "there is no need for government regulation in a market until avarice becomes the single driving force of progress". EA has overstepped and overstepped with more and more greedy business practices, game by game, until now it's finally gotten so bad that the games market has to be regulated for gambling. EA went ahead and peed in the communal soup bowl, and now everyone pays the price.
I cannot express the loathing I feel for EA execs, and I thoroughly hope they get to suffer for making the world just a tiny bit worse for everyone.
Barely 12 hours old and still on the front page
hahaha...imagine if he threw laser darts instead of wielding a lightsaber?
That the outrage used to be: " $60 for a game ! F**k that ! "
to
" I'm ok with paying $60 for a game but micro-transactions ? F**k that ! "
All the while game developers are quietly giggling to themselves because they don't keep making these things at a loss . . . . .
EA is hoping to increase the morale of their money-mill workers (e.g. customers) so they spend more on those microtransactions.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Sounds like a cheap Chinese knockoff.
Look up "Skinner boxes". They basically drop the loot quality rate until enough people buy them in bulk. This usually kills a game, though.
You apparently don't know what gambling is.
I posted on the MassEffect:Andromeda forum asking why they called the loot-chest dealer a "store" and not a casino.
It's a store if you can go in and put down money and buy a specific item, like I go to grocery store, and put down a few bucks and can buy milk.
That's not gambling. What is gambling is if the store gives some "unknown" reward for your few dollars. You may get milk (5% chance), or you may get a dead rat 90% chance, or a character card for a random character. You don't get to choose before hand. In ME:Andromeda, they score items and characters in 4 levels (common, uncommon, rare, very rare, or bronze, silver, gold and platinum). The platinum/very rare stuff is powerful, w/good attributes, bronze/common -- not so much.
You can't sell or give items or chars to others -- so once you have an item or character, you won't get it again. Items like special ammo, or power bonuses, etc, are "disposable", but it's random there as well -- if you don't pay, you don't get the item.
I don't get your casino option -- if you don't pay, you don't get chance to
win prizes -- same as in game. If you want to win top prizes, you need to
pay. Then you are dealt some number of cards -- and when you want to look at the cards, you hear something reminiscent of a slot machine sound.
You don't *HAVE* to pay real money to get items, but highest "chance" boxes cost $3 or 500,000 points. You get about 10K points for a bronze game that takes about 10-15 minutes to play. Silver can net you about 25K, gold... maybe 40-50K and platinum--don't know too tough to even try, but likely 60-75K. Most play @ bronze -- so 50 games or about 15-20 hours of play to get 1 of those top boxes --- OR $3.
No matter which way you pay for your "chance-tickets", the odds are against you getting ANYTHING @ very-rare, are maybe 1 in 25, or about
1 win/500K points (or $3).
If you want to win -- you have to to pay, or "work" at earning points -- about 15-20 hours for a $3 chance at a reward.
So how is that not "gambling"?
Note in the "solo play", a "store" is a store -- you buy things -- no random reward chances and you can sell your surplus. But in multiplayer... it's all setup to encourage shelling out real money.
Officially licensed.
That was what you were looking for wasn't it?
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If a game is tedious, what fool would p,ay it, much less pay for it. That is why we need Pac-Man, a simple animated dot roaming the screen. It was not tedious.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"Dirty Bomb isn't "pay to win"
Really depends how you define 'win'. If by win you mean, effectively kill the players on the other team, then no, its not pay to win.
But what if you define 'winning' in terms of unlocking everything the game has to offer? Because after a short period of time, every match is much the same as the previous one... the players are different but they behave much the same. The matches are short... and winning a match is pretty meaningless; other than the enjoyment of playing the game. And that's fine... that describes most multiplayer games.
But Dirty bomb has this other little counter, and once you've gotten 20 or 30 hours in, you've still got these cosmetic unlocks... its the skinner box that still pays out new shiny. And lots of people are addicted to the rush of getting new shiny... they don't even care about winning or losing a match... the next match will be much the same... but they'll start to get agitated if they don't get a cobalt.
I watched my son play that game. Before he finally rage quit, all he cared about after the first month or two was getting cobalt. Its the only reason he played.... and he played long after he stopped really enjoying the actual game because he wanted cobalt stuff.
"but you don't need them unless you just want some variety"
Yes, god forbid you want 'variety'.
