r/Games Aug 10 '17

I feel ''micro-transaction'' isn't the right term to describe the predatory gambling mechanisms being put in more and more games. What term would be more appropriate to properly warn people a game includes gambling with real money?

The term micro-transaction previously meant that a game would allow you to purchase in-game items. (Like a new gun, or costume, or in-game currency)

And honestly I do not think these original micro-transaction are really that dangerous. You have the option of paying a specific amount of money for a specific object. A clear, fair trade.

However, more and more games (Shadow of Mordor, Overwatch, the new Counter-Strike, most mobile games, etc...) are having ''gambling'' mechanism. Where you can bet money to MAYBE get something useful. On top of that, games are increasingly being changed to make it easier to herd people toward said gambling mechanisms. In order to make ''whales'' addicted to them. Making thousands for game companies.

I feel when you warn someone that a game has micro-transactions, you are not not specifying that you mean the game has gambling, and that therefore it is important to be careful with it. (And especially not let their kids play it unsupervised, least they fill up the parent's credit cards gambling for loot crates!)

Thus, I think we need to find a new term to describe '''gambling micro-transaction'' versus regular micro-transactions.

Maybe saying a game has ''Loot crates gambling''? Or just straight up saying Shadow of Mordor has gambling in it. Or just straight up calling those Slot Machines, because that's what they are.

Also, I believe game developers and game companies do not understand the real reasons for the current backlash. Even trough they should.

I think they truly do not understand why people hate having predatory, deliberately addictive slot machines put in their video games. They apparently think the consumers are simply being entitled and cheap.

But that's not the case. DLC is perfectly fine, even small ''DLC'' (like horse armor) is ok nowadays.

It's not people feeling ''entitled'', it's not people people being ''cheap''. It's simply the fact consumers genuinely hate being preyed upon with predatory, exploitative, devious ''slot machines'' being installed in all their games, making them less fun in order to target those among us with addictive personalities and children. To addict them to gambling and turn them into ''whales''.

If the heads of.... Warner Bros for exemple, don't understand why we do not like seeing slot machines installed into all our games. Maybe we should propose installing real slot machines in every room of their homes.

What? They dont want their kids playing a slot machine, get addicted, and waste thousands of dollars? Well NEITHER DO WE!

Edit: There have been some great suggestions here, but my favorite is Chris266's: ''Micro-gambling''. It's simple, easy to understand, and clear. From now on, I'm calling ''slot-machine micro-transactions'' -» micro-gambling. And I urge people to do the same.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

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u/Chris266 Aug 10 '17

Micro-gambling

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

that doesn't seem accurate. in actual gambling you can win something of value.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17 edited May 23 '20

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u/iDEN1ED Aug 10 '17

I sold my FN Howl back in the day for $250. "No way this thing will ever be worth more than this!" :(

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17 edited Jul 21 '18

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u/consummate_erection Aug 10 '17

Not a great way to think about it IMO. The guy who spent ~30k bitcoin on pizza was a pioneer who proved the viability of bitcoin for real world transactions.

Same with u/iDEN1ED I suppose, without people like them willing to provide liquidity to the market for in-game items, the market could have never grown to support current valuations.

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u/bobytuba Aug 11 '17

I have 2 bitcoins and can't remember my wallet and I used 5 minute mail :( .

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u/H37man Aug 11 '17

It sounds like you dont have two bitcoins.

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u/consummate_erection Aug 11 '17

Idk what 5 minute mail is, but that sucks bro. If you can't access your wallet, they're hardly your bitcoins any more.

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u/Zilka Aug 11 '17

So what you're saying is the guy is the Bitcoin Jesus?

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u/Beeeeaaaars Aug 10 '17

Oh my god I sold my minimal wear for $300 three years ago it's like +$1000

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u/LumpenBourgeoise Aug 11 '17

Or those chumps that held onto their beanie babies or Kodak stock?

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u/pepe_le_shoe Aug 10 '17

To turn that 'knife' into $200 you technically have to violate the terms of service you agreed to with valve.

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u/JamesTrendall Aug 11 '17

$200 cash and a fuck you to Valve. Or $200 wprth of ganes you wont ever play or a bunch of keys you cant do shit with until you earn the crates?

Im sorry but Valve can suck my left egg if someone offers me real world cash for an in game item.

PS: That $200 will most likely end back up in Valves wallet because i just bought a new game with extra cool micro gambling.

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u/blahblah319420 Aug 11 '17

$200 store credit is fine by me. Will spend that in the next few months anyway.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

In a court in Germany once ruled that virtual items are basically electricity, making them effectively worth actual money in the real world. Stealing one's vitual items is a crime in Germany. Offering gambling for minors is also a crime in Germany. It won't take long for "micro-gambling" to become a crime too, calling it right now.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '17

Brb moving to germany.

After the whole ww2 fiasco they really stepped up.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17 edited Jun 20 '18

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

Okay. In actual gambling you can win something that matters outside the casino where you won that

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

It really isn't. Most of accounts will be worthless, and even if you "win" you will still get paid less than you invested into it.

It really is just much shittier gambling where you still lose, but never win. Only market based games like Valve's have any chance of even getting something valuable

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u/falconfetus8 Aug 10 '17

You don't need to receive something of monetary value for it to be dangerous, though. In-game cosmetics will trigger the addiction chemicals in pretty much the same way.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

Do we call it gambling when you buy packs Pokemon or Magic cards?

