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German Authorities Are Considering a Ban On Loot Boxes (heise.de)
Slashdot reader Qbertino writes: Heise reports that German authorities are examining loot boxes in video games and considering banning them in the country. Loot boxes might actually even violate laws against calls-to-purchase aimed directly towards minors that are already in effect. German authorities are also checking that. Loot boxes are randomized in-game item purchases that many people consider a form of gambling. The decision to take action against loot boxes in Germany is expected in March. Germany's Entertainment Software Self-Regulation Body has since clarified that Germany authorities are not considering a general ban on loot boxes, but are actually examining regulations of online advertising and purchasing as a whole.
"A closer look at the discussion is taking place, ie., if there are any specific risks and where to locate them legally. As part of that analysis the KJM (governmental institution responsible for youth protection regarding to online content/services) is taking a closer look at permitted and prohibited advertising in shop offerings. However these rules apply to online purchases in general, thus also to loot boxes," the rep said. "In the German debate this term [loot box] refers to a broad variety of different in-game or even just game-related purchase systems with more or less randomized items. Hence one cannot say that 'loot boxes' violate German laws, as each integration has to be evaluated as separate case."
"A closer look at the discussion is taking place, ie., if there are any specific risks and where to locate them legally. As part of that analysis the KJM (governmental institution responsible for youth protection regarding to online content/services) is taking a closer look at permitted and prohibited advertising in shop offerings. However these rules apply to online purchases in general, thus also to loot boxes," the rep said. "In the German debate this term [loot box] refers to a broad variety of different in-game or even just game-related purchase systems with more or less randomized items. Hence one cannot say that 'loot boxes' violate German laws, as each integration has to be evaluated as separate case."
Never too early to exploit children, addiction, and lax laws. This is the holy trifecta of making stockholders happy.
My idea for the US: Just tell the state gaming commissions about loot boxes, and this problem will solve itself about 24 hours after the gaming commission shows up at the publisher's offices demanding to audit the code AND to have their slice of the pie, unless the publisher ceases and desists using loot boxes immediately.
I'd also like to see laws that ban virtual currencies which are purchased with real cash. And require gaming services (which includes appstores etc.) to enforce limits on the amount that anyone can purchase in-game in any given month. And worded to prevent bullshit circumvention of the limits. The limits could be set by the age rating of the game - the lower the rating, the lower the limit.
Such things might motivate companies to start producing games again instead of skinner boxes designed to target whales and compulsive gamblers.
The pokemon, magic and other collecting cards model seems to be restricted to 18+ now in Germany then!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Duke Nukem doesn't have loot boxes and I like it that way. Come get some!
Guys, it's simple: Games with loot boxes are targeting the same demographic that slot machines and roulletes do (real and virtual), only they do it without paying a gambling tax and without any age restrictions, so the governments are considering a ban on them to protect their tax revenue, they didn't magically start to care about the predatory nature of loot boxes or anything.
See the pokemon or collector cards has no external value imposed by the company itself, you get a bunch of random card the SAME price, some of differing rarity, which then an external private unrelated market set price to - you and your friends but not the original company. e.g. the mgaic the gathering only says you have 0.0001% change to get a black lotus from a beta pack, it does not say the black lotus is 500$ or it does not sell it as a single card (or at least it did not used to). But loot box are different : very often the SAME item which are offered at random, are actually offered in the same shop for a set price. So now your loot box DOES NOT have the same monetary value set by the company itself. The company tells you we are offering you something which "we" value at 2$ (but the market thinks it is not even worth it - e.g. most experience bonus are considered "loss" when opening lootbox of some games) or it may be something we value at 100$... And that is where the gambling kick in. If they did not have all those items for sale in separate that could probably not be considered gambling. But they do. And this is a MAJOR difference with card collector games.
table can't fix. Danke.
I'm actually impressed that they're evaluating individual systems and mechanics, rather than doing a blanket ban, which would be easier but catch relatively-moral implementations (e.g. loot boxes that can only be purchased with ingame currency.)
Hopefully they'll extend the restrictions to other Gacha and 'blind box' systems in games and for physical items as well. Blind boxes sold in stores tend to have their contents opened/stolen by children more than other toys. It's marketed as a 'surprise' which is ostensibly beneficial, but in practice it becomes anxiety that you'll have wasted your money on a duplicate; having different rarities on different items in a set makes it clear which of the two is the actual intent. Gacha is psychological manipulation for profit. The Monopoly game that McDonalds does is the same thing.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
The pokemon, magic and other collecting cards model seems to be restricted to 18+ now in Germany then!
They've long been considered a dangerous form of entertainment, and opposed by many parties. That's why Wizards of the Coast walks a narrow line of behavior with significant restrictions as to their conduct. Even aside from law, things like the self-imposed Reserve List, they don't want to make people angry by having too few cards available or crashing the economy for cards either.
Who are they to decide where my money goes? I want loot boxes dammit! Feed my addiction. The golden age of apathy is upon us if we have gambling taken away from us and we let them.
Shouldn't the same legislation be used to ban kinder surprise eggs? There is hidden toy! You don't know which you will get. You will gamble to get it!
Are trading card packs different except for being physical objects? You buy a pack of cards with a chance of getting a rare card. It's the exact same idea.
What about mystery minifig LEGO collector series? While you might be able to feel which figure you're getting, it's designed to be a surprise, so you don't know what you're getting. It's not quite the same thing, but it's close.
Are we going to ban all mystery sales?
Perhaps that's a good idea, but let's think this through.
Or perhaps we treat online sales differently as they cater more to the gambling mentality due to being instantly available at any time. It may not be fair, but it is addressing a practical problem in a practical way.