Dirty Bomb is free to play, so paying for 'some variety' is not unreasonable per se. The game needs some income stream. But I'd rather it just be $X up front.
I discourage my son from playing F2P games that are like this, but his friends get hooked in too, and he wants to play with his friends, and I can understand that.
The new stars wars game is $60 ... and all the cosmetic stuff is already in the game... the idea that anyone should have to grind thousands of hours to get everything is insane, especially when the only reason they have to grind thousands of hours instead of it just being a mix of in the menu on day one, unlocked after completing a few challenges, etc is precisely because EA wanted to milk people for all they were worth. The 'in game' path to the unlocks was so obnoxious it existed just so that people couldn't call them out it being over priced horse armor... because hey 'you can earn it game'.
Fuck that. It's still horse armor. If anything its worse than horse armor, because its even less honest about it.
You apparently don't know what gambling is.
I posted on the MassEffect:Andromeda forum asking why they called the loot-chest dealer a "store" and not a casino.
It's a store if you can go in and put down money and buy a specific item, like I go to grocery store, and put down a few bucks and can buy milk.
That's not gambling. What is gambling is if the store gives some "unknown" reward for your few dollars. You may get milk (5% chance), or you may get a dead rat 90% chance, or a character card for a random character. You don't get to choose before hand.
I suppose trading card games like Pokemon are a form of gambling too then. You're paying $x for a pack of 10 random cards. People keep buying them hoping to get that powerful or rare card, but end up with multiple duplicates of weak common cards.
We also need to ban Cracker Jack. I once bought 18 boxes just to get one decoder ring.
Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.... So we need to ban boxes of chocolate.
As a teen in the 80s I have fond memories of the ground breaking games that made them famous. Games like Archon and M.U.L.E. To see what they have become over the years. Evil in so many ways is sad. It would be good if they just dumped the EA and Electronic Arts name completely as there is nothing about the company ethos that even remotely resembles what EA was back in the beginning, They should be ashamed but that would require some sort of corporate soul that has a sliver of self respect and a sense of who they are other than being the equivalent of the ferrengi in STTNG.
Yes. They are gambling. So are blind bags/boxes.
these devs knew what they where doing. it started in f2p games because wile one a small percentage will do it they will drop thousands on loot boxes.so in the end they make more money on people gambling then just selling the item in the shop.
I'm not sure stories have morale but it does suggest that EA's morale and morals are both pretty low.
The best way to address this would be to get the ESRB involved and force any game that has micro transactions to be labeled A (adult) 18+ only. If game publishers are only allowed to sell games with micro transactions to adults, it will make them think twice before introducing these garbage financial schemes into games. It will probably also avoid situations like 8 year olds racking up $2000 bills on their micro-transaction riddled iPhone game.
The morale of the story? Employ editors who are actually literate.
At the bottom of the
Can someone please explain to me the difference between this and buying a pack of CCG or Baseball cards.
There would little or no difference between loot boxes giving out cosmetic items and purchasing a pack of (using your example) "baseball cards" which like it or not are a form a gambling (ie. chance). Where the difference becomes significant is when those loot boxes give out statical buffs for items and even new items which can be construed "pay to win" thereby giving an unfair advantage (ie. cheats) to online players that are willing to pay. You won't see that in "baseball cards" although it may be possible that some rare cards could fetch a high price however that is "trading" and is a totally different thing.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Finally that glorious company has made enough right decisions that hopefully will cause this loot box/microtransaction thing to either die of become marginal because of government control. Good job EA - you're the best! They didn't want a LOT of money. No - they wanted ALL the money. Now I saw somewhere that EA gave a memo to shareholders that blocking microtransaction in that Star Wars game won't affect revenue. Now that is some creative bookkeeping. I guess games aren't THAT expensive to make if it doesn't matter now, does it?
Just make all the stuff available as a fixed purchase. It can be high enough above the price of a loot box to justify its rarity.
Yes, you could still gamble with a loot box if you wanted.. but that would no longer be your only option (and in particular if you knew exactly what you wanted, you would also know exactly how much it would cost you.) I would imagine that should satisfy most people (well, not counting those that thing in-game purchases should be banned completely of course.. but it should satisfy anyone who's concerned primarily about the gambling aspect.)
