Are regulators secretly paid off by game companies or is this just OLD MEN kind of thinking

Are regulators secretly paid off by game companies or is this just OLD MEN kind of thinking

Regulators actually understand law, unlike the children struggling to pass English 10 that browse this board.

The US always manages to combine the worst qualities of an overbearing government and unrestrained corporatism.

fpbp
stop playing new games Sup Forums

Theyre "not gambling" in the sense that investing in the stock market also is "not gambling".

>tfw you stopped playing new games in 2006

WARNING

Just old men thinking. Remember that it was old men that made weed illegal in the US.

oh fuck!

or children who buy these loot boxes
or addicts
they don't understand law really, just like you.

I mean, have you ever asked yourself why regulations exist? order? but order for whom?

god I fucking hate republicans

>collectible card games
>widely regarded as an acceptable industry with nobody making an issue out of booster packs

>companies do the same with games
>customers suck corporate dick
>have to call for regulations on said dick-sucking

How cucked can you get?

>Giving children your credit card info
>Addicts who willingly put themselves in these situations to begin with

Maybe if you're an addict don't buy loot crates

Then we need to change the law.

>no one is truly intelligent but me
The best sign that an user is younger than 30.

It's all about protecting our corporate overlords and making the almighty shareholders more and more and more money above all else. Fuck the world and the people, money money money money money.

while I dont support locking pay to win weapons and armor in lootboxes, lootboxes themselves arent actually gambling because there is no chance the buyer can lose. you always get something from the box.

One is a real and tangible tradeable item that can be assigned worth as determined by what people are willing to pay for it, and the other is a worthless piece of code that you don't even physically own in the first place.

1. you can buy individual cards
2. you dont have to buy meme currency to conceal the amount of actual money you're spending when buying cards
3. cards are perfectly tradeable, resellable, etc.

>tfw you know someone's gonna edit that image into a log post

booster card packs are gambling too. nobody is making a fuzz out of it because it doesnt attract normies, only low-end people nobody cares about.

>if you know you're addicted to gambling, then stay out of casinos and don't buy loot crates
>loot crates aren't gambling though
Which is it? You can't have it both ways.

I don't think it's appropriate for you to doubt the judgement of Government Experts.

What the fuck is english 10? is that what 2019 hs grads call english 2?

>dude just stop your addiction
ok

You lose every time you open a $2.50 box and receive a 10c item back.

I graduated in 1999 and that's what we called the Sophomore English class

Actiblizz literally lobbies foreign governments. Of course they've got everyone in their pockets. They're all complicit.

you typed 2019 wrong

Retard

Its a game of chance. With money. Thereby gambling.

Maybe, just maybe, people call things differently in different areas of the world. Not everyone who has different experiences than you is underage.

The ESRB is INDUSTRY SELF REGULATION. So is PEGI. It's not hard to understand why they wouldn't touch monetization.

based user shitting on literal redditors

>want item X
>only way to get it is lootbox
>get item Y instead
how is it not gambling
you pay for a product and there's only a chance you actually get it

I should point out I dont mean that in the strictest most literal sense. I did not mean gambling as in taking a chance, I meant gambling as understood by us lawmakers specifically.

>muh children
Loot boxes aren't gambling.
Kinder eggs reward kids who buy them with random toys.
Collectible card booster packs reward kids who buy them with random cards.
Loot boxes reward kids who buy them with random virtual toys.

They're stupid shit aimed at retards, sure, but regulating or banning loot boxes isn't going to ban other scummy business practices. Even if they got regulated they're just going to be replaced by normal micro-transactions and other P2W shit that existed well before loot boxes, and those don't have a legal justification for regulation. Retards are going to keep supplying greedy publishers with shekels either way. On the other hand letting government easily dictate what kind of games you can or can't play or what kind of shit they can have sets a nasty precedence and could negatively affect other vidya in the future, the type that are seen "unfit" for the consumption of the masses for whatever reason.

If you spend real money then get miscellaneous shit instead of the stuff that actually matters then yes, you've lost something, but then again, how do you objectively measure the value of something if you can't spend actual money for it? You could argue getting some shitty camo for your gun has the same value as unlocking a gun/hero since they don't have any real prices attached to them.

To claim it isn't gambling with such certainty is fucking stupid. They're straddling a grey line and they know it, and retards like you don't help.

software isn't a tangible, physical product. it can be taken away freely at any time.

How are loot boxes gambling? As I understand it you pay for the loot box and it's guaranteed to contain an item. If there's no way for the box to be empty then it's not risking money.
Or have I missed something and you can pay for it and get jack shit in return?

