ESA sent lobbyists to Hawaii to fight disclosure of loot box odds

>tl;dr - ESA sent their shills to lobby against legislation requiring the disclosure of loot box odds in Hawaii

Hawaii Representative Chris Lee questioned one of the lobbyists.
youtu.be/W1hQHZedRSE

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yaaas I love government meddling with video games YAAAAAS

libertarded c*ck

good goy

Nothing wrong with just knowing the odds

death to degenerate gamblers and the criminals who create them

>ESA sent their shills
What does the European Space Agency have to do with videogames?

>I literally have no control over my actions
>I can't stop buying loot boxes hellllllllllp

>stickers will definitely work
>nobody ever bought an 18-rated game when they were 13

They're funded exclusively with lootboxes.

Stickers will reduce marketability. There will be restrictions on advertising based on these stickers. It will discourage publishers from pushing it as hard as they currently are.
It will have zero impact on any consumer who enjoys it, they will continue to have the games they love.
It will only hurt the merchants and their ill-gotten gains.
What fucking excuse to you have to object to disclosure of odds and game content warnings?

What if I told you that the biggest companies in the world are basically already goverments?

>games with gambling mechanisms should be included in games marketed and sold to literal five year olds

>a sticker is too much to ask

>actually defending the right of a corporation to not disclose the odds of their gambling mechanisms

meanwhile twenty year olds are escorted up to their hotel rooms because they're one year shy of being able to walk the casino floor (on the way to their rooms) in Vegas because anti-gambling laws are so strict

Even if you honestly believe the bullshit you're spewing, how can you defend the lack of consistency? Or do you believe we should get rid of the gambling commission too?

>I don't mind being fucked over by an organization that hates me, just don't call it gubment!

This. Parents should be notified and odds should be disclosed at the very least

>muh hatred of the government
Meanwhile the department of homeland security funded and is giving us SWAT5

>Err... I can't answer that
These lobbyists weren't very well prepared

I really hate this mentality because George Orwell got it wrong. It would be the corporations, not the government that ends up ruling the world.

b-b-but the free market

Please tell me in detail what consumers have to lose by having loot box odds forcefully being disclosed

it's both, stupid

They didn't expect to be grilled on it, they usually expect politicians to bend over because generally there is a tacit unspoken fear of being unperson'd and run out of politics if you don't play ball with lobbyists for special interests

Not saying that can't still happen, lord knows there are some crooked fucks in our state legislature but generally we have some stand-up people in office.

I love Chris. He nails the ESA on exactly what he needed to. Strange listening to a politician who seems to understand what he's talking about.

this is correct
of course neither orwell or huxley were able or willing to identify the root cause of said combined government/corporate control

you already know what it is and always has been though. and it's not just stupid people.

Is the guy in the hawaiian shirt even a lobbyist? He says some pretty damning stuff about EA towards the end.

The ESRB could have prevented this by making lootboxes be an automatic adults-only rating. The ESRB is supposed to deter government regulation and they failed.

The issue is that they're all exploiting loopholes so they can say gambling isn't gambling. They say that since you never totally lose your money, it's not gambling. If you spend $2.50 hoping to get an item worth $100 but only get something worth $.01, does that really make it seem like it's not gambling anymore because you didn't lose it all? Gambling should just be labeled as gambling and given an appropriate rating, that's all. It doesn't need to be banned.

No one will shed a tear over this blatantly manipulative practice, it's a zero effort way of generating a potentially endless stream of revenue through randomization. If you want to sell players imaginary items for real money you should at least have the fucking decency to let them choose the exact items they want to buy. The legislators have explicitly stated that they don't want to regulate video game content, just this single mechanic.

And don't compare them to trading cards. They're not physical items you can own, trade or sell to recoup your loss.

Luckily this is an international issue now and it goes beyond corrupt ol' USA

Did you want the video?
It's 10 minutes of a politician asking the ESA why they don't rate lootboxes and 10 minutes of them replying "I don't know".

