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Apple Says Apps Must Now Disclose Odds For Loot Boxes (kotaku.com)
Apple has revised the guidelines for its App Store, including a provision that loot boxes must be transparent about their odds. "Apps offering 'loot boxes' or other mechanisms that provide randomized virtual items for purchase must disclose the odds of receiving each type of item to customers prior to purchase," reads the new rule, which will affect the most popular games on iOS, including Hearthstone, The Simpsons Tapped Out, and Clash Royale. Kotaku reports: Loot boxes, which have always been common in the world of iOS gaming, are virtual grab bags that can give players a host of items ranging from common to rare. Most of the time, you can buy these loot boxes not just for in-game currency but for real money, which has led some players to classify them as gambling -- a label that the Entertainment Software Rating Board doesn't acknowledge. As rage over these practices gets louder and louder, Apple's move is the first of what may be many steps that game publishers and distributors voluntarily take in an attempt to avoid regulation from outside bodies.
And the odds they'll attempt to hide those bugs in software releases that compromise the performance and usability of their phones.
to self regulate fast before the government does it for them.
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This is like telling an alcoholic the alcohol content of the drink in their hand, and expecting them to quit immediately.
Addicts don't really care about odds.
they also said no marketing push messages
and no apps that are âoecreepyâ wtf does that even mean
the guide was written in such a way that they can reject whatever they want arbitrarily
Forcing the State-level lottery commissions to reveal the minuscule odds of a jackpot, and even the insightful math regarding the chance of breaking even over a long enough timeline, has done little, if anything, to diminish lottery sales.
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Every pack included common cards and semi-rare to very rare cards. The theoretical resale value of your pack was about what you paid for it according to the game guides. (Yes, I said theoretical)
It made everyone happy because it ensured that if you bought a full box of packs, you would get some decent stuff. There were no odds of dropping $50-$100 on a box of card packs and box being just crappy common cards.
100%. But then you didn't need apple to tell you that.
This just makes it MORE like gambling AND ruins the mystery by revealing what items could potentially be won.
A more PROPER policy to avoid Loot boxes being like gambling would be require all the publishers do these two things:
(1) Establish a "daily purchase maximum" per player / per-user that is not more expensive than the typical costs of food one eats in a day, for example: you cannot buy more than $5 in loot boxes per day per player per game. AND 3x that as a limited monthly limit, E.G. $25 maximum loot boxes per month, and when that $25 limit is used up, resetting it requires calling a phone number, providing verbal proof that the player is age 18 or higher, and accepts some terms, to reset to $100, and finally, an annual limit of $200 per player that cannot be overridden.
And, (2) REQUIRE the player pass a skill-based challenge in game for each loot box "purchase"; in other words, simply BUYING a lootbox cannot be done without completing a skill-based challenge first for each purpose OR consuming some in-game resource that player skill was required to obtain ---- Thus changing it from simple Gambling to a Contest-type situation.
Hmm, mine is three years old and is working fine. On top of that, Apple installed a new battery at no charge, further extending it's life.
To me it seems like this may have the opposite effect intended - I could see where someone with a real thirst for gambling would be MORE likely to go for a very rare item, than if they thought the item might come along from free look boxes alone.
Honestly I do not get the loot box hate. I've been playing Star Wars Battlefront II, and they've been fine - I've never felt compelled to spend any real money on them, you earn credits so quickly through normal play you can quickly unlock all the heroes and still buy a crate from time to time, in addition to the free one you get once a day.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1) not all addicts will start getting addicted if they know in advance the odds.There are various degree of addiction, some can't help, some just need a little bit of proding, not all are helpless. Addiction does not imply you cannot stop, addiction at its core is that you engage into an action in spite of knowing it adverse consequences. But every year people stops smoking. Knowing the odds could help this.
2) it may bring everybody including non addicts to recoil at the real odds. Especially if it is expanded to other medium like pc. It could essentially kill overnight the loot box startegy "what BS is that, I am getting 0.1% chance of getting what i want ???".
3) it is a step forward. What do you expect ? banning lootboxs outright ?
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Why should they?
In a couple months it will be codified in law that Apple and all cellular carriers do not need to disclose what your service costs, how much calls/msgs/data are in any plan, and they even can legally not tell you what your monthly bill will be.
And if you dispute their charges on your credit card, you are the one that will be sued for fraud, not the carriers who are legally allowed to claim any price they want and charge you any amount they want.
Have fun being promised "It's only $20/month" only to be locked in a $750/month bill for two years that you can't legally cancel!
If it is too much of a burden to track what they will be billing you, its many orders of magnitude more burdensome to tell you anything about their stuff you are buying
See here. Some folks just have to work a lot. Some folks had kids before they knew better or live in a state where birth control isn't available. It's hard to say no to sex. If it wasn't the human race would've died out.
What I'm saying is, a smart (and decent) society helps support parents. It doesn't just blame their kid's problems on them being lazy. Never forget that.
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I just wish the apps disclosed that they had this extra unpacking to do called loot boxes. I mean its a common cutesy with compressed assets for one.
Try upgrading the OS see how that works out for you.
Yeah I think itâ(TM)s a different phenomena. I still get a lottery ticket every now and then , even though I know the odds of a victory are so low as to barely warrant consideration. Iâ(TM)m not sure about the US , here in west Australia the lottery commission puts all its profits into charity groups , feeding poor folk, environmental cleanup projects and so on. I think itâ(TM)s a pretty good knowing my $2 goes into that , along with a bit of get-rich fantasy , well THOSE odds are pretty good
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
What are the odds of making enough to even pay for the equipment little known hosting and bandwidth charges to produce an app in AppStore? 100,000 in 1 billion?