So steam games are gambling since its not tangible

>Millward further explained that video game players “do not purchase loot boxes seeking to win money or something that can be converted into money.”

What is tf2/dota2/cs:go

Kek

It makes video games bad.

Greed needs to be stopped with full force. Those evil motherfuckers will prey on anyone that has a cent to spare and suck them dry.

So what are saying is that since the loss state isnt 0, that it isn't gambling? So when does las vegas convert to "always win 1 cent" non-gambling card games?

>too poor to purchase loot boxes so he complains to the government to regulate it, like some kind of communist.

I thought you losers were all about open capitalism or whatever.

I play this game and I don't have kids yet. But my husband makes enough that I have almost ever skin in overwatch just from buying boxes.

If you're pinching pennies, maybe you're just too poor to be playing these games. If your kids are wasting your money, maybe they should get a job or something. I always thought if kids couldnt afford lunches at school, they should do things like clean the building or work with the janitor after school to pay for it.

steam games lack the element of chance you intentionally obtuse retard
if you buy a game you get that game

Lootboxes are not gambling because the company that sells them has no "lose" state when you open the box. Regardless of what you get in the box, the company performs the same action of unlocking items in your game. That's a called providing a service, not gambling.

I began by stating that I didnt approve of the practice, but I clarified that the practice is certainly not gambling. trying to halt the practice of locking pay to win gear behind lootboxes by calling it gambling is a bad move on our part because it doesn't hold water as an argument. what gamers need to do is just not buy or play games that use this practice.

>Puzzle & Dragons comes out and everyone knew it had gambling mechanics for kids shortly after release
>Game premium laws were made over the years because kids and otaku keep dumping money into gachapon and everyone took apart the ToS and rates

>CSGO gets revived and AAA games started incorporating gachapon
>"NUH UH IT'S NOT GAMBLING CAUSE YOU CAN'T GET MONEY OFF IT"
Fucking westerners, you know pachinko is considered gambling because you could trade in points for real money in a building next to the parlor. You could pull some amazing skin in a game and just RMT the account or skin and make money off of that through Paypal instead of steambux.

Look up the legal definition of gambling in the USA you utter retard

They aren't gambling as you get something out of it, whether or not it's something you want is a different story.

Games are on an entirely different level.
>Each booster pack contains a set amount of cards, usually with at least a rare and 3 uncommons. You have an idea of the pack's value.
>Cards have real value and trading allows you to get the cards you wanted even if you didn't get lucky when opening packs.
>Cards are used to play the game, they have value based on their practicality and not only rarity.
>TGC have been called out multiple times for being too expensive, you can buy the cards you want directly but doing so might cost you lots of money.
Meanwhile on vidya
>Each lootbox contains whatever bullshit they want to put on it, maybe you want a weapon skin but the lootbox can also contain emotes, taunts and dragon dildos for all you know. How much are you getting from your purchase? No way to know an estimate.
>"Loot" has no real value, their content can't be traded or sold. There are few exceptions to this rule.
>Loot comes in 5 or more tiers of rarity for no real reason, increasing the chance of getting duplicates.
>Someone more educated than me may call this value obfuscation.
>Corporate cocksuckers rush to defend lootboxes at any oportunity.

>Grind for hours to unlock everything
or
>Pay real money for the POSSIBILITY to unlock everything and be able to enjoy the full product from the get go
Theoretically it isn't gambling since it's the consumer making the decision to shorten the time it takes to gain access to something which they could've gotten eventually without sinking in a penny. Still, if a priced game is withholding content from its buyers, then that has to set off a few alarms I would think.

I know nothing about law, I'm just sick of slimy practices getting a pass.

So if i gave you two choices here:

Pay me 2000 dollars and you have a chance to win either:

A) A car

Or

B) A small rock i found at the park

You wouldnt call this gambling? Because after all no matter what, you at least get a rock, so not gambling?

Well if there's no chance to come away empty handed then it's not strictly gambling.
It's like buying a raffle ticket where you're guaranteed a prize. It most likely won't be what you actually want but since you can't have no prize it's not a gamble.

It is gambling, just look up the definition. It's just not regulated by the law in this form.

Meant for:

So, alas, why does the vegas strip not adopt this to allow minors to "totally not gamble"?
In fact, why hasnt really anybody does this in terms of slot machines or other such games?

>REEEEEE THINK OF THE CHILDREN REEEEEEEE

>game loot crates are the same as stock trading

If you buy a raffle ticket, you're guaranteed to receive the ticket.