And anything that they want to be so rare that the price would look bad ($1000 for Luke Skywalker!) they could just turn into a low-chance random drop somewhere, outside of the loot box system. That is, adopt the cookie-cutter MMO model for those items. I'm not really sure how grinding for a rare drop is particularly better than grinding for loot boxes that have a chance to contain the same rare drop, but the main point is to dissociate it from any possibility of monetary loss ("gambling" with your time is apparently perfectly fine.)
Also, should a government anywhere make laws to restrict loot box systems.. what does that imply for things like Pokemon that has followed basically the same model with physical cards for 20+ years now. Or even hockey/sports cards that have been doing so for 100+?
I second that.
I don't know, I actually like all three Star Wars movies.
Except the Ewoks. Have you ever noticed that the one scene where the Ewok gets killed from the Stormtrooper with another Ewok bawling takes LONGER than the whole explosion of the Death Star? Call me a speciesist , but when a few thousand people die it's somehow more of a tragedy than when a Furby stops working.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
After playing quite a few F2P games, I have had a nagging suspicion that the RNGs are not necessarily playing fair. It would be a simple bit of code to weight an RNG based on the player's spending habits. Pay more? Better drop chances for that gold plated left handed swab handle instead if the usual rubber one. I freely admit that I have not taken the time needed to actually test that idea, but numerous impromptu player surveys I've conducted certainly hint in that direction. "Manufacturer claims based on number of participants, individual experiences may vary, member FDIC. "
Not when it's a few thousand space Nazi's riding a massive holocaust weapon.
I'm not much of a gamer, but I do play two games online.
One is a really boring game with only maybe a dozen players still hanging on after about 10 years. I'm the highest level. My rival has the highest stats and I'm convinced he bought them too, but that's what keeps this guy running his server. Some people even took pride in the fact that they never paid anything to achieve what they have, but others pay the bills.
The other is a tower defense game that I was grinding away at always ignoring the nags for micro-payments and then about a month ago I tried to login and they said they were hacked and I had to reset my password. I didn't even know which email I used to register so everything was lost. At that point I was relieved that I NEVER paid them any money although I often felt I should because I had spent hours playing it.
The first game I mentioned is probably more of a hobby(or perhaps a student project) to the developer and for the past 5 years at least he's just kept his domain registered and kept his server running - he's joked before that it's running on a Commodore 64 (and it's so simple, I'm not completely sure if he's actually joking or not). He probably gets just enough to pay for his costs and maybe to take his family out to dinner once a year.
As for the 2nd game, I'm glad there are suckers willing to pay to play because otherwise I probably couldn't play for free.
Granted those are very niche markets, but I don't pay for games as a general rule. I don't think I've paid up front for a game since the '90s (although I did make a few purchases on the first game I mentioned, but only after playing it for a while).
In the tower defense game there were several times where I felt I had hit a wall and couldn't advance without making micropayments. Instead I changed strategy a bit and always found a way past that point. That's the sign of a good game in my opinion. It should be hard and it should challenge you to rethink your strategy.
Erh... yeah, you are aware that we're technically speaking of one side being vastly superior in number and technology over the other who is desperately trying to succeed against all odds and against a crushing, overwhelming military power?
I don't know if too many people would cheer if an aircraft carrier got sunk.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
kinder "surprises"
When it comes to the various items that you can get, are those significantly disparate in value?
Ezekiel 23:20
If you've skipped them, how do you know they were trash...?
Depend on your definition. I posted my comment here before, stating that it is in fact just the code random().
Frankly, nearly every game since the first arcade game could have the game design consider as gambling. Here's part of my quote on gambling,
Should WoW monster drops now be considered gambling? Should PUBG random air drop and items found now be considered gambling? Should item box from Mario Kart now be considered gambling? Should Don't Stave random map generating now be considered gambling? Should the simplest game of snake with spawning food dot now be considered gambling?
All of those examples are events/ items that do give the players an advantage in game, each and every one of them. You might not think of them as gambling, but it's the same since you "did" pay for the game, right? Even most nostalgic arcade games have random enemies spawning and you have to pay to revive. They are all gambling in this respect.
I even stated that doing anything to it will be a can of worms. Seriously, look at how many existing games it could affected and still not really fix it, because the potential loopholes are uncountable.