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Belgium says loot boxes are gambling, wants them banned in Europe
- Thread starter Froz3n
- Start date
Well a good example would be Assassins Creed Origins. I love the game, its a great game. However, when it requires me to grind for hours to upgrade my armor and weapon pieces by hunting animals thats just a waste of my valuable time. I have a job and a family I cant be sinking 6+ hours just into hunting virtual animals, hell Im lucky if my wife lets me spend that much time hunting real animals.
I don't buy them at all. But you'd have to be in a coma to not be able to see where it is impacting game design and where content is being partitioned off. It is the same song and dance a map packs - it only takes a small fraction of people to ruin it for everyone.
Phalk
Neo Member
If they're going to do that the games would also need to be rated for adults only.
Do you not realize a lot of these games are aimed at kids?
Petrae
Member
Good. When publishers are too fucking greedy and refuse to regulate themselves, its time for governments to come in and do it for them.
Fortunately for these publishers, though, one of their biggest markets (the U.S.) has a government that is staunchly pro-business and will continue to cast a blind eye to this shit. The exploitation will keep on going here.
Fortunately for these publishers, though, one of their biggest markets (the U.S.) has a government that is staunchly pro-business and will continue to cast a blind eye to this shit. The exploitation will keep on going here.
BlitzerRadic
Member
I bought plenty of baseball card packs when I was a kid. So the save the kids argument is silly.
theclaw135
Banned
The snowball effect is only fair. Ban loot boxes and you have to apply equivalent logic to trading cards or similar schemes.
Malcolm9
Member
The difference being is those packs of cards you bought were pretty cheap compared to the loot box stuff going down.
Rocket Number 22
Member
Thats my stance also
Which ones? The ones who have a mature rating sticker on it? I never saw lootboxes on games like bubsy and co.
DiscoJer
Member
Trading cards usually have their rarity listed though. Uncommon, rare, up to mythic or epic. And the odds actually exist in reality. They put X amount of super-rare cards in Y amount of boxes. When it's a RNG and electronic, the rarity is only a vague guide.
dark_chris
Gold Member
I hate lootboxes.
Anything to combat that trashy practice is good enough for me
Anything to combat that trashy practice is good enough for me
The difference with cards is that you could trade or sell them.
The difference with cards is that there was not a 60$ paywall before you could buy them.
The difference with cards is that you could not accidentally buy them.
The difference with cards is that you have disclosed somewhere on the package the odds of rare cards.
The difference with cards is that you could only get cards, unlike in games where you can get from skins to grafittis.
The difference with cards is that you only had to spend time when going to buy them, not losing your time in a grindy mess.
The difference with cards is that not a single card affected gameplay (do not know well for card games like Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh how this works), which is funny because nowadays every online game is fucking E-Sports and they have this shitty business model.
And simply put, it is most likely that the market of cards is much more regulated.
On top of MTX, we still have shitty DLC and Season Passes. You have to pay for online access on consoles. There was a time when some companies locked content on disc or day one DLC. Or they tried to destroy the second hand market by adding a code to access the online or content. And now they add this, so yeah, I think we have the right and plenty of reasons to be angry about this situation.
I also bought many collecting cards as a child, and I was not against this type of business when these practices could only be found in F2P games. But when I bought Gears 4 and saw the F2P aspect, I felt the game was a cheap version of GoW, instead of an AAA project (and do not get me started on the whole horde mode being available only for gold users and always online, although that is offtopic).
Gamezone
Gold Member
So will used games apparently..
Schrödinger's cat
Banned
Agreed. Few have thought this through.
At best, this results in some disclaimer added to the EULA of games. At worst, something different will be introduced that'll make people yearn for Lootboxes to return.
More significantly, this is the advent of government-endorsed content regulation. Regulation brings enforcement and penalties. Who is going to do that? How are games to be regulated? Who decides?
Consumers have just said "We can't decide for ourselves by simply not purchasing the undesirable product on a free market - Hey government, it's time for you to take control!"
How far will government regulation on the content of videogames actually go now that the door has been opened?
Be careful what you wish for.
llien
Member
MilkyJoe
Member
How is paying for a chance to get something not gambling? Do you hear yourself?
BlitzerRadic
Member
lol do you think all baseball card packs are like $.25 or something? When I was a kid topps finest cards were $30 - $50 per pack. People paid that much because rare refractor cards were worth hundreds of dollars. The most desired card was a Nolan Ryan, I believe it was going for around $1k at the time and card shops sold these packs to anyone, even kids!!
Loot boxes are the digital equivalent of baseball card packs.
holland666
Member
Good, EA and all those other companies that encourage gambling have to be punished.
Rhetorical Question
Member
Schrödinger's cat;253046087 said:
While I think that goverment-endorsed regulation in that regard would be a straight censorship, which is a bad thing, I also believe that the state of microtransactions and lootboxes cannot be let as it is. Adult people should be able to do what they want, as long as they are not harming anyone with it, but it's a different story for kids. Microtransactions in general must be behind parental lock, and if they aren't, the game must be rated accordingly, so only adults can grab this game, or at least so the parents are informed to what kind of games their kids are exposed.