Are you retarded

YAAAAAS

Ill take that as a yes

Ye. Japan, China and Korea are the worst culprits with this gacha bullshit.
Especially since most of the time the cost to roll is expensive as hell and the chance to win is only about 5-7%.
Mobile gaming ruined everything.

I would argue that "skin betting" is irrelevant to the conversation as the businesses that run these sites are unaffiliated with valve in any way, nor does valve get any money from skin betting sites. There's no way on steam to cash out skins into real cash, it all has to be done via third parties and is also against the steam TOS.

Not saying that valve games should be exempt from all this, just that I wouldn't use arguments that give lobbyists ammo to blow away your credibility.

>video intro is him surfing shirtless
>pride and accomplishment
lol. based Hawaii

I wonder if one state enacting legislation would cause things to change in other states, simply because it would be easier to comply with Hawaii's laws everywhere than to split marketplaces and game boxes into one Hawaii-compliant version and one version for the other 49 states. Either way I totally support what they're doing

I have no doubt that it'll affect all products country wide or perhaps even continent-wide, the same way certain products even in canada have labels saying "This product contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer."

I mean, if they're forced to reveal the actual probabilities of getting specific items it's not like they can just not expect Hawaiians to keep it a secret.

That's actually not it, it's the fact that the items have no inherent monetary value linked to them that makes it "technically not gambling" but the concern is that it's functionally identical to gambling and can fuck up people with addictive personalities. People want it regulated because it's blatantly preying on children and people with addictive personalities in the same exact way gambling does.

>Japan, China and Korea are the worst culprits with this gacha bullshit.
They also have legal requirements to disclose their odds.

>Sup Forumsirgin neets are defending lootboxes
It's a bit ironic.

But I am not, fuck lootboxes and dlc

>If you spend $2.50 hoping to get an item worth $100 but only get something worth $.01, does that really make it seem like it's not gambling anymore because you didn't lose it all?
No that's still gambling. Look up false wins.

>disclosure of odds
Disclosing odds on slot machines doesn't change anything, stupid people still pump money into them. Real money microtransactions should be banned outright instead.

Wait nvm I'm a dumbass, disregard this post.

>Disclosing odds on slot machines doesn't change anything,
Good to know you're clueless on that matter. Thanks for your input.

What's wrong with DLC?

Nah, its corporations all the way since they can actually control the goverment and do whatever the fuck they want, look at how Disney opperates, they make their own laws

I'd love to be proven wrong. Got any data to show it makes a difference?

I really don't have time to explain to you the basics of why hidden odds might benefit a casino.
I'd probably need to start by explaining what numbers are.

oh so you're just making shit up. Got it. You should really add a warning to all your posts so other people don't waste their time reading the letters you mashed into your keyboard.

SEETHING

DLC is fine if it's treated like how "expansions" used to be. Just additional content on top of the full game. But stuff like on-disk DLC is horrible. Horse armor, etc.

OH NO NO NO NO

The obvious benefit is that without legally requiring "fair" machines and games with set odds, everything could be arbitrary and variable, so you could have machines that pay out nothing, ever, or worse, only at certain times or via certain triggers. Paying out more often when busy makes it appealing to the masses through inherent marketing.

scientificrevenue.com/

Or worse, they could be paying a middleman to calculate the precise moment to payout in order to increase sales and audience retention and otherwise hand out nothing.

>only at certain times
Golden wrench

This is a site that would bathe in shit to counter a Redditor being a neat freak.

How can you ever prove what counts as "additional content on the full game"? If you go ahead and make stuff like day-1/on-disc DLC illegal, developers are still going to make DLC alongside the game, they'll just keep it off disc or wait the legal minimum time before releasing it. If it's just "no small additions", there's no metric for measuring how much a game is actually adding or how much it's actually worth.

imo one of the main reasons DLC exists in its current form despite the fact that most people seem to dislike it, is because it's a response to the growing cost of producing high-budget games. People expect more from games but also expect them to cost less. A game that was $50 in 1990 could barely be sold for $5 if it was made now. Instead of needing 10 people to make a full-price game, now you need 100. DLC is a way of maintaining profitability while avoiding price hikes. People are much more willing to pay for a $60 game with $30 of addon content, than a $90 game that's feature-complete. Devs are increasingly turning to these scummy practices because the traditional model doesn't make the money it used to and in doing so have found it's really easy to exploit people's sense of sticker shock. e.g. a $60 game seems pricey but a $1 skin seems like a good deal even though the game took thousands of times more effort to make than the skin.

