Belgium wants to ban loot boxes...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/11/22/belgium-aims-to-ban-loot-boxes-in-europe

Interesting, and with some wide implications. (if not narrowly defined). I am never a fan of slippery slope arguments, but this feels like this might fall under that description. Granted the BFII stuff was handled very badly, but does it require legislation?

 

Does Magic The Gathering still have random booster packs?
You could actually sell rare cards for real money.

 

Battlefront boxes were almost directly tied to progression with almost completely random contents (ie. could just get useless poses). I've never played TGM or etc. but seen some card openings and with the boxes you at least know what you get plus have guaranteed rares?

 

Exactly. In physical products this is super common, heavily with kids toys.

 

Valve loves money too much to allow restrict random box.
Probably tons of F2P(And not) developers will be yelling at Belgium if they really ban boxes.

 

Not sure if guaranteed rares in a box, but yes I think its true.
If you buy 2+ display boxes filled with booster packs you will very likely get all the rares, if not you would have plenty of cards to trade away to get them. I had a friend who would buy several display boxes. He would put together a set of all commons and give them to me

Everything I just said was true 10+ years ago, no idea how it works now.

 

Magic still works that way. For every booster pack you get a specific number of commons and uncommons, and 1 rare or very rare. The value of the rare card varies greatly though, as it depends on the game's meta (as in how important that card is to building a powerful deck), from borderline worthless to over $100 USD.

 

I'm not against loot boxes, but their implementation is the problem.
In games like Battlefront 2 you can not choose a server you want to play on. (Hell you can not even choose which map to play...) So you could potentially end up with ppl that invested a lot of money and will have a distinct advantage. Without even the slightest chance to prevent that by, for example, choosing another server or hosting your own.

In a physical trading card game like Magic, i can choose if i want to play against a player that has invested thousands of dollars into his deck. So the 'bought advantage' is not really a problem in such a game.

I'm pretty convinced that the recent lack of dedicated servers in MP games (e.g. COD WW2, Battlefront 2) is not only driven by saving money on servers, but at the same time by maximizing profit with loot boxes. The 'matchmaking system' will ensure that the players find a reason to pay for additional loot boxes....

 

I have yet to see a single argument for loot-boxes that benefits a consumer. Banning may be a severe reaction, but if that's what it takes to remove this exploitation from the industry, I'm fully behind it. (And I will defend to the death that it is indeed exploitation). Classifying as gambling is a small step forwards, at least it will partially help protect children (but honestly, how many children play games they shouldn't already? I'm yet to see how this classification would remedy the situation). But the problem is also the exploiting of those with vulnerabilities and addiction problems, it definitely needs laws surrounding it in some form.

 

hmm Valve has lootcrates in tf2 and weapon crates in csgo...

I think its about time Valve got back to making actual F***ing games and making the steam platform less S***(it really should be better)...for all the money they make skimming off publishers and developers selling on the platform. I don't see why they need to be in the whole scamming children (and well adults aswel) into buying keys to unlock stupid boxes ... it really is promoting a form of addiction that has nothing positive about it, and I've never liked it in either of those games, sure maybe once in a while someone gets lucky on a something that isn't garbage or has a resale value that isn't below what they wasted on the keys..who knows what the 'rates' are.. its scamming players really.

It shouldn't be in games that can have a young and susceptible audience that can easily be enticed by it. I've never once bought a key for that S***... frankly its poor taste the way they've exploited millions of gamers into accepting it in games they otherwise enjoy playing. They could still keep marketing sellable skins but the gambling on boxes needs to take hike out of games than younger audiences can play. I'm sure Valve would statisticized that giving gamers lootboxes has kept millions still playing these same old games though.

not that I give a crap, I'll play an older game because its good or the competitiveness is there so I'm fine with belgiums stance on this one, and hope Valve S*** a brick on the possible implications of having to do some work on making actual games again...or the work on removing loot boxes probably delayed as much as possible because of ...valve time... lazy F***s

 

I am against government regulations for things which can be resolved by individual decisions of each person: not to buy, not to play, not to buy micros etc. No need for governments to intervene... Perhaps only place 18+ label on the game, but that is maximum regulation i would support in this case.