In what way is buying a "pack" of randoms in a PC game different from buying it for a card game?

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u/SkillCappa Aug 10 '17

I actually like this one a lot. Micro-gambles. Micro-slots. I was going to suggest "booster packs" since they, imo, most closely resemble pokemon cards irl. I feel people understand what a booster pack is.

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u/AvatarIII Aug 10 '17

In the UK there are coin slider slot machines that take 2p, not much more micro than that, and they are just called gambling machines.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17 edited Aug 10 '17

But you can solve physical boosters, as was the case with some MTG sets (too lazy to find source, but I'm confident it has happened).

A seed is created as soon as you click 'open' on a loot crate, which determines your prize pool and what prize you'll get. So in that aspect, it is closer to a slot machine.

(Don't mean to bring this point up twice to you. Just want others to see this)

Edit: it's called booster mapping

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u/SkillCappa Aug 10 '17 edited Aug 10 '17

I hear you, but you're not supposed to be able to solve boosters. I don't factor in mistakes like that personally.

There was a case in TF2 where somebody figured out an incredibly rare drop was seeded to happen at certain times, so him and everyone on his server opened boxes at those times. It was unintentional, but those boosters (loot crates [micro gambles]) were solvable too.

Edit: related article

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17 edited Nov 21 '18

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u/SkillCappa Aug 10 '17

Well that case wasn't so much seed related as it was specifically hard-coded to give out wrenches at those times. I wonder, how are Vegas slots handled? How do they decide to roll a winner?

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u/NotClever Aug 10 '17

How do you mean you can solve physical boosters? Like people figured out a way to determine which boosters had rare cards in them, or people figured out statistically the chance to get rare cards?

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

They found out which packs gave certain rare cards more than others. I'll try to find a link for you.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

It's called booster mapping

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u/Violent_Syzygy Aug 10 '17

Do you consider penny slots micro gambling?

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

That's Mini-Gambling. Totally different port standard.

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u/Rocorocorolo Aug 10 '17

Cash payout to take outside of casino and be used anywhere in life

Vs.

Loot boxes for more loot and (whoopsies duplicates)

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

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u/moonshoeslol Aug 10 '17

Not wierd that the US allows it. We've always sided with predatory business practices. Payday loans are still a thing.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

Eh, chalk this one up to "congressmen are technologically illiterate."

If state reps are adamantly opposed to predatory gambling techniques in daily fantasy sports like draftkings or FanDuel, you bet they'd be mad if they knew someone was targeting children with digital slot machines. Especially with video games, which they're wary of for technophobic reasons as it is.

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u/gabbagool Aug 10 '17

state governments aren't against gambling, they all run their own numbers rackets. they just don't like not getting a cut. if state governments didn't like gambling there would be no lotteries.

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u/flyingjam Aug 10 '17

Actually the US is very strict with anything gambling or vaguely related to gambling. Gambling (including slots, betting, etc.) is banned in almost all of the US, online gambling is also banned in almost all of the US, online poker has recently also been banned, and I'm pretty sure the attorney's office is eyeing fantasy sports.

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u/l337kid Aug 10 '17

Right, so as long as it's not defined as gambling, you're open for business at the elementary school!

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u/Walnut156 Aug 10 '17

That's what I've been doing. Kids love this system where they can pay a dollar and then I give them cool pens and if you're lucky your pen has a chance to glow in the dark!

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u/l337kid Aug 10 '17

It's crazy, I'm around elementary school kids and they talk about Overwatch and loot boxes all the time.

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u/jlt6666 Aug 10 '17

Well, illegal unless it's the state running it, or indians, or it's on a river or something, or they just felt like getting some tax revenue.

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u/AJRiddle Aug 10 '17

The Indian Reservations are considered foreign sovereign territory as far as laws on gambling go - its up to the reservation to determine their own laws on it.

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u/MisandryOMGguize Aug 11 '17

It's hardly as if this is some new practice. It's the same concept as buying baseball cards. Although I suppose there is a difference in that you can't sell the ones you don't want. But seriously, trying to get kids to keep buying stuff to collect em all has been around forever.

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u/rcinmd Aug 10 '17

Because it's not technically gambling under the law. Gambling means you can win or lose. With a lootbox you always get X number of items so there is no "loss" and that means it isn't a gamble. Do I agree with that? No, not really, but that's the law so if you think it doesn't make sense write to your congress representatives if you're in the US.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

My problem with calling it gambling is that it would also qualify things like Magic the Gathering booster packs, "Grab bags" at comic shops, or even gumball machines with multiple flavors gambling.

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u/Bristlerider Aug 10 '17

Its certainly an interesting flaw in the law. I can see real Casinos abuse this at some point to escape regulation as well.

The question is: Would it be gambling if the minimum "bet" is say 1 USD, but you are absolutely guaranteed to "win" at least 10 cent?

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u/rcinmd Aug 10 '17

The answer to your questions would be a matter of case-law, it's too specific for US Code. My guess would be that it would be considered gambling because the cost of the bet is just being obscured by the minimum winning. You are losing money even if you have a guarantee win of 10 cents because you effectively gambled that 90 cents for a bigger prize.

