EU wants to change how devs use "Free-To-Play"

[Gahars]

If an EU Commission has its way, it looks like developers and publishers won't be free to say "Free-to-Play!" very much longer.

Complaints from consumers who unwittingly purchased in-game upgrades in free-to-play titles have become common enough that the European Commission is taking action on the matter. EC members are meeting with tech companies and national enforcement authorities today and tomorrow to go over concerns about consumer protections in the burgeoning market, the group announced today.

...The Consumer Protection Cooperation and EC member states have released a list of common positions on the subject, with misleading advertising at the top.

"The use of the word 'free' (or similar unequivocal terms) as such, and without any appropriate qualifications, should only be allowed for games which are indeed free in their entirety, or in other words which contain no possibility of making in-app purchases, not even on an optional basis," the group said.

GamesIndustry International
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Of course, there's nothing stopping developers from switching over to "Free-to-Pay" and/or "Fee-To-Play."

That's not all, of course. They also want developers to remove direct calls for purchases in games aimed at children (Now how are we going to sell all those smurfberries?). The most outrageous demand, of course, is that purchases should require the explicit consent of customers. Utter lunacy, I tell you.

Now, this doesn't mean that the moniker will disappear entirely, just that developers will have to be a little more forward with their advertising (or throw around a lot more qualifiers, anyway).

Who knows if other regions will follow suit. It's a nice start, but ideas are one thing - application is something else entirely.

 

[WiiCube_2013]

The purchases are entirely optional and if the customers end up on buying those things it's only their own fault for doing so. I've never spent money on Free to Play games because I have always tried to keep it as it's advertised, Free to Play.

It's just like those customers from Apple complaining that their kids made the purchases and want to be refunded... when have people become so dumb.

 

[Arras]

The purchases are entirely optional and if the customers end up on buying those things it's only their own fault for doing so. I've never spent money on Free to Play games because I have always tried to keep it as it's advertised, Free to Play.

It's just like those customers from Apple complaining that their kids made the purchases and want to be refunded... when have people become so dumb.

It's called human psychology and dirty marketing tricks. People WILL buy these things, even though they may end up regretting it later.

 

[Mario92]

OK just asking is there actually fully free-to-play titles and if we are talking about flash games and such were they ever called free-to-play?
Free-to-play games are always free to play as name suggest and they have always had some kind of way to actually make money.

Then again most PC free-to-play games are entirely other level from facebook/mobile stuff.

 

[FAST6191]

The EU Commission could probably be trusted to organise a piss up in a brewery which places them above an awful lot of politicians.

Now if they had managed to do something about my "unlimited" broadband all those years ago I would be less hesitant.

What I will be curious to see is their definition of the term game, both in general and because there are a lot of other things adopting the model that are not necessarily games.

 

[Breadwin]

The should call it "Free to Play and Free to Pay" as in there is no cost to play the game but you are free to pay for micro transactions to add to the game lol

Personally i think it is a good thing i hope it goes through and they kick the ass of developers like Candy Crush those sons of beotches

 

[Kalker3]

Just call them freemium games or Pay-to-Win games.

 

[GHANMI]

That's baby steps, but hey it's something.
What they should be doing is regulating that market in the same way casinos are.
That entire model is built upon 0.15% paying customers who, more often than not, are children playing with their parent's phone, or vulnerable people who are essentially gambling addicts (1 purchase every two hours, that's what I would call an addict) under another game (the psychological shenanigans pulled are indeed the same as in gambling, except your chances at winning/enjoying something is an absolute 0%).
They have psychanalists called "monetization designers" who are essentially designing the app to be as much un-enjoyable as possible, but sucking the soul of the costumer enough into tricking him to pay in hope for ... an enjoyment ideal.
They call this: searching among the fish for "whales".
Fuck them.
Fuck mobile gaming and all it stands for (IAP of all kinds, "social" "games", mountains of stinking shit set to "replace traditional gaming").

I hope they ban F2P and IAPs outright...
like Japan did with gashapon but with a step further (gashapon made the gambling part shamelessly obvious "spend lots of cash and buy lots of cards (actually 256x300 crappy jpeg images) and you could end up with duplicates of ones you own but the aim is getting "rare cards" "... now iaps are more subtle but the same essentially).

 

[tbgtbg]

It's called human psychology and dirty marketing tricks. People WILL buy these things, even though they may end up regretting it later.

I don't see where it's the govt's business to protect stupid people from themselves.

Now, if the game is outright misleading and making you think you're spending in game currency instead of real world money, that'd be a problem, but I haven't seen evidence of that.

 

[jalaneme]

i still don't understand why people defend free to play, it's a evil practice and needs to die, the microtransactions are not optional, the game intentionally gimps gameplay to make you spend money to proceed and there needs to be laws to protect people from things like that, capcom are heavily relying on free to play and there are now full retail games that have this horrible practice, this is why it needs to stop.

 

[techboy]

Many of the so-called "free"-to-play games I've tried are also pay-to-win.

I would love to see something like this in the USA.

Unlike this proposal though, I don't care if it offers paid content as an option. What I do want is a requirement that free-to-play games also be 100% free-to-win, and without leaving a free player with a significantly increased difficulty, limited game play, or some other disadvantage.

 

[FAST6191]

i still don't understand why people defend free to play, it's a evil practice and needs to die, the microtransactions are not optional, the game intentionally gimps gameplay to make you spend money to proceed and there needs to be laws to protect people from things like that, capcom are heavily relying on free to play and there are now full retail games that have this horrible practice, this is why it needs to stop.

What you describe is one of the, possibly more popular, executions of free to play, one that I would be happy enough to see vanish tomorrow. Free to play as a concept, which is to say the bulk of the game given away for free with the money being made using some form of funds exchange that result in differences in game, holds a lot of promise as far as monetising games to allow them to continue to be developed and maintained and should very much be allowed to continue.

I don't see where it's the govt's business to protect stupid people from themselves.

Really? Because I thought that was one of their two big jobs (the other being public works).

 

[Squirps]

i still don't understand why people defend free to play, it's a evil practice and needs to die, the microtransactions are not optional, the game intentionally gimps gameplay to make you spend money to proceed and there needs to be laws to protect people from things like that, capcom are heavily relying on free to play and there are now full retail games that have this horrible practice, this is why it needs to stop.

Personally, I feel as though Team Fortress 2 is an example of a free-to-play model done right; you are able to unlock ALL of the weapons available and gameplay is solely based on skill; the only benefit the player receives by paying money is higher chance of rare drops, cosmetics, and increased backpack size (which is only necessary to make room for more cosmetics).

 

[Deboog]

Long overdue imo. Putting"free" in an advertisement that shows off parts of a product that are certainly not "free" is false advertising.

 

[MarkDarkness]

This is actually awesome.

 

[matpower]

Microtransactions are a bad curse that plagues the Gaming Market right now.
The only real Free-To-Play game that I know is TF2, you can use money to buy stuff, but you can get that stuff using your skills.

 

[Nightwish]

This is the kind of stuff that I like about the EU. Now if only the it decided to go back to sane economic policies it might actually keep being a nice place.

 

[XDel]

Consumer protection. That I like.

 

[Ashtonx]

Damn good job eu, i hated this bs marketing word, bunch of people get it cos its free and then spent hundreds of dollards on items ingame forgetting they could just as easily pay for way better games.
Marketing in recent ways feels like scam and it should be controlled.

 

[R4iFanboi]

Micro-transaction game developers/publishers:

This is for you.