Looking into this it seems that lootboxes aren’t banned in the sense that would benefit the industry and players as a whole and will instead incentivize game developers and platforms to create age verification systems.
Brazil had the chance to outright ban lootboxes full stop and the fact that they didn’t take it is really disappointing.
Lootboxes arent even the problem they used to be because developers have realised people will just pay $30 straight up for 1 skin anyway. On top of a subscription disguised as a battlepass, they dont need lootboxes anymore.
Even if you took the hardcore view that loot boxes are outright gambling, gambling isn’t illegal for adults. Why would loot boxes be treated more stringently than online casinos, even in your scenario?
Also, it doesn’t incentivize age verification systems, age verification systems are now mandatory. They are needed to be able to sell any games marketed at adults, including porn games, games with loot boxes and presumably any other game with an 18 and up rating by their official ratings board.
The loot box panic has mostly been another variant of the “will someone thing of the children” violence panic of the 90s. Just like then, age ratings and parental controls should have been the solution, but because gamers were too busy being angry and self righteous online they went with it to this point.
From what I tracked in one game the odds were wrong, so it goes against legal gambling laws where even if it is electronic it has to have payout odds that match the presented method. I.e. if its 5 cards, odd should be 1:5 in flipping the reward card. But some games it could be double or quadruple that.
Did you respond to the right thing? This seems like a non sequitur, so maybe the threading got messed up?
The comment of why would loot boxes be different than online gambling. The loot boxes I have seen in games are often chance based and the chances aren’t legal probability, so technically illegal
All loot boxes are chance based, but first of all, I don’t know which laws you’re talking about. Brazil’s? Guessing the US because when somebody has a case of the default human it’s typically an American, but who knows.
But also, I’m not a US lawyer, but I seriously doubt US gambling laws requires all games to have a flat probability, mostly because… that’s not how games of chance work anywhere, and definitely not how blind boxes work anywhere and blind box products are not gambling anyway, which is the entire point.
It’s still a non sequitur and I still have no idea what you’re trying to say.
(Im in Canada many other countries are the same) When a chance of game becomes electronic probability rules still apply. Those screen based jackpot machines in casinos have to follow actual mechanical jackpot game probability payouts.
So a six sided dice role in a game that involves a monetary system to purchase still has to have a 1:6 payout, or it is illegal because you are fooling the person.
I have played several games where they have say 3 loot boxes and you pay to open one. There is a known prize and generic stuff. The payout odds do not match over a large number of tries, meaning the back end probably has been coded to only payout 1% or something super low, or maybe not at all. In many countries this type of gambling (even for adults ) is illegal because it simulates a chance game but is fundamentally not as presented.
I was responding to the loot boxes and the gambling comment.
Sure, but this isn’t a digital version of a casino game. It’s a digital version of a blind box. And there is no rule to say that trading cards or collectible card games need to have equal possibilities of yielding a specific card. That is very much the opposite of how that works. Physical blind box offerings absolutely use different probabilities and different content rarities.
So yeah, if you make up the categorizations, the rules and the mechanics we can be talking about whatever you want, but in the real world that’s not even close to how this works in either physical or digital form, which I guess explains the confusion.
For the record, multiple games offer a readout of the possibilities of getting a particular type of thing. I, you may be surprised to know, haven’t checked the probabilities being accurate in all of them, but I’m gonna need some specific proof of someone fudging them, because that’s a problem of false advertising at that point, forget gambling rules that don’t even apply.
Also, 1% is a HUGE drop rate for rare items in loot boxes, both physical and digital. 1% is, as it turns out, 1 in 100. Lots of games, collectibles and other types of blind boxes feature way more than 100 tries at opening a loot box, even for fully unmonetized ones. If anything there’s a bit of a cognitive bias there, where people are very bad at instinctively understanding how percentages work, which makes disclosing loot box percentages a bit of a challenge.
Look, I’m not sure what games you play or your understanding of how any of this works but, respectfully, you’re misunderstanding it pretty deeply.
Lootboxes require a gambling license in my country. Because it’s fucking gambling.
Do pokemon cards require a gambling license?
They should, and I’m not even joking.
So… does anything you pay for money that results in a random ‘prize’ even if the prize is equal value everytime… should require a gambling license?
You make a good point.
But some games just really need to stop the addictive gamba.
No, specifically not if the prize is equal value every time. The prize not having equal value every time is exactly what makes it gambling.
That said, what the Tulip Mania taught us is that the prizes never have equal value so long as they’re different enough and/or have different rarities.
Selling loot boxes to miners is still ok, right?
Only miners of age. Miners who are minors are banned.
Societies with minor miners† have bigger problems than lootboxes tbh
† IRL, not Minecraft players.
Minecraft is proof that our children crave the mines!
minecraft is proof that colorful computer screens are attractive to many people. I’m not sure whether it proves anything else. the reason why people don’t like to do these things IRL is mostly because it’s physically exhausting, i guess, which it is not in-game.
I see what you did there
Lootboxes as currently used in Overwatch 2 is fine. You simply get them for playing. And that’s that.
That means they’re not “sold”
Semantics make a difference
Brazil wants to protect the children so they ban online gambling for them. I wonder how Brazil will verify identities to sell loot boxes to adults.
U.S wants to protect the children so they scan and read chat messages of every citizen. Great.
For once something done “in the name of child safety” that i can get behind, since it actually aims at protecting children and isn’t just a disguise to achieve a different goal.
Uuh i hope this won’t backfire into a “leftists are trying to take our fun away” drama. Like, that’s literally what happens in Germany a lot. Greens (center-left) want to outlaw selling combustion engine cars from 2035, lots of people say “boohoo they’re ruining our way of life”.
I think it would be better to make as little as possible rules for the individual people, because after all, if it helps, nobody thanks you, but if it hurts, you’re going to make a lot of enemies.
Better focus on the big things. (economy, geopolitics)
edit: but yes also lootboxes are gambling and should be disencouraged.
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