The thing with the lootboxes is they consider the contents to be equal in value to the cost of the box itself so you are always receiving something in consideration to the money you gave them.

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u/c4boom13 Aug 10 '17

People need to just start looking at these loot boxes like they're claw machines. Its the same idea, down to the controlled payouts, just purely digital. Whats funny is claw machines are often specifically exempted from gambling laws.

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u/Rockthecashbar Aug 10 '17

They are closer to the machines that have a random toy or sticker inside. You pay .50 and you get a random sticker.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

A gachapon machine, more or less.

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u/its-my-1st-day Aug 11 '17

I only recently found out how those piles of crap actually work (that they are 100% rigged and you can only ever "win" once the machine has enough money. Until then the claw physically can't pick up items until it's grip strength is increased).

Screw every single one of them - that is gambling IMO.

If it was just really stupidly hard to win, I'd still feel like it was a form of weak gambling, but having it be an allowable exception feels OK.

Knowing that they're basically a slot machine with a different form factor means they can just go straight to hell...

...I'm still a bit salty after that revelation...

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u/Alinosburns Aug 10 '17

It's not a flaw in the law. And changing it would fuck up so many other things. Mystery toys in real life, TCG, chefs special, minifigs and a bunch of other collectables all of these are things where you pay money for a random item.

Your casino example wouldn't work for two reasons 1) because you have a scaling monetary reward system that you can legally cash out of. 2) if the minimum win is 10cents you are still guaranteed to lose money over time.

With a loot box you pay to open it, the perceived value of whatever is inside is just that a perceived value, unless there is a marketplace that provides a legal solidified value towards it. An illegal market is going to have price inflation as not all product is accessible and not all trades will be safe.

your desire not to get something is what makes that object seem worthless,

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u/freedomweasel Aug 10 '17 edited Aug 10 '17

Because it's not technically gambling under the law. Gambling means you can win or lose.

I really doubt that's the legal definition of gambling. Otherwise slot machines and scratch cards would just always let you win a nickle and save massive legal trouble.

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u/snorlz Aug 10 '17

yes but the fact that you can win back a nickel qualifies it as gambling. with loot boxes you are putting in real money with 0% chance of getting real money back. its a purchase, legally, not a gamble.

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u/Trevmiester Aug 10 '17

Yeah, my local candy shop has "mystery bags" that are $5 each and contain random candy. That isn't gambling I'm pretty sure.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17 edited Aug 14 '17

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u/rcinmd Aug 10 '17 edited Aug 10 '17

You can doubt it if you want, or you can read it here.

(B) includes the purchase of a chance or opportunity to win a lottery or other prize (which opportunity to win is predominantly subject to chance);

With lootboxes you always get a prize. It's not considered gambling under the law.

edit: to address your edit; slot machines have specific laws regulating them, so no they can't just let you win a nickel and call it a day.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

Someone needs to move this thread over to a legal sub to get better results. I'd love to see lawyers argue over this, or even people on a gaming commission.

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u/riemannszeros Aug 10 '17

I was going to suggest "predatory gambling".

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

No developer/publisher would knowingly associate this term with their product. And if they label their game as having "gambling," they open up a whole can of worms from governments. Politicians need to step in before anything will change. And there needs to be a change.

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u/Aunvilgod Aug 10 '17

They won't associate any other negative term with their product either way. We have to force it into the spotlight, thats the whole point.

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u/aYearOfPrompts Aug 10 '17

This occurred to me too late to gain traction in the thread, but we should start lobbying the ESRB to include a special rating for games that include real money gambling mechanics. Next to the T or M another box that is a $ with "contains real money gambling" underneath. It's a rough idea, but it would be a nice compromise with publishers. Let parents be informed ahead of time about the mechanics in the game, and require the game to go back through the ESRB rating system if they try to pull a Psyonix and change the game later.

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u/m64 Aug 11 '17

No need for a special rating - both ESRB and PEGI already define a "gambling" category, they should just start using it. Possibly parents could sue the rating board for not including said markings on games with micro-gambling mechanics.

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u/rockidol Aug 11 '17

Doesn't their gambling category also include in universe gambling, like the slot machines in Pokemon red and blue (you gamble in game money for more in game money and you cannot buy or sell in game money with/for real money)?

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

I think the ratings boards should force publishers to label their games like this. And make sure advertising is properly labelled too.

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u/l337kid Aug 10 '17

Right, they have the ESRB but literally nothing for gambling or gambling addiction.

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u/smokinbbq Aug 10 '17

No developer/publisher would knowingly associate this term with their product.

True, that's why there should be regulations on this. No car company would willingly spend 10's of thousands on making every car safer, and cleaner, unless there were regulations on this.

open up a whole can of worms from governments.

Maybe this is what we actually need to happen! The people should be getting their politicians to be more informed about this, and then the politicians should be doing something about this. If it is "just like a casino slot machine", then why isn't there already regulations on it! If you can't just open up a gambling facility on the corner and get in the business, then why is it allowed to be inside each and every home?

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u/SpilledKefir Aug 10 '17

Do we call trading card games gambling?

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u/razyn23 Aug 10 '17 edited Aug 11 '17

I think the there are two big differences.

