In a very sudden development on the hot-button topic of 'loot boxes' and gambling in video games, the Belgium Gaming Commission has completed their investigation on the matter and have concluded that in-game 'loot boxes' are a form of gambling, and will likely be banned in Belgium. This could entail hundreds of thousands of Euros in fines towards Electronic Arts and other offending companies, as well as a ban on sales of games with loot boxes until companies acquire a gambling license or remove the feature from their games. What's more, Belgium is seeking to classify loot boxes as gambling across the entirety of Europe. Currently, the Dutch Gambling Authority has launched a similar investigation.

The Belgium Gaming Commission's statement roughly read, "The mixing of money and addiction is gambling." Belgium's Minister of Justice also chimed in, saying, "Mixing gambling and gaming, especially at a young age, is dangerous for the mental health of the child."

Following quickly after, and in a highly unexpected move, Hawaii House of Representatives rep. Chris Lee (D) held a press conference where he announced that the State of Hawaii would be introducing legislation to curb the "predatory behavior" of companies like Electronic Arts. He explicitly mentions Battlefront 2, calling it a "Star Wars-themed online casino, designed to lure kids into spending money." Highlights from that press conference can be seen here:



Lee said that new legislation in the coming year will target predatory microtransaction practices and that Hawaii would be speaking with other states to introduce similar legislation elsewhere in the United States. Parents also took the podium at the press conference to express their own concerns about loot boxes and microtransactions. Lee later wrote a Reddit post explaining the announcement, which can be read in its entirety by following this link. In the post, he calls on US citizens to contact their state legislatures and demand action against predatory microtransaction practices in the gaming industry.

The speed at which regulatory bodies are reacting to the loot box controversy is astounding. These developments come in the wake of EA's botched microtransaction scheme in Star Wars: Battlefront II that led to a Reddit post by an EA representative becoming the most downvoted comment in the website's history, prompting Disney to intervene and garnering mainstream media coverage on popular news outlets like CNN. This spells trouble not just for EA, but for all major publishers, including Activision-Blizzard, Ubisoft, 2K Games, and any other company engaging in 'loot box' practices and predatory microtransaction schemes.

Oh, how the tides turn.

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[MadMageKefka]

DLC before release at least when it is things like

I can stomach
Don't even mind on disc DLC -- plenty of other software models have it after all.
Speaking of software models I am OK with some aspects of the rolling release model and that can have implications here.

I have problems with them carving up games such that you are left with almost a shell of a game and then not expected to purchase the rest but moves purposely designed to maximise people buying in stuff like that.

Freemium is what it is. I can dismiss that as "if you don't like it then don't play".

Pay to win, which is to say those that paid end up with a fairly clear advantage over those that did not, I have problems with and happily call such games broken if you are going to call such things a test of skill. That said I don't know if I can get as far as calling it a scam.

The skins thing
You get things like
http://store.steampowered.com/dlc/24010/
Which may have rights issues associated with them. Fair enough really there.
Similarly skins which had the effort put in I can live with. The ones that are functionally the alt colours from the 16 bit era, or could be made in 20 seconds with a colour slider is not a scam in as much as it delivers what was asked for but certainly ranks up there with the "shit I touched" things you see at events where they drag a noted person into and give them a desk to sit behind.

You occasionally get a phrase along the lines of gambling is a tax on idiocy, or maybe a specific type of gambling. It feels like something similar could be made for many of these things.

In any case you are unlikely to find me buying into such things -- make a broken game and there will be thousands of other things out there to occupy my time.

Unfortunately, plenty of people DO buy that stuff, so it continues and we get less quality games, and more market flooding with cash-grab crap.

 

[FAST6191]

Unfortunately, plenty of people DO buy that stuff, so it continues and we get less quality games, and more market flooding with cash-grab crap.

Is market flooding a bad thing? There is more than sufficient space on virtual store fronts for all the games that want to be produced and means to by which to search/sort/categorise things.

