They're only banned in the US due to a perceived choking hazard (Cue sarcastic "Only in America" comments). I don't see what the association with gambling is?
The association with gambling is since you are paying for the egg but don't know what you are getting inside that is a form of gambling (this is implication of argument above, not what I think)
At least with kinder eggs you know you're getting the chocolate, and you know you will get one of half a dozen toys. But sure, I guess its not that different...
Could one argue that adding a small consolation prize to loot boxes overcome the gambling issue with them?
"Here is your item that you paid for, oh also here is a random extra lottery item."
They really don't have much in common. If you want more kinder eggs, you have to walk to the store. When the mechanics are based on exploiting a skinner box as they are in games these days, breaking engagement like that pretty much ruins the whole thing. If EA or Caesars Palace required you to go to the store and buy a physical card to play again, revenue would plummet.
This is interesting. What's the difference between a lootbox earned in game, vs the act of killing a mob or raid boss and having the RNG determine what drop you get? You
can't pay for the latter with real money, but you do need to put in more gaming hours (and thus pay more real money for a subscription) in order to get good drops. So in effect you still have to indirectly pay for the chance to get loot. Would this make all forms of random drops gambling?
Can't speak to Belgian law but in the US, the definition of gambling has 3 elements IIRC: consideration (i.e. something of value the player offers up for the chance to win, usually money), prize(s) (i.e. something of value the player wants to win), and chance (i.e. whether the player wins a prize is primarily determined randomly rather than though application of some skill).
Online games dodge these three elements:
-In terms of consideration, the subscription fee doesn't count because it grants players access to the game world, which includes much more play elements than just the drop system, and the player's time doesn't really count since nothing of value to anyone else results from their play time. Note that this gets more murky for Asian-style gachapon-monetized games where the player directly spends virtual currency purchased with real money to roll for virtual items.
-In terms of prize, the fine print of most online games' TOS say quite explicitly that the player has no property rights or ownership of any items they get within the game.(If this weren't the case, they would have to compensate players for the loss of property when the game closed down or if the player were banned.) Since one doesn't "own" a drop, there's technically no prize per se.
-In terms of chance, most likely gaming companies would argue that killing a mob or raid boss counts as some sort of skill. Again, Asian-style gachapon-monetized games are on much shakier ground here.
That being said, it's not impossible that new legislation could expand these definitions to include online games and it's arguable that they should be; you have to admit that there's something unsavory about intentionally exposing minors to gambling-like systems to hook them into playing your game.
(I am not a lawyer and nothing said above should be construed as legal advice.)
I'm usually a strong proponent of regulation to protect people, but only where the harm can be studied and analysed. If games are not marketed to minors, I do not think it is reasonable to restrict the content of the games lest minors see or interact with them. If the content is aimed at children, then a case may be made (as gambling can develop extremely harmful addictions and tendencies) for their restriction.
Many things which adults may freely consume within society, including pornography (and certain genres therein), alcohol, tobacco, etc. are regulated, but these "vices" are not illegalised for the sake that a child may engage in it, and I think that an effort to do so would be very disappointing.
Although this reads like a typical libertarian argument, I want to note that I simply don't consider myself to be an advocate of illegalising something because it has a bad effect on some users, or it is used for nefarious purposes. Encryption can be used for terrorists to communicate, the Internet can be used for revenge porn, and a baseball bat can be used to bludgeon someone to death.
Loot boxes explicitly use the same associations of slot machines: sight, sound, timing, and color associations combined with having a low cost action (hitting one button) to potentially have a highly desirable reward.
While killing a mob/boss is likely to have associations to the actual play and learning of the game.
As a data point, Japan set restrictions on Gatcha games. It doesn’t mean anything for EU law, but at least there’s a precedent if we ever need one, and they have tangible evidence that led them to go that route.
How do loot boxes compare to all the different kind of booster packs out there in terms of gambling? I feel there is little difference, should they then be banned too?
Gambling is not banned in Belgium, it is regulated. There is a state-owned lottery, plenty of casino's, sportsbetting companies etc. One thing that is banned is selling gambling products to minors.
You are right that booster-pack based collectible card games are basically gambling (and they are definitely also targeting minors). However, there is also a significant difference between a game that front-loads this gambling (you know what you are getting into, and you buy and construct your card deck before a game) and a game that tacks it on an existing game. It a gray zone if the loot box contents offer no in-game advantage (e.g. Valve sticks to purely cosmetic items for their games), but is pretty sinister from both the game design and ethical perspective if it offers an edge in the game. It's back-loaded gambling, where a pay-gamble-to-win scenario is dangled in front of the player after getting killed in a shooter.