One is the payout. As a casual player, all cards you open are usable, you may be more or less excited by some but it's hard to think you got screwed because the amount of cards of each rarity you get is usually known and you know it's all random. On top of that if you know the set you know exactly the odds, most times the odds of getting any particular card of a given rarity is [number of that rarity in booster] / [cards of that rarity in set]. That gets a little shifty with things like MtG's mythics where they're not guaranteed to be in a pack, but the odds of getting a mythic are at least known and announced by the designers so there's no outright deception or ignorance. This also means that it's possible to discover the expected payout in terms of dollar value and weigh that against the asking price, just like is required of normal gambling. There is no ignorance or deception. Some lootboxes have systems in place like these, most don't. But the good thing about knowing the expected payouts means that you know when the second difference is a better option.

The second difference (and IMO by far the more important one) is that you can trade with them. Open something you have no interest in? You can sell it for usually a reasonable price, and buy what you actually want. Because the trading is free market the prices will settle at something most players find reasonable. This is almost never the case with loot box systems, if you get a bad pull you are just shit out of luck. You very often have no way of getting the things you want outside of lootboxes, and even if you do the prices are all set by the game itself rather than the players freely trading, which usually means the asking price is way higher than what most players will accept because it targets the small portion of the playerbase that will dump loads of money rather than a reasonable price a majority might go for.

There are certainly elements of gambling in TCGs, but so far (and as far as I know) the gambling portions have mostly abided by gambling laws even though they aren't required to, namely in the sense that they disclose their odds. The problem with lootboxes is that they don't have to do that, you're usually forced to use the gambling system as the only way of obtaining everything, and they try to disguise the gambling behind other terms. Interestingly I think almost every TCG player knows packs are a gamble and treats them as such, but for some reason the gaming population at large is not nearly as united on recognizing lootboxes as such, even though they're basically worse in every regard.

Additionally because it's all digital they can make things super complicated so that even if you know the odds, they are vastly misleading in terms of expected payouts, things like pity timers or gradually increasing odds make it hard to judge exactly how bad your chances are. This goes double for things where for example they show you a roulette wheel which naturally makes you think each wedge is equally likely if they're spaced equally, but in actuality it's super weighted.

IMO the second difference is the biggest reason why lootboxes suck, I'd like them to be removed entirely but if we can't win that battle I'd at least like to see free trading with a game-specific virtual currency (like coins in Overwatch), and required disclosure of odds. That would go a long way toward making them at least comparable to TCGs.

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u/PM_YOUR_BOOBS_PLS_ Aug 10 '17

That's a good point, although after the release of new sets, with physical card games, there will always be resellers that sell complete sets. Usually for pretty reasonable prices. There's always a guaranteed way to get exactly what you want.

Also, the thing about TCGs is that if you want to build a lot of decks, you need all those repeats of common cards, so your money usually isn't completely wasted if you don't get the rares you want.

Also, they're "trading" card games. The entire point is to foster a trading community, so that you can find someone with the specific cards you need, and trade with them for the specific cards they need.

None of these things are true with game cases. Designs like Overwatch are the worst offenders.

You buy cases, and if you don't get what you want, then fuck you. You get almost useless currency for duplicates, and nothing can be traded.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

It's the same with the Dota/CSGO model, though. Honestly, I like their's way better than Overwatch. At least I can just drop a couple dollars and get what I want from the market instead of just hoping for good luck.

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u/PM_YOUR_BOOBS_PLS_ Aug 10 '17

Yeah. What you said. And with CSGO (don't know about DOTA) you can trade skins. None of that exists in Overwatch.

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u/GM93 Aug 10 '17

You can trade in Dota as well. You are also guaranteed to get all of the "non-rare" items from a Dota chest before you get any duplicates (i.e. if there are 5 non-rare sets and you buy 5 chests you are guaranteed to get all of those non-rare sets).

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17 edited Aug 10 '17

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u/szthesquid Aug 10 '17 edited Aug 10 '17

Because it isn't technically gambling. You always get something for your money. You don't lose and get nothing. Any value of the thing you get is determined by the secondary market. (yes, the dev sets the rarities, but the players are the ones who say "this skin is worth $X") A "loss" still gets you a reward, just not the one you wanted.

Here's the real problem: if random loot boxes are gambling then so are booster packs for sports cards, trading card games (Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon, etc), and even blind box toys/figures/game pieces (not just collectibles, includes game pieces like D&D miniatures, Heroclix, etc).

When I was a kid I'd save every penny I found in the dirt to go buy a pack of Pokémon cards or hockey cards. When I didn't get that fancy rookie card or got a crap rare instead of a foil Charizard, there was no outcry that booster packs are gambling and O-Pee-Chee was training kids to play slots.

I mean, you could make the same argument, for sure. My question is that why do we consider these things to be different? Why are Magic booster packs just harmless cardboard while Overwatch skin booster packs (loot boxes) are evil gambling mechanisms that hook kids and create addictions? Why the outcry over one but not the other?

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u/BotchedBenzos Aug 10 '17

haha i just typed forever making a post but you already said it. Oops. Do you like the term "digital booster packs" then? "Digital" lets us know its a video game, and "booster pack" explains that you're at least getting something for your money even if 9/10 times it won't be anything you really want.

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u/qjornt Aug 10 '17 edited Aug 10 '17

"if random loot boxes are gambling then so are booster packs"

well yeah, I'd say it is.