 

Slippery slope arguments are often correct, it's the timing that is usually off because there are a lot of things that can postpone the inevitable or temporarily reverse the process.

What bugs me though on a more practical level about this particular case, is how we just keep absolving parents of responsibility. I mean in this case it's actually the parents who foot the bill. And while making loot boxes illegal might protect a few wallets, it teaches kids nothing really. It's kind of the opposite of tough love. Where we say if you can't be bothered to be a parent, we will bail you out. Which just makes it easier for parents to not have to be parents.

 

Loot boxes being predatory in nature only has the slightest thing to do with children. These games target and exploit adults too.

 

Actually, it was Disney who put the stop on the loot boxes to protect their IP. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Honestly, I think forcing people to pay to progress their character is lame. And even worse, the game has been marketed to children...Star Wars, of course. Not that adults are not exploited, but you target kids and everyone is up in arms, as they should be.

 

I am the first one to say that many parents do not take responsibility for their kid's game habits or their phone bills.

However, in this case, we have a game where you pay $60 and then have to pay to progress the character if you actually want to be able to compete.

You also have a game where parents may store credit card information such as on Steam or Xbox (or whatever console this game is on...PS4?). It is quite easy for a kid to buy stuff. Yes, the parents should be responsible, but some of these things require a credit card to even work!

 

This is my thought too. It needs to come with conditions.

Certainly, but children are much more likely to play games and for longer, so this is a bigger risk category.

Adults can buy booze as well, but we can't stop those at risk having a drink. We can only advise.

 

No, we cannot. However, alcohol sales are extremely regulated, at least in this country. So is gambling. If Lootboxes are reclassified as gambling then the government will regulate them. Not saying that is good or bad, just that it would change things for the game companies as well as the players.

Big problem with gambling, if lootboxes end up fitting into that classification, in game is that one cannot enforce the age restrictions that apply to kids and gambling. One cannot truly drink booze online, but they can gamble.

I am not going to make this a moral thing, but having known and loved people who struggle with addiction, I certainly do not like seeing such things marketed to our kids. Addiction destroys lives. Ultimately the responsibility likes with the person or the parent, but please...do not tell me that some of these companies do not know exactly what they are doing.

 

In the US adults can't drink, until they turn 21

I think this highlights the grey area for me... at least in my culture kids can gamble gamble to an extent from playing bingo, entering competitions from the backs of cereal boxes, entering raffles in school / church fetes, and I think that's ok - it helps children understand gambling and chance before becoming adults.

I agree with Murgilod that lootboxes are predatory and exploitative, and think it's timely we are seeing countries look to legislation as the industry seems to be running with this unchecked.

I hope measures are sensible and focus on protecting consumers rather than outright banning this gambling-lite. I know China has some legislation around publishing drop rates that Overwatch was made to comply with earlier this year.

 

I think that is okay too.

But, they do not have a credit card attached to the bingo card that they can push every few minutes.

When we were flying to Austin recently and back again, I looked for some games to put on my android tablets for my girls. Unfortunately, in order to do this, I had to have a credit card attached. This made it easy to purchase in-app content. With my ipad, a fingerprint is required to purchase, but with the androids, nothing.

My girls are older teens, but I can imagine my son when he was 10 or so, going nuts. lol I recall some heavy purchases on facebook at one time.

I played bingo and entered raffles, etc., but only when I actually went to the events and always with my parents. Sometimes I had a few bucks in my pocket. It was a social event where we played and laughed.

I am afraid I cannot compare that to play a game alone, getting really immersed, and then having the choice to level up by paying money, at that very moment, when adrenaline and dopamine is rushing through one's system.