IT will reduce marketabillity to those who pushes it.
I suspect , that just to attract a precise group of consumers, publishers will start to release more game " Lootbox free" . You know, everything is free from something nowadays. Gluten free, sugar free etc.
This.
I will laugh my ass if they need to reveal retroactively. The fag that spent 1000$ for a specific skin is now shown that he had 0.00000001% of getting it and that the % of availability can be buffed depending on the players preference based on their current gear. And that for some other guy who doesnt care the ratio was 20%. He will get mad.
This
Lootbox odds aren't written in stone right now. They can be changed with algorythm that includes you and your desire as a variable. That's not fair. But hooo so profitable.

Kek

>Give Hawaii a modified version
>State chance is 5%
>non-Hawaii chance is 0.0005%

>this stimulates the Hawaiian economy

Go look up videos of the shitshow that resulted in the ESRB being created. No one sent to Washington to argue in favor of the companies looked like anything but buffoons.

Jake? Gav? Liam? Is it any of you guys from PGG?

Even if you think lootboxes or whatever are fine, you have to admit that revealed rates would be a good thing.

BIG GOVERNMENT ATTACKING SMALL BUSINESS

VOTE REPUBLICAN 2018

#REDTSUNAMI2018

It's good to reveal odds, but consider this. Every slot machine in the US has the odds printed on the front, by law. Even so, they generated 7 billion dollars in revenue in 2016. More than every other casino game combined.

So yes, it's good to reveal the odds, but if you think this will stop loot boxes in your games, you're completely wrong.

It won't stop them, because people are retarded and will buy them anyway. Gatcha proved that. It'll just be nice to know.

But gambling regulations are so strict only casinos adhere to them. You don't walk into a movie and get slot machines during the show.
It's fine if lootboxes stay, just keep them out of regular games.

>Every slot machine in the US has the odds printed on the front, by law
What?

Let me explain it in a way that you can understand. Let's say you want to get AIDS and there's 2 gloryholes you can go to one that tells you how many employed cocks have AIDS and one that doesn't. The exposed AIDS gloryhole proudly states that 1/100 of their cocks is poz but because you're a stupid faggot you go to the one that doesn't expose how many AIDS ridden cocks there are.

Also because you're a stupid faggot the hidden AIDS gloryhole has data indicating that you're a bug chaser. They assure you that at least one employed cock is positive and that's about all you get. The hidden AIDS gloryhole can do all sorts of nefarious things such as not having the AIDS cock penetrate you until your asshole is already destroyed by clean ones. The hidden AIDS gloryhole might go as far as to get more information on you so they can literally tell when you've spent as much as you reasonably could and only at that moment they'll give you poz loads.

At the exposed AIDS gloryhole you only had to suck and fuck about 100 cocks to get a poz load but at the hidden AIDS gloryhole it's possible they'll only give you AIDS when they believe it's more profitable to do so.

It draws attention to it, which is a factor for fighting it long term. It's harder to dismiss drop rates and time investments when they are forced to be put on the box.

>b-but think of the children!

>b-but think of the nosebergs!

>I love government meddling with gambling
Fixed.

No one seriously thinks this is going to kill lootboxes. Right now shit is just way to weighted in favor of the companies in ways we'd never allow in any other similar kind of business. If we're going to live in a free society, people have to be allowed to be rampant idiots. We just don't allow companies free reign to hide information that, in principle at least, let people make informed decisions on what stupidity they wish to take part in. It's telling that no matter what company it is, where they fall on the spectrum of F2P, P2P, microtransactions, and lootboxes, they really don't want you to know what the odds are when it comes to this stuff.