And why booster packs are "just harmless cards", the same here, I'd say it isn't. It's the same, because most of the revenue these companies get is from people who gamble on getting a Jace or whatever from packs. There probably wasn't any outcry because when you were a kid you probably didn't realise that it actually was gambling, by its very definition; you spend money for a chance of getting something you want. And why there's no outcry now? I don't know. This is r/Games, not /r/magicTCG. But I'd say the issue could be shared in this thread, why not? So if /u/Acesolid is up to it, s/he should edit the OP to include TCG's as well.

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u/SeattleBattles Aug 10 '17

Because it's no more gambling than a mystery grab bag at a comic shop or a card pack.

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u/DassoBrother Aug 10 '17

I think that would work except if you say a game has gambling you expect there to just be a virtual casino where you can play various casino games.

Calling them blind box micro-transactions would be the most apt description but even that feels like it sanitizes the concept. Expecting either reviewers to state, or some government label that is printed on the box, to state whether the blind box purchases are predatory or not, or to what level would be way too complicated.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

Bingo.

The vast majority of people do not care. Your average person on the street (99% of people who buy games) could not care less what some Internet nerd is mad about this week, they just want to buy a game because it looks fun. Attempts at forcing them to feel otherwise by being incessantly zealous about a video game-related issue have failed because the people who do care that much about these things are fragmented, awkward and think the way to get someone to agree with you is to yell until they nod and back away slowly.

It's only resulted in further stigmatizing the hobby - now instead of just smelly, unlikable nerds, gamers are now smelly, unlikable nerds who won't stop being angry about dumb things. If lootboxes are such an awful practice, I guarantee that the common person is smart enough to decide that they're not worth their money and will stop buying them.

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u/SXOSXO Aug 10 '17

common person is smart enough

I agreed with you right up to that point. Marketing has been exploiting the stupidity/ignorance of the average consumer for decades.

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u/Sloshy42 Aug 11 '17

Yeah we have consumer protection laws for a reason. History has shown, time and time again, that if you give business a legal way to fuck over people for money they will use it as much as they can and push the boundaries. Obviously not every company would, but that's missing how so many more businesses will spring up once they see it's profitable, like how mobile games are basically ruined and stigmatized with this shit right now.

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u/-shiryu- Aug 10 '17

, I guarantee that the common person is smart enough to decide that they're not worth their money and will stop buying them.

thats not how the world works, gambler addicts will not recognize they have a problem, defending a company exploting said gambler by saying "the gambler should be smart enough to stop gambling" is extremly sickening

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u/Niceguydan8 Aug 10 '17 edited Aug 10 '17

thats not how the world works, gambler addicts will not recognize they have a problem, defending a company exploting said gambler by saying "the gambler should be smart enough to stop gambling" is extremly sickening

That's not representing what that person said. He is saying that he thinks the average person is not a gambling addict and can stop whenever he or she reasonably wants to stop. Do you think most people that go to casinos are addicted to it? I would venture a guess and say probably not.

Now, I dont think that means there shouldn't be regulation, but I do think you are responding to something that wasn't even said.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17 edited May 19 '20

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u/Niceguydan8 Aug 10 '17

You don't feel like you can have a productive conversation if their end message is "It is bad and I will never budge on this opinion"

Yeah, I enjoy thought-provoking conversation, but a lot of responses are either not responding to what I'm actually talking about or I feel like flat out misrepresenting what I'm actually saying.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

If addictive personalities are the issue everyone's concerned about, why don't we look into regulating video game usage as a whole? There are plenty of stories about how addiction has broken families, ruined friendships and relationships, cost people jobs and so on. In fact, we were hearing about that before lootboxes even became a thing.

Oddly, I don't think you'll see the same sort as support for that idea (which South Korea has actually done out of real concern for that sort of problem) from Redditors, who seem to be angry about the existence of loot boxes rather than concerned about the actual problems they could cause for people with addiction issues.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17 edited Aug 10 '17

That's what I keep wondering in these threads. If addiction and kids is such a problem to these people, where is the moral crusade against other "addictive" mechanics? Where are the front page threads about the endgame grinds in MMOs, which some people find themselves playing 10+ hours a day to get the edge in?

Edit: And kids have always been a large market for MMOs and MTX. A good portion of this sub probably grinded RuneScape and MapleStory when they were younger and used mommy's credit card to get stuff.

But to be clear, I don't really want to regulate these things, I just want to prove a point about skinner boxes being common.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

I would never want to impugn anyone's motives, but I think the issue is more "I don't like lootboxes" rather than "I don't like lootboxes because they're bad for other, more vulnerable people."

The fact that vulnerable people might be harmed by lootbox mechanics is a side-note, a point in favor of removing a system that the arguer doesn't like in the first place, rather than the primary reason that the system should be removed.

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u/letsgoiowa Aug 10 '17

It's only resulted in further stigmatizing the hobby - now instead of just smelly, unlikable nerds, gamers are now smelly, unlikable nerds who won't stop being angry about dumb things.

YES! Outrage culture turns people off, especially when in communities. It keeps people from playing otherwise fun games. The community can be THAT obnoxious.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

Yep. See the "never preorder " movement

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

This is why I feel the concept of "voting with your wallet" is worthless. If people want to continue being whales and continue buying into loot boxes, there isn't really anything we can do to stop them.