I do not ever remember that rush when playing bingo. lol

 

The first point, that's life, some things are expensive if it's too much don't buy it.

Second point is I think hitting the nail on the head and is the angle this whole thing should be addressed from. It's really not hard to do either. We don't let minors sign contracts in most cases. But we defacto allow it every day via credit and really don't provide any good tools for parents to control it. We have parental controls on all sorts of other things, and we don't let companies get away with just saying but it's not our job it's the parent's.

It boils down to money. The reason we don't force credit card companies, or merchants, to provide parental controls is because we have allowed kids to spend so much via credit that it actually factors into the economy in a major way. Which makes it almost untouchable politically without attaching some other hot button issue to it, like gambling.

 

Offtopic, but I think it's mobile OSes that are to blame - a PC OS will let you have a parent have an admin account and have a child as a non-admin user. A parent and child have to share details on a phone or tablet to a greater extent... any way I think that this is moving away from lootboxes.

 

I have been following this on reddit and in the media. I find it very interesting to see the difference of opinions between gamers and game developers.

Most of the gamers hate what Battlefront did with the cards.

Opinions are different here.

I have no real interest in who is right or wrong or more than likely how gray this area really is, but I do see both sides. My young adult/teen kids have more interest in this topic than I do, all Star Wars fans and none of them have a huge disposable income. They will not buy the game, their choice with their Xmas money.. Plenty of other games out there.

 

Everyone should buy Divinity Original Sin 2, RPG Tactics style.
10/10 would kill Alexander again, again, again ...

 

Let's be honest - lootboxes are gambling.

I'm not against gambling, but to not call loot boxes or sealed packs gambling is insane.

It's actually worse than gambling in most cases because it's often against TOS to convert your wins back out from game currency to real currency. So it's gambling where you can never win.

At least with physical cards (baseball card, magic cards) you could sell your cards for cash, as you were legally the owner.

 

I agree with you 100%. However, anything that makes big money is going to be justified somehow.

 

I think as a society we got together and decided that games of chance where there is no chance of real world gain are not "gambling". Candyland and monopoly are games of chance that are not considered gambling.

In that respect it's in favor of lootboxes not being potentially profitable that you call worse, I think.

 

It's just monopoly is not going to exploit anyone or cause mental issues.

Gambling addiction is considered an actual recognised chronic mental illness for decades now and only applies where there is actual real world risk. This has been proven in numerous studies. People who play monopoly are not really taking risks they care about, and this is why (monopoly was actually used in many of the studies) it is not considered gambling without financial risk and is just a game of chance.

Rather than invent what you think gambling might be (addressed to anyone) you should look it up from the experts. If it costs money and you know what it COULD contain then it comes under modern gambling.

If you don't know what it could ever contain, then it comes under gift hamper, loot box, loot crate etc - you're in fact buying something for sure - you just don't know what it is. This is *not* gambling. It is simply buying unknown goods. This is where the system is being abused.

It only becomes gambling when you have a % chance at specific goods in exchange for money (directly or indirectly - ie token). As loot crate contents are widely known, and there is a % chance (and you're required by law to show the % chances in some countries) it is gambling.

A loot box can only be considered not gambling if the contents are either unknown or guaranteed, and the potential contents are actually known, so generally, the industry will probably place this under legal scrutiny. It's certainly met the criteria.

I suspect that everyone's just been turning a blind eye up until recently. I'm pretty sure that it will no longer be the case for long.

Likely the solution will be to accept it is gambling and put an age limit on the loot boxes instead of the game, where possible OR they'll just say you're actually paying for a guaranteed item within, and anything extra is a bonus.

There's a ton of ways they can make this work outside of gambling even though we all know it is. That's life. IMHO if it offends, simply don't buy the game. Buy a great indie game and show your support there instead.

 

I think belgum hit the nail on the head:
- If you are spending money to buy an item without knowing what it is you're buying, then you are gambling.