Also note Casino's are circumscribed in other ways, namely in where exactly you're allowed to have them. In the US, any way. People really don't fucking like those things near them. The real hurt to the lootbox situation isn't odds printing, which they definitely should fucking do anyway. It's being slapped with even a "gambling-like mechanics" label on the cover. Pokemon got fucking entirely fictional, in-no-way-tied-to-real-money slot machines cut out of their games because of that stink.

Lootboxes will never go away, that's just a fact of like life alcohol, drugs, and prostitution. And companies will continue to make mundo bucks on it. We simply decide to what degree these vices may impact our society and the ways the human brain is not properly equipped to deal with on its own. And then determine where to draw the line of regulation to best balance our freedom to choose and our duty to stop predatory actions. Right now the companies hold all the cards and they definitely shouldn't be.

>PAID LOBBYISTS
>PAID LOBBYING
>UNITED STATES OF FUCKING GEN X / BABY BOOMER MONEY CHASING RETARDATION AND BEING STUCK IN THE 1950'S IN MULTIPLE CATEGORIES

WILL SOMEONE PLEASE JUST ATTACK US?! JUST WIPE OUT D.C.

*rubbing hands intensifies*

>Sup Forums pretending the care about the children just because they don't like microtransactions

Unless you're unironically using it as an argument, in which case, congratulations, you've completed your metamorphosis from rational young adult to your mom in the 90's

Manchildren need to be protected. We look after our own

It won't happen this time, it's this guy opportunity to become known to the general public and get a secure seat in the senate. It's too good an opportunity for him to fuck it up.

If that is so; Pokemon, magic the gathering and all kinds of other TCG booster packs needed meddling long before lootboxes did - not to mention very many other similar types of products that have existed physically, tangibly and were sold and collected in very same manner loot boxes function now. And that was never an issue it seems.


HOLD UP: user IS SHILLING FOR THEM LOOTBOXES?
Nah, do not like them and EA can fuck themselves.
Could lootboxes use regulation, like Hawaii's wish for just disclosing on the box or sale page of the game that it includes element of lootboxes - sure. Seems fair enough, lootboxes stay but warnings for normies come in, everyone kinda wins.

But are lootboxes gambling? Not really, and if they are classified as such, then there is a whole lot of more to make into gambling and that is not just in video games, and those other practices are decades old now and only now with just one farce we are absolutely not ok with any of it? Please.


TL;DR:
People get on bootbox bandwagon because EA fucked it hard enough and it is alright to kick EA as much as you can when there is change of them tipping.

Lootboxes are not gambling tho.

Fuck lootboxes anyway.

I've been honest about that from the start. I want regulation just to punish the practice. It only hurts the merchants so why wouldn't I want that if it leads to better games.
Protecting muh kids is just a happy coincidence.

Only libcucks want government meddling in their lives.

>sold and collected in very same manner loot boxes function now
Is there any games outside of Valve's sphere of influence where you can trade and sell shit you get from lootboxes?

I think TCG booster packs should also be classified as gambling or at least a form of it. I think they've only escaped notice because they're so niche and because the cards can be traded. TF2 got away with lootboxes for years using basically the same premise. Any activity where you put in real money for a randomized chance of getting something valuable is basically gambling.

>government meddling

A free market can't exist without regulation. There's nothing inherently right or left about regulation.

user, the odds of tcgs are, generally, public knowledge. When mtg has extra special cards in packs, they even release the low low odds for them.

No, user is pulling shit from his ass as usual.

Exactly. The ESRB and PEGI should be self regulating, as that was the entire reason they were created in the 90s.. to avoid government meddling. I suspect the AAA publishers are paying the ESRB hush money to try and hold out as long as possible, before a decision has to be made. It is going to take an entire ordeal to get through to them. Government proceedings with the ESRB begging them not to interfere and that they will fix their mistakes.
But until then we all just have to suffer while the industry and the government bodies threaten each other.