 

[the_randomizer]

Oh EA, never change

 

[StarTrekVoyager]

What the fuck is a lootbox

 

[MadMageKefka]

Is market flooding a bad thing? There is more than sufficient space on virtual store fronts for all the games that want to be produced and means to by which to search/sort/categorise things.

I think it is. Clutter is bad. Makes it tough for any small time dev / company to be noticed. My point with those types of things is more that they prey on addiction, or childrens tendency to ask for things a million times, though. My problem isnt so much the clutter, though I do personally dislike it. I feel this is getting a bit off topic now. More back to the point, I dont think loot crates are gambling, but I do think they are as close as they can legally be. You mat not end up with nothing, but you will probably end up with crap you didnt want. Its designed to make you pay again and again and again in order to TRY to get what you want, instead of just letting you buy it outright. I think thats a shitty way to "sell" your ip, and Im not sad to see it go.

What the fuck is a lootbox

You pay real money for them and they give you random skins, items, or whatever else in game.

 

[KingVamp]

Quality games will end up being pricey because they can't make their money back without things like luck based microtransactions in certain games (anything with summoning and equipment) or the microtransactions will be small things like a level boost that people probably won't buy.

Or they should simply rethink their budget and stop trying to scam people. Not that I think they aren't getting money back from just the games alone.

 

[sarkwalvein]

What the fuck is a lootbox

I would recommend you watch some Jim Sterling. That would answer your question.
The Jimquisition has a ton of episodes on this topic, but I will post one of the more recent, from one week ago:


Of course, you can disregard my recommendation.

 

[Deboog]

As much as I despise this mechanic in gaming, this is just GTA all over again. Now instead of killing hookers, video games are "teaching" kids to gamble. Rather than there being intervention and education from the parents they just flock to these lobbyists, because it's much more convenient to go out on a witch hunt against the boogeyman instead of admitting they failed at parenting. It's absolutely disgusting that people take no responsibility for this crap. How did little Jimmy acquire the means to pay for these loot boxes? Did Mommy maybe give him her credit card? That's the game's fault, though, right?

It's so clearly gambling I don't even know where to start.

In GTA you kill fake hookers. In these games you spend REAL money to get something of VALUE, RANDOMLY. Saying this isn't gambling is like saying Pachinko in Japan isn't gambling because you win "prizes."

 

[sarkwalvein]

It's so clearly gambling I don't even know where to start.

In GTA you kill fake hookers. In these games you spend REAL money to get something of VALUE, RANDOMLY. Saying this isn't gambling is like saying Pachinko in Japan isn't gambling because you win "prizes."

But according to Japanese law, Pachinko isn't gambling, it is "amusement". All gambling is illegal in Japan. /s
(sad but true)

 

[KingVamp]

But according to Japanese law, Pachinko isn't gambling, it is "amusement". All gambling is illegal in Japan. /s
(sad but true)

Reminds me of those claw/crane games.

 

[ihaveahax]

this was just uploaded so I feel I should post it here, since other jimquisition videos are here too.

 

[Ritsuki]

I totally understand why they do that, but in this case trading card games are also gambling. Hell, even Candy Crush could be gambling. The problem is how those loot boxes are implemented.

IMHO, to be considered as gambling, you need a money to money transaction. Let me explain : when you go to a casino, you put money to make more money. In a game you put money to get random items.

There's also a thing called mathematical expectation, that you can calculate. Basically it tells you if in the long run you'll be winning or losing. Every single game in a casino has a negative mathematical expectation, which means the casino always win in the long term. In a game, you just give them money but you never get money in return.

Now, some loot boxes can be unfair, I won't deny it. Some games play with that, and at this level I think we're closer to a scam than gambling. Now in some games, these boxes are only here for vanity items. In this case I don't see why it should be considered illegal, people are paying to get random items, they know they have only a certain amount of chance to get the item they want, and even if they get it, they're not going to get their money back. In gambling, that's one of the reasons people keep playing, they think they can beat the casino and become richer, which is not the case in games. You know you're just losing money whatever happens.

