(Loot Box's) Number of child gamblers quadruples in just two years....

[Stardrift]

This is about children and not about grown as men playing video games and become addicted.

Same goes to them. Their parents bought them the games. Their parents aren't smart enough to keep an eye on their credit cards.

Let stupid be stupid.

[melzas]

I don't think loot boxes are gambling (at least not the dangerous gambling type) but I hate the concept so anything that sets fire to the loot box philosophy is good in my books.

[Bolf]

Imo lootboxes today are a plague on modern video games. The only iteration of them that I believe was kinda OK was the original Team Fortress 2 crate system, where the boxes function exactly the same as what we see today, but you could trade for what you wanted in a reasonable amount of time. I'm kinda glad I got my loot box "addiction" out of the way from the TF2 crates since I was able to cash out unusuals and stuff with minimal losses.

Now I'm very much against government involvement in the video game industry. However, seeing as some companies prey on the easily addicted at the cost of game quality, I have problem with them laying down the hammer on it.

[stellvia]

They're not going anywhere, even if the Gov't bans them. They banned them in China, all blizzard did was sell a small amount of dust in HS with BONUS PACK. So like in OW, you'll buy maybe 10-100 gold and get loot boxes.
It circumvents the ban because you're buying the gold, the loot boxes are "free"

Most Western governments also don't take kindly to trying to end-run around laws, especially when the focus of the legislation is protecting children. I guarantee you they will just keep passing new legislation if the companies try to be cheeky about it.

I normally roll my eyes at "think of the children" stuff bc it's usually overdone, but in this case I agree: This kinda shit is a cancer on society and it's doing real appreciable harm to the development of children. The type of behavior it conditions leads to poor impulse control, lack of patience, craving endorphin rushes, etc.

From the development angle: They also make for shitty gameplay. Lootboxes any way you look at them are a net-negative in any game. They break immersion, they make a mess of trying to play the game as you jump through a bunch of hoops to get what you want. It usually entails adding extra grinds whose sole purpose is to try to goad you into buying. Meanwhile everyone else that doesn't buy just has a worse time of it so they can entice the whales.

[Onikaroshi]

Most Western governments also don't take kindly to trying to end-run around laws, especially when the focus of the legislation is protecting children. I guarantee you they will just keep passing new legislation if the companies try to be cheeky about it.

I normally roll my eyes at "think of the children" stuff bc it's usually overdone, but in this case I agree: This kinda shit is a cancer on society and it's doing real appreciable harm to the development of children. The type of behavior it conditions leads to poor impulse control, lack of patience, craving endorphin rushes, etc.

From the development angle: They also make for shitty gameplay. Lootboxes any way you look at them are a net-negative in any game. They break immersion, they make a mess of trying to play the game as you jump through a bunch of hoops to get what you want. It usually entails adding extra grinds whose sole purpose is to try to goad you into buying. Meanwhile everyone else that doesn't buy just has a worse time of it so they can entice the whales.

I see zero negative in properly implemented lootboxes, like OW, where you can easily obtain them from standard play and they are 100% cosmetic. It todays world you NEED to extend content because people eat it up, spit it out and then bitch and complain. No matter what they do, it's going to hurt somebody, people have died playing wow.

[Tenjen]

Well, it really comes to a point of, do you want updates to your game past the first year? Yes? Then there's either some form of Microtransaction, or you're buying "season passes", games are expensive to develop.

this excuse "games are expensive to make" has long since been discredited. Did you see the earnings Microstransaction laden games made? How much went to investors and executive pockets and not to developers and development?

[Onikaroshi]

this excuse "games are expensive to make" has long since been discredited. Did you see the earnings Microstransaction laden games made? How much went to investors and executive pockets and not to developers and development?

Did you see that record breaking sales from BOPs IIII weren't enough to placate investors? No investors, no game, it's why we have so many shitty games now, but it's the world we live in.

[Tenjen]

Imo lootboxes today are a plague on modern video games. The only iteration of them that I believe was kinda OK was the original Team Fortress 2 crate system, where the boxes function exactly the same as what we see today, but you could trade for what you wanted in a reasonable amount of time. I'm kinda glad I got my loot box "addiction" out of the way from the TF2 crates since I was able to cash out unusuals and stuff with minimal losses.