Except it's more like

A) A small rock i found at the park
B) A small rock i found at the park, but painted blue!

You are in control, it's why the Phrase "Vote With Your Wallet" exist but morons don't know when to put the wallet away. Calling it "Gambling" is a convenient excuse you paint yourselves as victims when you waste your money on stupid shit, What value do you get out of a Rare Drop these days? Most of these games don't even let you sell these items to others except for TF2 and CSGO which some how got away with it for years now. Battlefront II let you pay actual money for small advantages which was a bigger problem than the random chance lootboxes that you could just skip for the rewards themselves. Microtransactions and DLC themselves are linked to this issue and this solves nothing because banning it won't stop them from finding other ways to nickle and dime for content and If it's just classified gambling it still means moronic adults will be the audience that claims their the victims of their own horrible spending habits.

Great choice of words! It's almost like a fifteen year old trying to sound like a master of the English language.

I don't give much of a fuck if anyone is getting bled dry consenually, regardless of their state of mind, but the lootbox shit in games like Destiny 2 and the level of divide between cash shop shit and actual content is absurd. Approximately half of the items that were introduced in the PAID DLC were walled up behind lootboxes, which were gated behind an obfuscated experience system, eventually being placed behind a huge timegate to grind.

>Let's regulate industry X with fallible human beings who happen to be politicians
>Industry X begins to pay off and form quid-pro-quo relationships with up and coming politicians
>Now the major players of Industry X have government influence, giving them untold power over competition.
This almost always fucking happens too.
>"regulator"
>not just some ex-executive who got installed into a regulatory position by some politician who got paid off
You must think the recent NN vote was fair since the voting board for that was full of 'regulators'

>but it's gamblin'!
>think about the chillunz! abloo bloo bloo
Get bent.

PUBG as well, which contributes to hackers, it's annoying af desu

they are. thats what this thread is about. also, blind boxes and card games.

Consideration, chance, and a prize makes virtually any game 'gambling' in America, that's why sweepstakes have to have "no purchase necessary" boilerplate, or they'd be considered lotteries.

was I the first to think of this when I saw your image?

>you have to pay 60 to pay another 10 to get a couple boxes that might have this thing you want
>you have to pay 20 to get this thing you want or you can buy a couple packs for 10 to try and get this thing you want

>people are incapable of controling their impusles and end up making dumb purchases
Thats a perfect reason to regulate this shit, to protect the public.

CCG booster packs are technically gambling too, it's just that they're not publicized enough to be legislated against. If slapping down lootshit slaps down boosters, I wouldn't get all that mad.

This. "A fool and his money are soon parted." Lootboxes are stupid, but people trying to get the government involved in this is just retarded and would only make things worse.

How is it consensual? They have an army of psychologists to trick you into buying that worthless shit (and as a side effect, making a good game is a secondary objective)

I'd be stoked if all card games moved towards a LCG model with set expansion packs

I believe that these ideas work under the concept that a blind box always has an item of a set value by its company. The secondary market creates its value through demand. But no individual blind box content is more "rare" than the others. You always get one, you always get any random one. This is the same logic that card games have used for a long time. Which tends to deviate quite largely from loot boxes. Which, whilst they use baseline loot common, always can replace the entire loot with super rare special bonuses, etc. Overwatch is a prime example of this. You always get G/G/B/G, but it could be 4x legendaries. Each packs worth is not set and so inherently a gamble.

That being said, all media has been pushing this boundary as well. MTG introduced mythic rares that replace like 1:7 rares, for example. But even then, those markets can fall back on secondary markets to get what you want. You cannot do this in any non-valve game.

Fuck off facist

Even smart people fall for this shit, it's addictive.

How would they make things worse? If loot boxes were gambling we'd have: companies registering for gambling licenses and having to publicly list what games hace gambling in them, all games with loot boxes being restricted to people aged 21+, or companies being banned from using lootboxes. What's so bad about ANY OF THESE?

If exploitation of dumb consumers is left unchecked it'll either lead to an industry shift where EVERY effort is directed towards cattering to these retards or a simple crash.

I'm not sure I'd want the government to step in but I can understand how powerless some people feel when watching this mess unfold, and the desperate need for some kind of contingency to keep retards from being so fucking retarded.

>it's why the Phrase "Vote With Your Wallet" exist
It doesn't work here, it didn't ever, the whole system works thanks to an extreme minority of users.

You have physical value with cards. More than just the game but collector's value as well for unused and well kept cards that went out of cycle years ago. Games with Lootboxes taking the place of just getting the items via natural game progression don't have that same value, they can't cross over to new games and you can't sell it years later if the Game is Long Dead and has no Playerbase. Regulations are stupid but it's obvious why this shit dosen't work on a game to game basis. Lootboxes don't need to be banned but they shouldn't be in games to begin with.