I mainly want them gone because they are shittifying games but gambling is proven to ruin people's lives and I'm not edgy enough to think they deserve it because they didn't just stop. Knowingly preying on people's weaknesses such that their lives are worsened for it, is just as evil as outright defrauding them.

you retards can't stop thinking about them anyway

PSO2.
Japan only but:
Cosmetic shit is big. The game has fucking breast sliders and shit, you can guess how badly every Male AND Female player of the game want to dress up their characters, I am no different.

So PSO2 works in manner:
All cosmetic shit is released in 200jpy (~2eur ~2dollar) scratchers. What you get is from pool of whatever the scratcher has, changes every few weeks leaving third newest scratcher behind and thus, VERY valuable in future until any revival is made for some of the items.

EVERYTHING from these scratchers can be sold in player market, and markets also tell the in game money value of said item. Only way F2P only players get the items is buying them from markets.

Situation is kinda win win for both those who pay and those who pay for their play and those who don't. Paying people buy and sell shit, F2P players give money for that shit.

It's all in game but every paid item has inherit value of being a paid-item so they all have at least enough value that you can sell them for some money and collect up for shit-you-want. Some trash is trash in everyone's eyes enough to not have notable value trying to dent into big stuff but that is basics of it:

TL;DR:
PSO2
Every cosmetic is paid and lootbox
Everything from lootbox can be sold in markets for ingame money
Ingame money circulation and shit.


Yeah. Form of it? Possibly. I dunno if I use my own word for gambling I would agree but to me American/English word of Gambling kinda goes into possibility of real money for gambled money. Here it is just random change of getting something for your money, but you get SOMETHING for your money.
New schemes limit it with no trading so then "loosing" is a factor depending what you want and don't want for sure.

But for now, terminology of HARD GAMBLING with lootboxes is off, at least to this user.

spotted the jew EA shill

All I want is anti-trust laws

>more retards don't understand what gambling is

I don't actually care about the people who are addicted to loot boxes, not really. They're just a sympathetic face for the cause of FUCK LOOT BOXES. Obviously it sucks that people get hooked and spend their savings on this stupid shit, but we're really just using them to put an end to the kikery.

>PSO2.
THanks for remind me that we will NEVER EVER see an English release of hte only MMO I'd like to try.

>And that was never an issue it seems.
There's always been an issue, but the problem nowadays is the way digital goods fucks it all up. The barrier to entry was much higher for TCGs, because they were their own thing you had to specifically get at a store. They take up physical space and schools have banned them since forever. Lootboxes can be in any game, essentially bolted on or woven into an otherwise typical game and you're not going to know it unless you go looking for that information. There is also inherent difference between physical and digital and it's not that physical cardboard is somehow inherently more valuable. It's because once you have the physical good, it's yours. You've still bought an actual fucking thing you can do whatever with. Digital goods are entirely dependent on the software environment they're a part of. You haven't bought an item. You've paid for the game to allow you access to a part of it that was always there but you weren't allowed to use. It's also important to note that in TCGs, every card is, technically, a part of the game. Things may be worthless if you're building a different deck or have like 50 of them, but even the most min-maxed decks will have some kind of variation in the rarity of cards. With skins and items and so on, it's all either or. You don't construct a 60 card or whatever thing, you're after one of few things you want.

I don't disagree that TCGs should maybe get another look. If there's something there to look at, it should be looked at. But it's clear companies have shifted in how they treat this. TCGs are their own damn genre. Lootboxes are trying to infect every single kind of game the companies can figure out how to shove them into. TCGs can't have the odds edited on the fly. The physical nature allows a free market around individual cards to develop. It ends up being the very thing people say lootbox system should offer: the ability to just fucking buy the item even at stupid prices.

>but you get SOMETHING for your money.
Sprays are literally worse than nothing. Stop with this. And even then, no you're not actually getting anything for your money because these goods are not real and will die when the servers do.

nothing personnel

>Any activity where you put in real money for a randomized chance of getting something valuable is basically gambling.
not by US law it isn't. Both sides need to be able to win and both sides need to be able to lose for it to be considered gambling. In both booster packs and loot boxes, there is no way for the seller to lose. The costs for them to produce the cards or unlock the items are the same regardless of what you get