Admittedly, the work around to this kind of regulation is simply to buy game currency as a known quantity, then to convert the game currency into randomized outcome. This is essentially a kind of very simple money laundering.

If you take this a step further and consider different forms of actual currency (like bitcoin) then what is or isn't "money" becomes less clear.

Lootboxes are so effective at both working around existing gambling regulation and around societal morals that it's preventing better development of superior gambling games. The fact is, you can have kids gambling hundreds of dollars on lootboxes without needing to worry about legal issues surrounding more traditional gambling.

I have no problem at all with gambling. I used to gamble lunch money on dice games in elementry school. It's fun. The real problem I have with lootboxes is that it's a form of gambling that's not considered gambling and not regulated equally.

Traditional gambling and lootbox gambling should be treated the same. Either allow people to do whatever they want with their money, or put an age restriction on it, but it should be treated honestly and equally either way.

 

I think we as a society decided that gambling preys on addiction and attracts some of the worse elements of our society, creating an avenue for organized crime. Gambling exists, it is highly regulated.

We have plenty of casinos here in my state. But again, they are regulated. If loot boxes are found to constitute gambling, they should be regulated as such. Does not mean they will not exist, but they should follow the same rules as any other gambling site.

Candyland and Monopoly are not games where people bet real money on whether you land on Boardwalk. Could you do this? Sure. You could probably set up an online gambling site where people bet on whether a bot will land on Boardwalk, once you get past the copyrights for the Monopoly game and you file as a gambling site, with all it's regulations.

So..Lootboxes, nothing wrong with them...but if the courts decide it is gambling, then they will need to be regulated per law whether we like it or not.

In my opinion, the worst thing about the lootboxes is simply that they require people to pay money to progress their character in a manner that allows them to compete. It is a pay-to-win scenario. Not illegal or maybe not unethical.

However...as we can see if we get out of our developer bubble and go read what players are saying, it is not really necessarily a good monetization model in the long term. People who have money won't care and will continue to spend. Those that cannot will fall away to the next game that comes along. So not a good way to build a loyal following of dedicated players in an MMO.

It will not be long before people start realizing that unless one has a high income, they will always struggle to compete. Kind of like playing a game with my son...he always wins, so I feel much less motivated to play.

 

That's definitely not what money laundering is.

Arguably that's a different field's definition from the one being implied when discussing law. Some game's use of Skinner box mechanics and risk and reward structures might even be said to be in that space even without any purchasable items.

Perhaps, I've been unclear in my position: I don't feel lootboxes are necessarily gambling (by there design they've been crafted to skate under most jurisdiction's definitions I suspect) but I do feel they are anticonsumer and as Murgilod said "predatory". I support them being legislated, as does seemingly everyone in this thread; just not because they are gambling, I think that's a side issue to doing the needful, they should be legislated because they are anticonsumer / predatory.

 

Money laundering is quite literally the practice of obscuring the source of funding in order to work around laws or regulations...

If there is a law that says "buying something without knowing what you're buying is gambling" so you offer USD->Game Currency->Lootbox, then what you're doing is literally laundering the USD->Lootbox transaction via in game currency.

 

It certainly could be used for money laundering. That does not mean it is money laundering at this moment. I imagine many game currencies could be used this way, and probably have been, but we just do not know it. Even using an MMO to buy up in game currency and then selling it on the market to gamers could be a way to launder money....bad money, becomes good money. That is all it means.

 

To be clear, I mean the company not the user. The company is essentially laundering illegal gains. Admittedly I'm stretching the definition a little -- but not that much (tax evasion can also be money laundering where the crime is tax evasion - so these things can be a bit circular)

 

Yes, that is what I mean too. Not the user, the company. lol

My above example was not a very good example.

 

I don't think any legislation is warranted. Mostly because the whole thing issue has been self correcting. (also it turns out that the politician calling for it is pretty much alone in it, and has no support, it ended up being a bit more of vg journalism hype than reality). Sorry, I posted this topic before I learned it was actually a lot of hot air.