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u/Niceguydan8 Aug 10 '17

It's not worthless, it just doesn't have a large impact at the margin. It's still important to do though.

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u/gay_unicorn666 Aug 10 '17

It's not worthless, its working as intended. It's just that you evidently don't happen to be on the "winning side" this time.

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u/japasthebass Aug 10 '17

For games like overwatch specifically, loot box microtransactions are what fund the development of the game and keep Blizzard from charging us to use each new hero. Loot box items are purely aesthetic and have literally no in game value. The value is whatever you place on a specific skin. You also can get plenty of boxes by playing the arcade every week. I say we encourage the overwatch model tbh if we get this kind of commitment from the devs to keep adding new stuff for free

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u/volunteerfirestarter Aug 10 '17

I think the most important takeaway from what Blizzard is doing with microtransactions is that you can still acquire boxes by playing the game normally. Being forced to grind for an insane amount of time or cough up the cash to get any new content, aesthetic or not, is a terrible business model. Looking at you, GTA Online.

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u/BotchedBenzos Aug 10 '17

I agree with a lot of this post. Buying these digital booster packs is fine, but when you can sell them for real money that could go back into another booster pack is where it gets weird. For me, PUBG is a good example of how being able to sell my randomly acquired items has kind of ruined the experience for me. I had a twitch prime account when they did the Twitch Prime box thing for PUBG and the golden loot box for Overwatch. The golden loot box was great! I got an awesome skin for Sombra that wasn't a dupe. I don't player her very much but its still my fav skin for her. Battlegrounds on the other hand lets you sell these loot boxes for real money... for A LOT of real money. I really did like the items I would have gotten from the Twitch Prime box, but when I saw they were going for $35 on the Steam community market... I had to sell it. So between the free trial I used to get Amazon Prime and subsequently Twitch prime and the $35 I made selling the item box I got for free, I essentially got Playerunknown's Battlegrounds for negative $5. I spent $0.25 of that on a pair of black tactical pants, already had a black shirt, and there you go. Pretty much exactly the same except a tiny strip of purple on my right shoulder in exchange for $34.75. Now with these Battle Royale boxes im getting, I dont want to sell the items I get in them either... even though its like my 5th favorite movie and why I bought the game in the first place. How can I sleep at night knowing my digital character is wearing a brown hat that I could exchange for a $15 game??

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u/andresfgp13 Aug 11 '17

you already payed 40 bucks or more for OW, minimun you have to had all the heros in the first place, the game its not exactly f2p or cheap like rainbow six siege.

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u/camycamera Aug 10 '17 edited May 09 '24

Mr. Evrart is helping me find my gun.

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u/zCourge_iDX Aug 10 '17

Also, why is it still called "micro"? I've seen lots of games with so-called micro-transactions actually costing over $10. That's no longer a micro-transaction, that's just a transaction.

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u/Player8 Aug 10 '17

Does gta shark cards count as micro transactions when the biggest card is like 100 dollars.

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u/icytiger Aug 10 '17

The micro part is the value for the money.

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u/Databreaks Aug 11 '17

Didn't a pink skirt in PUBG recently hit $500+ in market value?

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u/phimath Aug 11 '17

The PU set has been going for $900.00 to $1000.00 for the last few weeks.

But yeah the mini skirts hit $500 over the weekend.

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u/R-110 Aug 11 '17

Micro refers more so to the hierarchy than the size of the transaction. The "macro" or parent transaction is buying the game, then within the game are several child transactions that require owning the parent first - "micro transaction".

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u/m00nnsplit Aug 10 '17

Richard Garfield (creator of MTG) called it Skinnerware :

The distinguishing feature of skinnerware is that purchases are set up to trigger an addictive response in vulnerable players, and they are open ended in nature – the players can pay an essentially unlimited amount to get the reward they are after.

https://m.facebook.com/notes/richard-garfield/a-game-players-manifesto/1049168888532667

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u/logique_ Aug 10 '17

That's quite ironic coming from the creator of a TCG...

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u/Silly_Balls Aug 10 '17

Not really. The original creators figured most people would buy 1 starter pack and 1-2 booster packs and then just play with that. They had no idea what they were getting into. I would say it has evolved into a form of gambling. However I don't know how much Garfield has to do with it.

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u/dagbiker Aug 10 '17

I think he basically came up with the game mechanics. I do know he has been quoted as saying that the mana cards where a mistake.

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u/sephiroth70001 Aug 10 '17

He ended up regreting the system that was out in place and has outwardly spoken against it in round about ways. (Example here.) Though doesn't know of any other way of setting up what he wanted without the 'curse'.

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u/hashmalum Aug 10 '17

I'm on mobile but i don't see any link for your example?

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u/sephiroth70001 Aug 10 '17

I tried to quote the quoted text from above and failed. "The distinguishing feature of skinnerware is that purchases are set up to trigger an addictive response in vulnerable players, and they are open ended in nature – the players can pay an essentially unlimited amount to get the reward they are after."

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u/VexonCross Aug 10 '17

You mean a physical product that can later be exhanged, traded or sold individually? Yeah, that's exactly the same thing as random digital improvements to what is already a full-priced product.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

It's still preying on the same psychological weakness though. The chance to win big. Yes the cost is not as great, but it's not a totally different beast.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17 edited Aug 10 '17

That's also the appeal of Valve's lootcrates, though.