There are enough ways for kids to spend their pocket money on that digital garbage, you can't prevent that just by not giving them access to your credit card.
Also another thing is the damage the gamedesign is taking from the lootboxes being in mind of developers while developing a game. Yes, it is present, and yes, it sucks a lot, but if that's what the majority wants (which is obviously, because else we wouldn't have that shit in our games), then who am I, or we, or the goverment to decide for them? If you're not ok with MTX, don't buy the game, it's that simple. You have to stay consequent on that matter, even if you'll probably go through the sacrifices to not playing certain games.
I for myself am replaying a lot of good old singleplayer games that I learned to love. And I can go for the next 20 years with them without it getting boring for me.
GreatnessRD
Member
People who want the price of games to go up are at fault, too. Publishers and Developers just need to make a great game and people will buy it regardless. DLC is 'meh', but if you put out something worthwhile, then I'll buy that and support your billion dollar business. Micro-trans are not needed and just a money grab pure and simple. DLC is also a money grab but MOST of the time less scumbaggy, if that makes sense. Gaming is so sad now, the line is blurry on what's substance and what was taken away and sold back again.
BlitzerRadic
Member
Most of the stuff you listed is basically a personal rant about why you don't like loot boxes and not any basis for why they should be classified as legal gambling.
One thing you did mention however - odds for rare cards. The reason that's disclosed is get people to buy an entire box of cards.
Schrödinger's cat;253046087 said:
How melodramatic of you.
No one wants more expensive games. Just standard honesty.
Is there some disconnect that people dont understand the many, many different price points and business models that publishers know and understand that will still create massive revenue but are simply avoiding out of Potential risk. You think this current business model/creep is somehow beholden to the consumer. They are serving shareholder fortunes. This is not state-of-the-art gaming, this is closer to snake oil salesmen let loose in the wild wild west.
Agent_4Seven
Tears of Nintendo
GET THE FUCK OUT with your p2w, lootboxes, MTs and mobile paywalls!
Like?
What's shittier than constantly being taking out of my immersion by gambling practices?
Anything can be considered a personal rant if you do not like it then. Good to know.
Cato
Banned
Agree 100%
A rating of Adults Only
and a
Sticker on the box that says "contains gambling with real money".
Is all I ask for.
EdwardTivrusky
Member
The article from PCGamer has been updated to say that this is what the Belgians are raising. They want clarity of contents on lootboxes etc just like CCGs have had for years. Every CCG pack has the odds printed on the back. I'm sure their points will be clarified over the next few days when journos end up reading the proposal properly.
Updated paragraph from OP:
Anyway, Games Pubs will just get their lawyers to find ways to weasel around it or they'll have to be transparent with their odds and they won't be able to just silently change them on the people who have to buy lootboxes.
I wonder how pissed other publishers are with EA right now. This has been going on for a while and stayed off the mainstream radar until EA went comic book villain with it, on a property that is huge with kids, no less. Whatever arguments there are to be made about GTA or COD being M rated and for adults, that does not apply to Star Wars.
Woo-Fu
Banned
So that means the price of games that don't have lootboxes should already have gone up. Oh wait, they haven't.
Woo-Fu
Banned
You're confusing two different issues, and maybe they are too.
"Cosmetic is fine" is a comment on DLC, with direct comparison to pay-to-win.
As far as gambling goes, the big difference is whether or not you can buy those boxes with real-world currency. Which means you can have lootboxes without it being gambling as such, and/or not any different than other random-drops in-game, you just can't sell those boxes.
Loot boxes are unlikely to be banned directly in Europe. Online gambling, e.g online poker or slot machines to begin with is legal in the EU, it's just more tightly regulated via gambling laws.
If this goes through more thorough regulations will be put in place to keep minors out with more reliable age checks, but the practise itself isn't gone yet.
If this goes through more thorough regulations will be put in place to keep minors out with more reliable age checks, but the practise itself isn't gone yet.
Schrödinger's cat
Banned
I'm working on a proven precedent, not fiction.
Reactionaries don't think about things fully. Then they complain about things when the reality of the situation dawns on them.
As someone who has enjoyed this hobby since the early 80s and seeing it transform from cottage to a global industry I saw, so many times, the wishes for computer games to be accepted by the mainstream, as a legitimate hobby that wasn't sneered at..
..and since that happened, the littany of complaints ranging from 'good old days' and 'filthy casuals' to 'it's all driven by profit' show that people should be careful about what they wish for.
I largely agree with all of this. A little discipline goes a long way. Sadly, it's asking too much of most.
N1tr0sOx1d3
Given another chance
I stand with the majority here. I'm glad that potentially something will be done.
I just want to buy a game and enjoy all the content I purchased.
I just want to buy a game and enjoy all the content I purchased.
Metal Gear?!
Member
Regulation of business practices is not "straight censorship" what the hell
Memorabilia
Member
Are you surprised that people don't have a fucking clue about the basic difference between business regulation and censorship? I'm not. The fact that so many argue against the former by falsely conflating it with the latter isn't just happenstance of most people receiving a poor education. People are this dumb and tend to argue (or, say, vote) against their own best interests by design.