Much like most f2p games, it isn't gambling (and not remotely laundering, lol). But it was clearly unpopular with consumers, and a poor decision. Player rancor resulted in them changing things, which the best possible solution. Losing customers is going to be a lot more motivating than a legal fight. I think it is great. Because, if nothing else, EA proved there is a line and that consumers will push back. EA's mistake results in great (free) market research for the rest of us.

Thing is, I don't see how this is any different from pokemon cards. (which is primarily for kids, and has monetary/material value). I doubt legislation could actually happen for in-game loot boxes if pokemon cards aren't. And the argument "for the children" falls pretty flat, as purchases are done with credit cards (mostly). At some a legal adult is involved in the process, and the game is rated Teen. If kids are being "taken advantage" or "mentally harmed" is because a parent / guardian allowed it.

 

It can't, even facing worst case regulation game makers can just shift to cryptocurrency in order to provide the gambling experience and that becomes impossible to regulate.

You can wave it away as hyperbole but it's really not, games are already moving in this direction and will continue to do so. We're already seeing the first wave of cryptocurrency based game currencies. More will follow.

With the internet enabling international transactions, the widespread acceptance of microtransactions and the rise of cryptocurrency,.. it's just a natural progression.

If you're interested, here's a bit of discussion from the other end - that of cryptocurrency and it's use in 'traditional' online gambling:

https://chapman.edu/law/_files/publications/CLR-5-mark-schopper.pdf
This article was written a while back before cryptocurrencies existed (or were widespread), so he just refers to "e-currency" and stuff. Same thing though.

 

While interesting, its a seperate issue from the loot boxes thing. Gambling is a different issue. Crypto currencies may have an impact on online gambling, but it won't protect legitimate companies operating within the law. Companies operating within the laws of their region will still be subject to those laws whether their revenue comes from traditional banks or alternate currency. Illegal gambling doesn't become legal because it obfuscated.

 

I don't think it's possible to prevent cryptocurrency from effectively legalizing gambling, as long as the market for those currencies is healthy and people grow to accept them as not shady. Just in regulatory terms, I think dealing with alternative currencies is something that's nearly impossible to regulate.

I could be wrong, predicting the future is tough. We'll have to see where it goes...

EDIT: to keep this rooted in video games, here's the first game with a cryptocurrency based game currency:
https://reality-clash.com/ -- they raised something like 3 million offering the currency pre-release. So this isn't some distant hypothetical!

 

There's a huge difference between "absolving parents of responsibility" and "making their lives a tad easier". Loot boxes aren't there to teach kids or their parents anything, and getting tricked into using them isn't "tough love". I don't necessarily have the same problem with them in principle that other people reasonably do, but if we're going to argue in their favour then lets not pretend it's for the benefit of children!

Also keep in mind the knowledge and experience required of parents to make a meaningful decision about loot boxes. As game developers we're well aware of that stuff almost by default, so we're aware that loot boxes in particular are things that should be examined and the arising considerations. The average parent is not. To the average parent, they're just a thing that pops up on the screen between rounds of some game they or their kid are playing. They can't afford to pay that level of attention to everything else, how can we expect them to magically know that it's specifically required in this instance?

 

While I totally agree that parents cannot be fully expected to know all the details of how games and things of that nature work, they should be paying attention to outgoing money. If a kid can spend hundreds dollars unmonitored on anything (be it games or amazon or anything), that is a parental fail. When my niece and nephew were younger, they had a card they could use for steam/game purchases, but they had a limit.

Really though, I think the original complaint about harming kids is an emotional plea rather than a real issue. The BF2 uproar wasn't really over unsupervised kids, it was from (and about) really crappy gameplay monetization from engaged players. I would doubt that if any kids were affected by this (at least not more than normal). It was pissed off player (justifiably so).