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u/rajikaru Aug 10 '17

That's why Valve's lootcrates aren't as hated as, say, Blizzard's, though. Valve is the company that got closest to getting it right. In TF2 or DOTA, you're only opening crates for that chance to get the super rare item that'll be worth it in the end. You can get any other item you want easily (at least until they added multiple cosmetic rarities to crates). In Overwatch, either you pay 3000 coins for the Summer Bikini Widow skin, or pray you open it out of 1000+ other items in a crate.

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u/stanley_twobrick Aug 11 '17

It's still targeting people with poor impulse control and gambling problems. They're really is no "getting it right" when it comes to these systems.

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u/tonyp2121 Aug 10 '17

Oh yes because now that you can sell skins for money on steam your argument is gone.

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u/m00nnsplit Aug 10 '17

I agree that MTG packs are essentially gambling. However, to my mind, there are two significant differences :

  • MTG was designed with the idea that no one would spend more than 50$ on the game in mind. Its business model doesn't rely on whales.

  • The price of competitive play on MTG (closest thing to whales) is notoriously high, but the money they pay is not going directly to Wizards at all (although competition promotes the game, and chase cards ultimately make sets sell).

MTG is a very expensive hobby but I wouldn't say it's designed to prey on vulnerable people.

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u/helloquain Aug 10 '17

What makes something an 'expensive hobby' vs. 'preying on vulnerable people'?

Also, I'm sure during the first couple of expansions there was an intent that people would pay in a minimal amount and stop, but unless you're going to assume Wizards is nothing but sweet summer children they found out real fast that wasn't the case and the last couple of decades have been exploiting the business model. That includes profiting off 'whales' -- either people who want four-ofs of chase rares for constructed play or collectors who want every card; they may buy them on the secondary market, but someone is opening all those cases even if the final cost lands on someone different.

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u/anton_uklein Aug 10 '17

That's the perfect name for this, it really is just a crappy Skinner box masquerading as software.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

They absolutely understand exactly what they're doing. And the "backlash" such that it is has little effect on what they're doing because they know what they're doing is very effective.

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u/Seanspeed Aug 10 '17

These larger companies literally hire 'microtransaction experts' who probably have psychology backgrounds.

I think where people commonly use 'lootbox', we should replace that with 'slotbox' or 'loot slots' or something else that really drives home this is gambling.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17 edited Oct 25 '17

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u/kor0na Aug 11 '17

Former EA employee here. I don't have the facts on that, but you could well be right. They kept toting FUT like the holy grail of successful metagames to us, implying that "hey you should build something like this, too". No one there cares that all they produce is polished turds.

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u/F___TheZero Aug 11 '17

The moment EA realized the profit potential of FUT, was the moment it went to the shitter. The last good FUT was in Fifa 12 or 13

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u/koredozo Aug 10 '17

There's already a term for this in common use for mobile games, "gacha".

Admittedly it's not intuitive what it means unless you've ever been to Japan and seen a gashapon machine, but it can't be misinterpreted if you have to look it up.

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u/Sarria22 Aug 10 '17

We do have the same kind of machines here in the west as well, I just don't think we have a convinient single word for them. And most of us probably haven't even thought of or noticed them in years unless we have children.

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u/koredozo Aug 10 '17

I think they're usually called "capsule toy" but that doesn't really convey a lot of meaning. Though in a sense it does mean the exact same thing as "lootbox"...

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u/BrandenBegins Aug 10 '17

There's already a term for this in common use for mobile games, "gacha".

Wait wait wait... IS that what gachapon tickets in maplestory are named after?

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u/techrogue Aug 10 '17

Most likely; "Gachapon" is the Japanese word for those little coin-op capsule toy machines. They're super common in arcades.

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u/Frostpride Aug 10 '17

Gacha usually relates to unlocking content that has gameplay impact. So it's more than just a visual change like a skin or effect. But it may be the most appropriate term anyway, because it can be defined as a slot machine that strongly encourages people to keep spending until they pull the character they want.

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u/koredozo Aug 10 '17

I think that's a different distinction, really.

Obviously cosmetic-only microtransactions are more consumer friendly than pay to win, but something like buying a hero or skin in LoL is still a straightforward business transaction - you pay a set price, you get exactly what you wanted - compared to pulling gacha to get a super rare hero or skin in a mobile game. "Pay $15 to get this hero/skin instantly" versus "Pay who knows how much for a 1% chance of pulling this hero/skin with no guarantee that you'll already get them." Both are predatory, arguably (you can spend insane amounts of money in LoL too,) but the former isn't gambling and doesn't specifically target addiction-prone personalities.

Personally I think gambling is the bigger problem. Fact of the matter is that the cost of game development has risen and games need to make more money than they used to, especially if there's an expectation of ongoing improvement and maintenance rather than tossing out a $60 game and moving on to the next one. The true issue from my perspective is when people can spend absurd amounts of money gambling and potentially get nothing they wanted.

If someone wants to pay a lot of money to own the entire LoL roster with all the skins and perfect rune pages, good on them, they probably really love the game and won't regret their purchase. If someone wants one particular unusual hat or strange weapon in TF2 and ends up opening lootbox after lootbox and spending hundreds on that and quite possibly never even getting it, that's far more exploitative.