Now I'm very much against government involvement in the video game industry. However, seeing as some companies prey on the easily addicted at the cost of game quality, I have problem with them laying down the hammer on it.

not exactly lookboxes. Microtransactions in general in games they dont belong in. Development has to be made around htem, game systems have to adapt to incorperate them and game progress is influenced by them. Prioritizing the presence of MT's over a good gaming experience is becoming a mainstay.

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Did you see that record breaking sales from BOPs IIII weren't enough to placate investors? No investors, no game, it's why we have so many shitty games now, but it's the world we live in.

Its not a feasible system. Each year investors will want higher and higher earnings. Games which cant be modeled to such earnings shall be discored and the commercial pop music version of games shall be the only big earners. Franchises will be malformed to fit the model as we've seen happen a few times now.

This is not the world we live in, that is bulshit. they just made it that way and it's going to blow up in their faces. Other companies are doing fine not following that model.

[Onikaroshi]

not exactly lookboxes. Microtransactions in general in games they dont belong in. Development has to be made around htem, game systems have to adapt to incorperate them and game progress is influenced by them. Prioritizing the presence of MT's over a good gaming experience is becoming a mainstay.

- - - Updated - - -



Its not a feasible system. Each year investors will want higher and higher earnings. Games which cant be modeled to such earnings shall be discored and the commercial pop music version of games shall be the only big earners. Franchises will be malformed to fit the model as we've seen happen a few times now.

This is not the world we live in, that is bulshit. they just made it that way and it's going to blow up in their faces. Other companies are doing fine not following that model.

Show me a major, traded, company that isn't just barely scraping by that doesn't employ these things? EA, ActiBlizz, Ubi.. EVERY major game developer does. Sure you can sometimes get away from it with indie games, but those aren't what everyone is looking for. Microtransactions are here to stay, either give up on major developers, and go indie 100% or just stop playing games all together if you don't like it.

[stellvia]

I see zero negative in properly implemented lootboxes, like OW, where you can easily obtain them from standard play and they are 100% cosmetic. It todays world you NEED to extend content because people eat it up, spit it out and then bitch and complain. No matter what they do, it's going to hurt somebody, people have died playing wow.

75% of the content of the game is locked behind lootboxes. You earn maybe 1 per 60-90mins of gameplay and it's not guaranteed to have what you want. Currency drops from the boxes at about a 5% rate and the 50/150 are the vast majority with 500 being very rare.

"In today's world" my ass. Until ~5 years ago you made a product and you sold it. Done. You played it for ~20-60 hours or whatnot (RPGs notwithstanding) and that was it. FPS games came with dedicated servers you could run yourself! Replayability was on the strength of the gameplay itself, not how much artificial grinding they put in. The only reason companies "need" to do this shit now is because it makes them a fuckload of money and traps you in their ecosystem. It absolutely is not necessary to turn a profit.

Newsflash: COSMETICS MATTER! If they didn't matter, why did they itemize what was previously included in the game for free without grinding? People want to look cool. Looking cool matters to people. If it didn't, they wouldn't spend billions of dollars on the shit. Why was stupid shit like common voice commands and stickers placed into the lootboxes? Because it pollutes the pool with a bunch of garbage that keeps you playing/buying more. It is absolutely not a consumer-friendly tactic and is not done for the good of the game. It's straight-up pure unadulterated greed.

[DrMcNinja]

It circumvents the ban because you're buying the gold, the loot boxes are "free"

Surely governments that are not Chinese will catch on to this and make sure it would be an airtight law?

[Onikaroshi]

Surely governments that are not Chinese will catch on to this and make sure it would be an airtight law?

Unless they flat out ban loot boxes (which would be silly and way overstepping what a gov't should be) not much they can do. Loot boxes on their own aren't a bad thing, loot boxes you can't get for free and loot boxes that include power type items are.

[DrMcNinja]

Newsflash: COSMETICS MATTER!

This is actually the truth we live in. Many examples of this in real life can be found. Cosmetics are an easy brag. The latest iPhone? Don't buy it for the tech but just to brag about my awesome phone. A lot of the value lies purely in the fact that people own the latest, hottest thing. I see it in my sister all the time where her friends have the latest phone and she complains.

Just like with skins in games. You buy the newest skin so you can flaunt your moneybag in front of other gamers. Wouldn't say the majority acts like this, but it surely is a big enough thing for companies to exploit. "Wow you got X skin!" is like a stroke to one's ego.

[Onikaroshi]

75% of the content of the game is locked behind lootboxes. You earn maybe 1 per 60-90mins of gameplay and it's not guaranteed to have what you want. Currency drops from the boxes at about a 5% rate and the 50/150 are the vast majority with 500 being very rare.