The thing is there is a difference between a blindbag of random physical items that you purchase in person at a store verses a lootbox of random virtual items that is purchased online and opened instantly. Especially if those lootbox items are not able to be resold on an open market. I'd say that's a fair place to draw the line.
They ban books, movies, games. They even banned entire ethnic entities from existence once. Such is the nature of the German beast. Beware the Germans.
A ban on collector cards, and gaming cards too?
When you buy a pack of trading cards you always gain ownership of something tangible that has value. When you buy a loot box you never get any ownership of anything. Even further than this: a game itself is licensed to you, you never own it. Buying the game buys you the right to play it for as long as the owner of the game says you're able to. Read the EULA and you'll see that it does, in fact, have an End User License Agreement.
With trading cards you get what you pay for, it just so happens that some things inside it are more desirable than others and this affects resale value.
With loot boxes you tangibly receive nothing at all and that lasts as long as the company who made the game tells you it'll last. Even when you're allowed to use it, when the game servers are still running for example, it's still legally worthless as it is intangible, it has no redeemable value, and is only yours on license.
The more you know.
don't have the problems loot boxes do. I think it's because buying into the game and buying a pack of cards are the same thing; so everybody does it. If you want to play Magic you buy card packs. But with loot boxes most people play the game without buying them. That pattern becomes the norm and encourages mechanics that target the "Whales" who spend large sums. Supposedly something like 0.19% of users account for 50% of mobile game revenue. That can't be healthy, and loot box mechanics come from that school of monetization.
OTOH there's plenty of digital card games. Maybe deck building helps put the kibosh on out of control purchases. Some of the hard core Magic players I knew had a play style that meant that once they had the cards for this year's version of their deck they were done. I guess you can run out of cards to get at some point. Also you can usually trade cards (they're called Trading Card Games usually) so that usually limits the gambling aspect. Finally most publish the odds meaning you know how much that item's gonna cost.
Not sure if it's any one thing, feel free to chime in if you think there is though. But it's odd that this didn't blow up until EA. It's also odd that EAs been doing this crap in FIFA games for years and it took Star Wars for people to notice.
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We are finding ourselves unable to ban wars, injustices, crimes, quarrels and lies from this world, so let's make laws to promote moral second life and make it illegal to portray evil in games, movies, songs and books of fiction, so that the real world may follow suit.
"Loot boxes are randomized in-game item purchases that many people consider a form of gambling.
Not even close to correct. Not even in the ballpark. Try again.
is another's protecting the psychologically vulnerable. Half of mobile game revenue comes from just 0.19% of players. When you've got numbers like that something is very, very wrong.
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it's also heavily regulated. You're glossing over that by ending your post with a cynical stab at those regulations. If this was just about the government getting their cut there's ways to go about it without riling up the neck beards. The government really does have a legitimate interest in keeping children away from gambling. As a voter, a gamer and a parent I _want_ to see this regulated. I don't trust the game industry to do it themselves. They're a lot bigger than they were in the 90s when they backed down and formed the ESRB and with that size comes power and arrogance.
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which makes it a lot easier to get a full set. Also there are finite limits to them (e.g. the set). Also most of them publish their card distribution / drop rates, so you can calculate how much a full set would cost.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
is how glacial the rest of the world is on this issue. And the fact that EA got propped up by wallstreet after the slide to soar back up and way over instead of collectively shunning the practice of (de)mon-etizing CHILDREN! Obviously EA is the poster child for wallstreet financial gains and the model must succeed for them to stay viable.
I would say at least Disney were looking out for the kids, but we all know they are really at the heart of monetising kids. How far can gambling loot boxes take you? is pulling the one arm bandit and getting a random prize of lemons or cash any different than throwing a ring and having it randomly land around a bottle neck for a prize?
From history, comments to freedom after speech, news on social media.
Now Germany wants to enforce its laws on computer games?
Time to see what German censorship is and publish around it.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The company behind Farmville and a massive number of "free to play" games hired a team of specialists on addiction and compulsive behaviors but, not to make sure their game wasn't addictive, of course, but to make sure that their games were as addictive as possible so that you would spend the maximum amount of time and money on their games. If it destroys someone's life, that's not their problem; they got their money.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
it is a cynical attempt to screw the player to pay more money to unlock a game they've already paid for
What if you haven't actually paid full price for the game yet? Even if you only consider inflation, a AAA title that cost $60 in 2005 should cost ~$75 in 2016 dollars. If anything $75 is low, as production and marketing budgets have grown faster than the rate of inflation. Extra Credits (a game design Youtube channel) did a really interesting episode on this a few weeks ago. Their next episode is about why publishers can't just slash their budgets to get the price of the game down - worth checking out if this is a subject you're interested in.
Publishers are faced with a decision - raise the sticker price of the game, or find other ways to monetize it. Market studies show that consumers would balk at a $75-80 game so we're left with things like day one DLC, microtransactions, monthly subscription fees, and most recently loot boxes. Personally I'd support a higher sticker price, but I'm also the guy who waits until the game is 80% off on Steam a year after release, so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask.
I have no problem with the way boxes are done in say Destiny 2 or Overwatch - the items inside the boxes have little impact to gameplay, the boxes can be earned through gameplay and opened or unlocked freely, and additional boxes can be purchased by those willing to spend some extra cash.
I have a problem with the way they are done in CS:GO and Rocket League - where you can "earn" a box but have to pay cash to open it, with the chances of getting the super shiny ultra-rare hood ornament or sniper rifle skin undisclosed except to say that they are "rarer" than the other item categories.
If the game is only licensed to me, then what exactly did I pay for before I agreed to eula?