 

Absolutely. It's just that in this case, that's something that won't detect the problem until after it's happened. And as a symptomatic response, I think "what the heck is that transaction?", followed by finding out, followed by "well, this shouldn't be allowed, lets raise it with someone who can do something about it" is pretty reasonable.

 

Belguim:
"Look guys, this few game companies are doing this thing, that some people, who regulaily play games, don't like!"
"Now is our chance to virtue signal about our concern for our tax lifestock's safety from themselves!"
*proposes authoritarian solution*

...

Why are they trusting their kids (becasue, let's be honest, "muh keyds" will be the proposed legislation's only argument) with credit cards if they didn't raise them to be responsible with their purchases? That's just handing off parenting duty to the state.

Solution to kid playing with cooker isn't a bigger playpen wall or higher kitchen counter, but some better parenting.

That was a community uproar. This is state, using community uproar to blatantly expand it's power.

 

I lean libertarian on social issues, but this nonsense.

Most people think there should be an age restriction to gambling. If that's the case then loot boxes via micro transaction should be restricted similarly. Although I personally think that all gambling should be legal at any age, I understand that most people feel differently. There are very long standing cultural, religious and moral issues revolving around gambling that many have trouble with.

Regardless of where you personally stand on lootboxes being gambling or not, it's pretty clear that the line is becoming increasingly blurred.

 

Loot boxes ARE gambling by definition - what do you mean on personal stance?
Definition of gabling (dictionary):

My issues are:

• legislators using the "think of the children" argument to pass anything that will expand state power but throw those same children under the bus when national spending needs to be increased without appropriate tax increase
• parents giving children access to unlimited funds and passing the resposibility of teaching and restricting them to the state, which will in turn take away responsible children's rights and decrease irresponsible parents' obligations

I'm not in position to say whether underage gambling should be allowed or not. I'm just saying everyone, even authoritarians, should understand what increasing a state's legislative power brings along. Today they may vote their children shouldn't have a right to gamble, tomorow their children may vote to take away their voting rights becasue they are retirees and no loger provide any value for society. Extreme example. But last 100 years in europe have been pretty extreme

 

I hate when governments forbid anything, especially the pathetic government like the Belgian. I also do not like the pay to win system, but the players should decide. It seems that every card game like Dark Eden, Magic or even BattleCry is gambling, because buying a booster you never know what's inside. I understand that in Rocket League the draw of Crates is also gambling? In the end, they also have value in real money. I am opposed to state interference, it never ends well

 

Doesn’t that already exist? I haven’t looked at steam, but I think all the other platforms have parental controls. Some have pretty pervasive ones.

 

Actually is is not gambling, there is a legal difference. Gambling involves the chance of getting something of value like money, or something that has material or exchangeable value (stakes). Random (chance) rewards in games that don't have actual value beyond the game are features. Since you can't trade or sell rewards back out of the systems, they are not considered gambling. This is why games have multiple currencies and certain things can only be exchanged in limited directions. In-game premium games of chance are in many games and have been around as long as there have been micro transactions.

A simple way to understand the difference, is just ask yourself, can buying lootcases (spins on a wheel, whatever) pay your rent? If not, it is not gambling, you are just paying to upgrade your game.

 

All this lets protect the kids stuff doesn't really hold water with gambling. It's as if people think suddenly all kids will have gambling addictions, smoke crack and not do any school studies.

That's really not the case. Over-indulgence of console gaming, porn and other things will do far more harm. Gambling is as old as civilisation. I took a day away from the discussion and realised just how dumb it is to regulate gambling in any shape or form.

As for loot boxes, and fleecing customers, well like I say - support indies until they fleece you too.

 

For the record, MTG used to have gambling built into the rules with antes (you would both stake a card on the game). They even printed a ton of cards that did things like doubled everyone's bet.

The antes fell out of favor largely because of the huge price differences between cards and decks (the bets werent equal, some decks ran way more expensive cards than others) and because some cards became way too valuable to risk (and too expensive to replace) but gambling was built into the game at inception.