So basically people are raging about voluntary payments in free or almost-free games? How about just not playing those games to begin with? I've found that that is a great way to deal with games I don't like...
Dude. Get some Thorazine, your mother is probably worried by now.
If you poked your head outside your little self contained info bubble you might actually learn the only people that care about âoesjwsâ are sjw opponents. The sane folks are not particularly concerned about millennial tumblr users forming a vast spooky conspiracy to take over the world SOMEHOw.
Concerns over gambling happen to come from all across the political spectrum, but traditionally from the Christian Right (and shock horror look at where most of the political pressure to censor games has come from. Yup, the Christian Right). And now those motherfuckers have you marching lock step along with them waving the boring old culture war and freaking out about language that have been preoccupations of the Christian Right weâ(TM)ll longer than my grey beards been collecting dust for.
Have some fucking perspective
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
They should have to disclose the probability that the customer should have bought an android device instead.
This is needed because there is a lot of deception. Some games will change their odds hourly. Other games will dynamically change their odds on every pull. You can't make a rational purchase decision under these conditions. I've found myself angry about this many times, and even contacted lobbyists in DC because I'm seeking regulation.
Not all games are evil, but enough of them are to warrant it.
IÃ(TM)m not sure about the US , here in west Australia the lottery commission puts all its profits into charity groups
Here in the USA, most of the money just goes into the general fund. Only a tiny smidgen of it actually goes to education, which is where they always claim it goes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Oh, but dear sir, it's not so simple! How sure are you the phone won't be 59% slower, or 61% slower?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
It's a good first step to curb some of the abuse and limit the gambling, but we know that it won't work very well. People know the odds of winning the lottery, and yet they play. Because humans are incredibly bad at judging chances and probabilities.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Chance would be a fine thing:. I have a two year old android phone so no chance of an OS update.
You need psychiatric help - obsessive and delusional.
Whats the correct perspective to have on an OS wanting to change games?
Just for some aspects of games for now? What other areas will have to be changed to meet new OS regulations and rules?
Do other groups get to enforce suggestions for things they want to see changed in games?
Whats next for pre-publication censorship? Time for a new classification board or censorship board to ensure games are within OS standards?
Do artists and designers really want an OS to offer suggestions about their product?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Anyone who plays these games long enough already knows the odds. People want to know the odds just so they can piss and moan when they feel they don't get what they should.
It isn't gambling though since you get nothing that has real money value out of it.
If they really intend to do something about it, the simplest way I can think of to deal with it is to define "freemium" fairly broadly, and either forbid it or set a maximum price (once the maximum is paid, all tokens & unlocks would be free of charge). And, at the very least, such applications should be greatly disadvantaged in the app store - outranked by things with fixed costs or with a set subscription, and easily hidden from search & browse results (or hidden by default).
For my part, I consider it faster and simpler to stay out of the market than to expect the likes of Apple or Google to set aside what's more profitable to them (the "whales" apparently) just so they can attempt cater to me. Also pretty unlikely for me to ever go back, since the old device I would have used for running untrusted applications was zapped (Its eventual replacement will not have an app store).
Never tell me the odds!
you can leave parents to flounder, be self interested and not be dumb (as you imply). The key is to limit access to birth control while creating a propaganda system that encourages child birth. Then you can get the people you want/need to do the things you want done by shear weight of numbers rather than by investing in their quality of life. All it takes is a willingness to condemn 98% of the populace to poverty, misery and death. And that we've got in spades.
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And the odds they'll attempt to hide those bugs in software releases that compromise the performance and usability of their phones.
Oh, FFS! Give it a REST, willya?!?
In PA some of the money goes to elderly people for medication, care, etc.
Not fast enough.
CAPTCHA: tantrum
Seriously, what kind of bullshit are you trying to peddle? Like the other person who replied to you said, the only people who care about so-called "SJW" types OMG RUINING EVERYTHING are rabid anti-SJWs like you. You create this ridiculous strawman and then project everything you hate and that bothers you onto it. It's ridiculous and borderline neurotic.
And again, claiming "radical leftist" types are the ones trying to censor video games? Where have you been the past 25+ years? Because it certainly hasn't been in America or even paying attention to anything happening here. Because it's been the pearl clutching, conservative Christians who have been crusading against evil video games, time and time again. They did it with Doom, with the Postal game, various GTA incarnations and probably plenty others I can't remember.
So maybe next time, you get at least SOME kind of clue before you just start ranting and raving about how the SJWS OMG are destroying everything. Because as it stands you're just wrong and come across as just another bitter, angry Internet alt-right troll type lashing out crazily, with no basis in fact or reality.
Re "with no basis in fact or reality."
An OS wants to ban games under new OS rules.
Thats the reality of what is been presented. Someone is suggesting it would be good to be ban games for a set of reasons under new rules.
Who gets to set the rules and what new rules games have to follow to be allowed to work on an OS would have been an on topic discussion.
Considering the power a modern OS has to allow or not allow a game to work that is a powerful change to the creativity of publishing a game for that OS.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This is the first good thing I remember Apple doing in several years. Gambling for children is a serious issue in games and I'm very happy to hear Apple is pushing things a bit in the right direction. Very surprised but also very happy.