Not really, consider CS:GO weapon values. You're paying $2.50 a in hopes you'll get something worth as much as $2000. Conversely you're challenging the implicit value of the dollar against the odds of the roll in the game when you're examining systems like OW where the value is intangible. To expound: Say you want the unique Mercy "Devil" skin, the odds that you'll roll that must be weighed against the amount of money it will take to make that roll, which dictates the closest thing to an objective value for that item.

Just because value is obfuscated doesn't mean that it isn't there. The fact anyone in any gaming community is willing to defend this is appalling.

If you can earn in game money for loot boxes then the gambling argument fades but doesn't disappear. If you can never buy loot boxes with anything but real money then it's gambling.

Is it sane to think of this as a smart person vs a whole lot of dumb people wasting money? If so I feel a lot better and care less than usual.

They would just stop doing them, for the most part. Just like how Valve could have made its refund policy EU only, but it instead did it for everyone. It saves them the headache of having to manage who can or can't refund.

Since EA/Blizzard/Valve/etc cannot really regulate who is or isn't 18/21+, they would just not bother entirely or move loot boxes to whatever would not make them legally gambling anymore. This would, most likely, mean they would move loot boxes to set rarities and tiers. You open a box and always get a legendary skin, you just don't know which skin, etc.

the mark of contrarian dipshit /iamverysmart/ redditor

>bet on all numbers on a roulette

>HURR IT'S NOT GAMBLING BECAUSE I'M GUARANTEED TO GET SOMETHING

Fucking this.
I know what this analogy will imply here but stay with me to the end here.

Do you ever wonder why bait works? A lot of fish are stupid, but there's smart marine life out there too. So why then do the smart fish get caught along with the stupid fish? The answer is that the bait is designed to catch fish, not stupid fish, and not smart fish, but all fish.
The same logic applies to lootboxes. It doesn't matter how smart you are, it's designed to suck in everyone, not just idiots or rich kids. If they weren't designed that way they wouldn't work.

It's more "smart person vs. many less smart people who spend a little money vs. a few mentally unfit people and children who spend a LOT of money".

samefag more

>people disagree with me and I don't have a counter argument, better call them samefag

>Are regulators secretly paid off by game companies

no, payoffs in the form of sinecure hires are common knowledge.

I've only bought lootboxes once, for OW, because it cost me $40, and I valued it at $60, it was voluntary. I have two dozen crates in CS:GO and I haven't bought keys for a single one, you can argue the victimology stance all you want, but they volunteered to spend their money to buy those chances for that roll for that item. If you're going to make that argument you have to make it for everything that is brought to market with any model of advertising at all.

this

Jesus fucking christ you're insult an opposing view while provide no constructive criticism of said view.... just like a child would do.

Good job faggot.

Anyways, the very regulators you are talking about have ruled in other cases that loot boxes are a form of gambling - of which they are. The issue is how you determine what should be regulated gambling as most governments would not regulate capsule vending machines or mystery boxes (of the toy variety).

The greater issue here is how video game addiction combined with the average time people spend on video games foster a more severe form of gambling addiction than most other things. Likewise, most games don't allow for individuals to purchase the individual item that they want which means that there is no way to bypass the gambling aside from gaining sufficient in-game credits which does nothing but feed the loop - It's just as how you would buy a holographic star pokemon card from another kid back in the day, or go on ebay to buy an individual mystery box figure that you wanted, but now imagine that you need to trade x amount of cards to gain said card or x amount of figures to obtain said figurine.

....and that's where a major contention is: if video game developers and publisher just allowed for flat purchases of game items, there wouldn't be as great an issue.

There's literally no good argument for regulating loot boxes.

>it's gambling
No it isn't. It's perfectly analogous to trading cards and those have been allowed for over a century without the gambling label.
>it's exploiting children!
Parents are responsible for their children. The only way these kids are able to buy loot boxes is with parental permission and money.
>it's addictive
So are video games. Should we ban those?
>but I don't like loot boxes?
You don't get to ban everything you don't like. Lots of people don't like video games period. Should we ban those?
>loot boxes ruin the games they're in
Then don't buy them. Most games don't use loot boxes.

>play slots
>get a single sesame seed every time I play, get a trinket the casino will buy for n dollars if I trade it in at the cashier
IT IS NOT GAMBLIIIIING LOL WHY DID NOBODY THINK OF THIS BEFORE?!