Thanks to premii, I was able to read the actual article, but fuck pcgamer.
If you try to access the website with disabled javascript or while blocking ads, you'll be redirected to a HTML page that kinda only says "We know you are using a blocking script and want you to disable it".
More and more sites are doing this, and more and more am I realising that I really don't care to read the articles enough to enable javascript/disable adblockers. A nice side benefit is that I'm consuming much less content that, really, I don't need. Most news articles for example don't affect my life other than, perhaps, depressing me. If its not actionable, I don't need to know. These sites are helping me (slowly) unravel my internet addiction. So really, I should be thanking them :)
The most negative ones would be:
- Content blocking: you limit access to your news to a very precise subset of people, so implicitly easily targeting and closing users's views.
- Heaviness: you limit access to your news to mainly desktop targets, as most mobile networks have very limited bandwidth usage.
Also it have a positive impact on you, also me (as I decided to add it and all its subdomains to my blocklist) but a lot of users will keep living under those website's constraints, but also gaining the habit of that, thus starting to think about it as "normal" where it's really the Web and net neutrality cancer.
21 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 34.8 ms ] threadOnline games dodge these three elements:
-In terms of consideration, the subscription fee doesn't count because it grants players access to the game world, which includes much more play elements than just the drop system, and the player's time doesn't really count since nothing of value to anyone else results from their play time. Note that this gets more murky for Asian-style gachapon-monetized games where the player directly spends virtual currency purchased with real money to roll for virtual items.
-In terms of prize, the fine print of most online games' TOS say quite explicitly that the player has no property rights or ownership of any items they get within the game.(If this weren't the case, they would have to compensate players for the loss of property when the game closed down or if the player were banned.) Since one doesn't "own" a drop, there's technically no prize per se.
-In terms of chance, most likely gaming companies would argue that killing a mob or raid boss counts as some sort of skill. Again, Asian-style gachapon-monetized games are on much shakier ground here.
That being said, it's not impossible that new legislation could expand these definitions to include online games and it's arguable that they should be; you have to admit that there's something unsavory about intentionally exposing minors to gambling-like systems to hook them into playing your game.
(I am not a lawyer and nothing said above should be construed as legal advice.)
Many things which adults may freely consume within society, including pornography (and certain genres therein), alcohol, tobacco, etc. are regulated, but these "vices" are not illegalised for the sake that a child may engage in it, and I think that an effort to do so would be very disappointing.
Although this reads like a typical libertarian argument, I want to note that I simply don't consider myself to be an advocate of illegalising something because it has a bad effect on some users, or it is used for nefarious purposes. Encryption can be used for terrorists to communicate, the Internet can be used for revenge porn, and a baseball bat can be used to bludgeon someone to death.
While killing a mob/boss is likely to have associations to the actual play and learning of the game.
But if gambling should be banned, why are lotteries still allowed? They are arguably the worst kind of gambling.
You are right that booster-pack based collectible card games are basically gambling (and they are definitely also targeting minors). However, there is also a significant difference between a game that front-loads this gambling (you know what you are getting into, and you buy and construct your card deck before a game) and a game that tacks it on an existing game. It a gray zone if the loot box contents offer no in-game advantage (e.g. Valve sticks to purely cosmetic items for their games), but is pretty sinister from both the game design and ethical perspective if it offers an edge in the game. It's back-loaded gambling, where a pay-gamble-to-win scenario is dangled in front of the player after getting killed in a shooter.
Edit: I see now you mean randomised ones, and I wholly agree with you
If you try to access the website with disabled javascript or while blocking ads, you'll be redirected to a HTML page that kinda only says "We know you are using a blocking script and want you to disable it".
The most negative ones would be: - Content blocking: you limit access to your news to a very precise subset of people, so implicitly easily targeting and closing users's views. - Heaviness: you limit access to your news to mainly desktop targets, as most mobile networks have very limited bandwidth usage.
Also it have a positive impact on you, also me (as I decided to add it and all its subdomains to my blocklist) but a lot of users will keep living under those website's constraints, but also gaining the habit of that, thus starting to think about it as "normal" where it's really the Web and net neutrality cancer.