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The FTC Says It Will Investigate Loot Boxes (kotaku.com)
The Federal Trade Commission this week agreed to investigate video game loot boxes, accepting an official request by Senator Maggie Hassan. In a Congressional oversight committee hearing yesterday, FTC chairman Joe Simons affirmed Sen. Hassan's request that loot boxes be investigated. From a report: During her turn to ask questions at the hearing, Hassan cited a recent report by Great Britain's Gambling Commission that found 31% of children in the country had at one point or another paid money to open a loot box, a well as moves by Belgium (which prompted Square Enix to pull three mobile games from the country), Japan, and other countries to limit how loot boxes can be used in games. "Given the seriousness of this issue, I think it is in fact time for the FTC to investigate these mechanisms to ensure that children are being adequately protected and to educate parents about potential addiction or other negative impacts of these games," Hassan said. "Would you commit to undertaking this project and keeping this committee informed about it?" In response, Simons said "yes," but declined to go into any more detail about the FTC's current position on loot boxes and whether they constitute a form of gambling. Despite vocal criticism from Hassan and a few others on the topic, regulators have not been jumping to get involved in the debate.
No, it's gambling which is illegal for minors and possibly w/ interstate issues also. Just because you don't understand the law or why things happen doesn't mean it's without reason.
No, it's gambling which is illegal for minors and possibly w/ interstate issues also. Just because you don't understand the law or why things happen doesn't mean it's without reason.
Parents are buying adult-rated games and handing them to their underage children, and you think the problem lies with the game creators? Last I checked, a 10-year old can't get a credit card; Adults are entering credit card information into games, and you want to blame the minor?
Let me know when parents start giving a shit about their kids again, and you fully understand "why things happen". Until then, this is a complete fucking waste of government resources.
$eriously, like $80 and the girls get some make up, dolls, and bath bombs. o.O
https://www.amazon.com/L-L-Sur...
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Last year my daughter wanted one, I was like HELL NO, not at that price. So daddy went to Dollar Tree and bought a large Tupperware bowl. Stuffed it full of little things, bath bombs, etc, etc. Wrapped it in aluminum foil. Then wrote
"Daddy L.O.L.Z." on it....
Kids loved it.
In app purchases in general should be well regulated.
1. They are often Pay to Cheat, especially for online games where people who pay more get a leg up on the stuff.
2. Kids are greedy little suckers. I know I use to be one. If my friend was playing a game and had that fancy skin that their parents shelled out $10.00 for and my parents said no. I would still really want it, or something of equal or greater cost. I didn't care about building character, they had it, and I wanted them the feel just as envious of me that I feel towards them.
3. Kids are class oriented. You have X and they have Y one has to be objectively better then the other. if you have the one that isn't better you are often feel like you have been put down. Sometimes they actually are, and other times they just feel that way. Emotionally it is the same.
4. Kids don't understand the value of money. You see Mom buying $250 worth of groceries, surely $10 or even $100 isn't that big of a deal. Not realizing such payments can add up quickly, and the money after bigger expenses is much lower.
Even with Good parenting you kid can fall under pressure to buy this type of stuff. If not to reap the reward of the purchase but avoid the shame of not having it.
There are also a lot of adults too have these problems, but they they legally can take the brunt of their mistakes, vs kids who share the consequences.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I have no issue with my kid playing "adult" games. I wouldn't hand them my credit card though. I had a debit card at a young age and I'd bet most kids now do too. At least by middle school age anyway. You should be teaching your kids to make wise decisions rather than nannying them. Go look up Free Range Kids. If your kid can't walk to the store by age 7 or take a subway (if you live in a city) it's your own damm fault. Stop babying them.
the app stores had the auto buy with card on file (needed even for free apps) and the game cash to make it look like it's not real cash.
I mean Drug war? What Drug war?
Loot boxes take advantage of well known defects in human thought and personality. They're very well known because they're the same defects that make gambling work. That's because loot boxes === gambling (using 3 equal signs to indicate exact match here).
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But can a player keep an unopened loot box and sell it to another player? That would be more interesting from an FTC perspective.
As long as you know exactly what you get for your money, eg. a bundle of 5x Item 1, 10x Item 2 and 1x Item 3, then it's not a loot box. It's a different problem, and I'm against microtransactions as a matter of principle, but the gambling aspect of loot boxes is a problem entirely in its own category.
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Maggie was an embarrassing governor (she opposed decrim many other sensible proposals) so we sent her away.
LOL. Yes, all of NH hated her so much they voted her out of the state senate and into the governor's office. They then hated her so much more that they voted her into US senate. At this rate, I can't wait to see the unbridled fury with which they cast their hate vote for her in the 2020 presidential primary.