 

[Osha]

in this case trading card games are also gambling

I'll just stick to this bit because I see it brought up very often for whatever reason. Difference between a lootbox and cards is that, first of all, one is digital while the other is physical.
Second, you can trade the cards you don't want for the one you may want, hence the "trading" in the name.
Finally, if trading doesn't work, you can always buy the card you want. Sure, it could be expensive, but at least the odds are 100%, unlike whatever EA and many other companies try to pull.

 

[sarkwalvein]

IMHO, to be considered as gambling, you need a money to money transaction. Let me explain : when you go to a casino, you put money to make more money. In a game you put money to get random items.

Gambling is not just money for money, the prize can as well be almost any thing of value. At least in America, AFAIK, it would be considered gambling if the price is either money, something you can redeem for money, merchandise, or a service.
Is the content of a loot box any of those? Well, that should be answered by a court setting precedent.

 

[Joom]

It's so clearly gambling I don't even know where to start.

In GTA you kill fake hookers. In these games you spend REAL money to get something of VALUE, RANDOMLY. Saying this isn't gambling is like saying Pachinko in Japan isn't gambling because you win "prizes."

Where did I say it wasn't? I'm saying that since kids are the concern here then maybe their parents shouldn't lend them their credit cards in the same sense that they probably shouldn't allow them to play mature video games (hence the GTA reference).

Finally: you claim that putting lootboxes under the same regulations as gambling somehow denies responsibilities from the gamers (and parents).

No, I didn't claim that. I claimed that conveniently blaming game developers rather than thinking "huh, maybe my 12 year old shouldn't have my credit card information" is irresponsible.

 

[kumikochan]

The government is trying to declare this as "gambling" so it can tax it. This is disgusting.

No it's not. I listened to what he had to say in Dutch and they're not. He said normally gambling is taxed by the goverment but they want to ban these lootbox thingies since minors can gamble on them. Belgium is making a problem out of it with all lootboxes. They're not making a problem out of micro Dlc because you know what you're getting but lootboxes be it cosmetic or pay to win is a game of chance and since minors play games it isn't allowed because you need to be over 18 to gamble. Good going, taking everything out of context

 

[Ritsuki]

I'll just stick to this bit because I see it brought up very often for whatever reason. Difference between a lootbox and cards is that, first of all, one is digital while the other is physical.
Second, you can trade the cards you don't want for the one you may want, hence the "trading" in the name.
Finally, if trading doesn't work, you can always buy the card you want. Sure, it could be expensive, but at least the odds are 100%, unlike whatever EA and many other companies try to pull.

You're right, but some loot boxes work like that. Should they be also banned ? Like I said in my post, when companies like EA do things like that, they really break the game experience, because you can't compete without buying loot boxes. If this is only for vanity items for example, why should that be a problem ? The items are not needed to play or to boost your skills, has no trading value, so basically the player knows he's just throwing money away.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Gambling is not just money for money, the prize can as well be almost any thing of value. At least in America, AFAIK, it would be considered gambling if the price is either money, something you can redeem for money, merchandise, or a service.
Is the content of a loot box any of those? Well, that should be answered by a court setting precedent.

Yeah but in this case we have to be on the same page as to what has value or not. IMHO if you get a service then it's not gambling because you're paying, and you get the service, in terms you've accepted. For example, there's a website where you can book an hotel for a very very low price. You just have to choose the city, but it will be randomly selected. Would you consider that as gambling or not ? Honestly, I wouldn't. I'm not defending EA, I actually hate loot boxes. I think microtransactions has nothing to do in video games.

 

[KingVamp]

So, I guess they won The Worst Company award again. lol Ok, maybe the second due to Net Neutrality.

 

[Deleted-355425]

Just sell items in game or dont, paying money on a gamble is a real shit thing to put in a game.

 

[kehkou]

I don't get why USA, since I can just look out the window here and see a real casino, but if it is to ban microtransactions I'm all for it.