"In today's world" my ass. Until ~5 years ago you made a product and you sold it. Done. You played it for ~20-60 hours or whatnot (RPGs notwithstanding) and that was it. FPS games came with dedicated servers you could run yourself! Replayability was on the strength of the gameplay itself, not how much artificial grinding they put in. The only reason companies "need" to do this shit now is because it makes them a fuckload of money and traps you in their ecosystem. It absolutely is not necessary to turn a profit.

Newsflash: COSMETICS MATTER! If they didn't matter, why did they itemize what was previously included in the game for free without grinding? People want to look cool. Looking cool matters to people. If it didn't, they wouldn't spend billions of dollars on the shit. Why was stupid shit like common voice commands and stickers placed into the lootboxes? Because it pollutes the pool with a bunch of garbage that keeps you playing/buying more. It is absolutely not a consumer-friendly tactic and is not done for the good of the game. It's straight-up pure unadulterated greed.

0% of the main content is locked behind loot boxes, and you can get more than "1 per 60-90 mins" if you don't play like a retard. We've spent maybe 40 bucks total on loot boxes and my wife has just about everything she wants and all she does is play regularly, plus enough currency to buy anything that comes out during an event.

And cosmetics only matter to PEOPLE they don't matter to gameplay, get the fuck over yourself, I'd rather not have paid expansions splitting a playerbase. (Btw, cs:go has been doing boxes for many years before OW, where was the outcry then?????)

[stellvia]

And cosmetics only matter to PEOPLE they don't matter to gameplay, get the fuck over yourself, I'd rather not have paid expansions splitting a playerbase. (Btw, cs:go has been doing boxes for many years before OW, where was the outcry then?????)

I'd rather have gameplay not be dictated by their ability to interface with slot machines. Sell me a good product at a fair price. Whether cosmetics are part of gameplay or not is irrelevant to the fact they are part and parcel of the entire game experience. Not only skins are in their skinner boxes, but a whole slew of voice commands and emotes. And the difference in CSgo and TF2 is that the games come with a wide range of voice and emote options (not including the two dozen or so flavor clips they say), you can use custom sprays, the game is fully moddable and private servers can allow any skins people want. You can make your own maps.

Most importantly: You can trade any items you craft or get from a crate, and you can even sell them on the marketplace for steam credit. (There are also sites that will buy them from you for cash money, but I can't comment on their reputability since that is a meta option) With OW you are literally pissing money down a well for a bunch of "rewards" that are default features in other games. You can't trade. You can't sell. A lot of the content updates for TF2 are also fan-made (curated by Valve) where they get a chunk of every cosmetic item sold, including buying stamps to pay map creators.

[Ealyssa]

They're not going anywhere, even if the Gov't bans them. They banned them in China, all blizzard did was sell a small amount of dust in HS with BONUS PACK. So like in OW, you'll buy maybe 10-100 gold and get loot boxes.

It circumvents the ban because you're buying the gold, the loot boxes are "free"

"No random transaction of any sort can be tied to a purchase, loot boxes, lucky coins, gifts packages or affiliated"

Boom, fixed for ya. It's not like you can't make smart laws. If they really want to ban them, they can. That's really not up to debate. The only thing that is is if the industry is smart enough to regulate itself before a definitive ban.

[Onikaroshi]

"No random transaction of any sort can be tied to a purchase, loot boxes, lucky coins, gifts packages or affiliated"

Boom, fixed for ya. It's not like you can't make smart laws. If they really want to ban them, they can. That's really not up to debate. The only thing that is is if the industry is smart enough to regulate itself before a definitive ban.

And with that you've basically just killed all digital trading card games, since TCGs are BASED off random boxes, good job.

[Ealyssa]

And with that you've basically just killed all digital trading card games, since TCGs are BASED off random boxes, good job.

And not a single fuck will be given...
Card game could easily adapt or die. Hearthstone wouldn't be any different if you could still buy pack with golds (pure ig currency) and only buy dusts (with no "free pack offered" bullshit) with real life money.

Randomised paid lootbox is the absolute cancer of video games. You want random reward ? Dont make it a real life money gambling, period.

[Yunru]

Oh ubisoft....

[Deleted]

Most people here seem to just have a problem with microtransactions in general. Not with the random aspect of lootboxes. If they outright sold skins in games like Overwatch, you would still complain that they are greedy.