Wow did you ever miss the point on this one. While I would never buy anything in a mobile game, what you are talking about is completely different. In your example you know exactly what you are getting before you make the purchase. Yes it has no value, but that is not the point, you are getting something that is definable; eg... jump 20 levels, 10 lollipop bombs, 3 extra lives, etc... With a loot box you are getting the chance at something of in game value.
Introduce them to the economics of it before the addiction can get a hold on them.
Great idea! Perhaps through some sort of video game ...
There's nothing unique about loot boxes when it comes to the topic of tax evasion. Loot boxes can be sold for real money in some games, and some people may use that mechanism for tax evasion, but that's equally as true of any other virtual item that can be sold for real money in a game, whether it's a weapon, a skin, a piece of gold, or whatever else.
There may be something worth investigating there, but that's a separate concern that has nothing to do with the unique characteristics of loot boxes.
the insurance industry, for example, is heavily regulated to ensure people get value out of it.
The reason the industry won't self-regulate is they know damn well that gambling mechanics with real money being exchanged means an AO rating.
As for preventing terrible life decisions, those people's decisions effect you too. The most obvious is you get worse games. The less obvious is that people turn to crime to feed their addictions. You don't live life in a vacuum. No man is an island. And you can't just put your fingers in your ears and chant "freedom" and make out alright.
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I disagree.
I'm a father of two full-fledged teenagers who in the past have been known to buy each other loot boxes for their birthdays.
In Overwatch, my daughter's favorite, she loves to get the latest and greatest skins. But I've seen her with tears in her eyes because she had incredibly high hopes that the loot boxes her brother bought her would give her the skin she really wanted. This of course made my son feel like shit because he really wanted to make his sister happy and he had spent almost all his monthly disposable income on loot boxes for his sister and he failed to be her hero. He, who is freakishly talented with regards to killing in games but hates Overwatch then binge gamed with her to try and earn her more loot boxes before the special offer expired. They still came up short.
My friend's son who receives close to $400 a month in allowance (he plays his divorced mother and father against each other) spends most of it on loot boxes, then he sells whatever he gets. So far as I know, the most profitable month he's had in 3 years of doing this is to break even. And because of the nature of gambling, he and the other moron children who do the same thing sit around comparing who is going to get rich first from this. And then they complain about how their parents didn't by them the latest Jordan's yet.
Loot boxes legitimize gambling for teenagers. This means that they grow up thinking that the lottery is a good idea. They think that Vegas is a great place to go. Instead of cake sales at schools, they sell raffle tickets for the same cakes. I recently was asked to buy a raffle ticket for $2 for a chance to win a cake. I said "I'll give you $30 for the cake"... they actually turned me down because they would rather gamble that they could sell more than 15 tickets for the same cake their mother baked.
I refused to let my kids play Movie Star Planet when they were younger because in order to advance in the game, they had to use tokens to win more tokens at a casino. Of course, they had a few tokens as part of the membership to the game, but they would beg for us to buy them more tokens so they could gamble more. When I asked why... that was the end of that game. Same went for several others.
No... casinos and gambling are not welcome. And legitimizing gambling for children of any age is simply not welcome. My son is playing basketball now, I told him that I'll pull him from it as soon as he participates in gambling of any sort and that includes raffles. I said that if they don't want to throw a bake sale, then sell services like carrying bags at the grocery store to peoples cars. Or offer to pack peoples groceries for a tip. There's simply no reason to gamble or to promote that other people should gamble.
it's a common mistake by Americans. The problem is that healthcare delivery is fundamentally not insurable. That stopped being the case when medicine became more advanced than a few pills and the occasional operation. We're past the "disaster recovery" stage of medicine and well into maintenance mode.
I have life insurance. About $500k total. Why? Because if I get in a car wreck and die I don't leave a lifetime of poverty for my family behind me. This way the kids have money to finish college and get set up in life. That's insurance: something to protect against a very rare disaster. It's also cheap. I pay $15/mo all told and I'm probably overpaying.
Now, healthcare "insurance" is a scam. I pay for it and unless I hit a pretty high out of pocket max they don't pay a dime. But I use it regularly for various maintenance activities. It's no longer a slot machine if I need the chips from the machine to live...
We know the solution: stop having my company hand a portion of my check to a private company and just give it to the gov't. Then let the gov't pay the doctors. Single Payer works in every country it's been tried in.
tl;dr: You're mixing up the value of actual insurance with the scam that is the US healthcare system, causing some confusion with the points I made above.
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Doesn't the constant disappointment of loot boxes act as an early lesson that gambling kind of sucks and you can find way cooler uses for money?
Yeah, I mean it's not like they have algorithms that have been developed to give you enough wins at exactly the right rate so that you stay hooked. After all, if they did, gambling would be a huge business!
Oh, wait.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.