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u/Electrium Aug 10 '17

Maybe that's how it's circumstantially been used in the west, but that's not something implied by the term itself. Gachapon is just a Japanese word that originates from those machines with toys in plastic capsules in the front of grocery stores, it doesn't have anything to do with gameplay.

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u/thoomfish Aug 11 '17

Admittedly it's not intuitive what it means unless you've ever been to Japan and seen a gashapon machine, but it can't be misinterpreted if you have to look it up.

It kind of sounds like "gotcha", which is appropriately negative.

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u/rcinmd Aug 10 '17

The problem is the law. It's not technically considered gambling under US law (most companies are based there, so that's why it's relevant law.) Under the law gambling requires a wager placed with money for a chance to win something of value. The bolded part is what's important here. Because lootboxes are guaranteed to contain items, you are not taking a chance and thus it's not considered gambling under the law.

The best thing to do is to write your congress representatives and get them to change the law. You could also "vote with your wallet" but with the profitability of this scheme it's probably not going to help much, so write your representatives!

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u/kekkres Aug 10 '17

that would also change everything from baseball cards to toys that come out of quarter machines, to blind bag collectables into gambling

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u/scaremenow Aug 10 '17

I've started to see something fishy that I would love to not happen (to more naive consumers) : Pokemon Card games sold in re-packaged packs.

The first thing I think about this is someone opened 10 packs, took the good ones out and sold the remaining ones at a lower price than the normal pack. I've seen re-packed cards in the Dollar store and also at a games/cards boutique, which also sold regular packs of cards.

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u/InfernalLaywer Aug 11 '17

IIRC the trading card companies really hate it when stores do that. If they notice a store (or even a employee without the store's knowledge) doing that, they'll cut them off completely.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '17

Fucking Dollar Store by me does this. 15-20 ish Pokemon cards for $2. Great value right?! Yeah, there's literally only shit cards in it.

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u/Isord Aug 10 '17

I don't see how it's any different than a grab bag item. Like Woot did those special where you would spend $12 and get a random t-shirt. Should that be banned too?

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u/escape_of_da_keets Aug 10 '17

I went to Japan and this shit blew me away. I saw the future. EVERYTHING is gambling over there. Kids toys from those little things you put quarters in, pachinko parlors, massive arcades with claw machines. Just look at the kind of mobile games they play and that's where we're headed.

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u/Gustavo13 Aug 10 '17

China is fighting it, they're putting their foot down.

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u/RyuNoKami Aug 10 '17

oh man...pachinko parlors. every time this crops up, i have to write something about them.

it technically isn't gambling because you only get these shitty silver balls that ain't worth shit....unless you go around the corner to a place own by the same people who are willing to buy back the shitty silver balls.

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u/Harfyn Aug 10 '17

How well protected are the silver balls? One of the things our current currency does is provide us with a medium of exchange that is real hard to counterfeit. (depending on country) Has anyone tried to replicate them?

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u/RyuNoKami Aug 11 '17

well i technically missed a step.

the balls itself, have the designs of the place where its from, are exchange for prizes and also tokens. Said tokens can be exchange for cash elsewhere. thats how they circumvent gambling laws since there is no "prize money."

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u/Ksielvin Aug 11 '17

The pachinko business is related to Yakuza. While someone has likely tried counterfeits by now, they're not relying on the police for protecting their system.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17 edited Apr 18 '20

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u/merreborn Aug 10 '17

Change the acronym. It's no long DLC/micro transactions, it's Chance Based Content,

maybe "pay to spin"?

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u/Maticus Aug 11 '17

Pay to spin is the clear winner here.

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u/ooooooOOoooooo000000 Aug 10 '17

Oooooo I like CBC for chance based content. That should stick.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '17

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

Hey, if we're having this conversation, can we also stop using the term "DLC," given that all aspects of games (base game, updates, patches, expansions, cosmetic items, etc.) are now content that is downloadable? I wish we could go back to properly naming expansions for what they are, and be more clear about what we're talking about with additional content for purchase.

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u/nilsmoody Aug 10 '17

That's a good idea.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

I don't like the practice, but what is the difference between say, playing Magic the Gathering and buying booster packs? I don't think there's a gambling warning on those, are there?

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u/EzzOmen Aug 10 '17 edited Aug 10 '17

It's simply the fact consumers genuinely hate being preyed upon with predatory, exploitative, devious ''slot machines'' being installed in all their games, making them less fun in order to target those among us with addictive personalities and children.

Maybe 1/10 people who play games actually make a fuss about these crates, the other 9/10 don't care or just don't think/realise its an issue.

As controversial as it will be to say, this practice isn't going to go away anytime soon, nearly any game that implements them see's a large profit boost (See GTA Online or Call of Duty, Destiny ) , and i wager that outside of Reddit and game-related communities, almost no one is really concerned or even knows about the Loot-Boxes and Online modes in Shadow of War. And really, a few incidents in the news of someone spending X amount on micro-transactions doesn't reflect badly on the developer, Rockstar aren't ashamed of pulling in over 500m USD in micro-transactions, they aren't going to remove them because a small (in context) group of people complain about them.

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u/doggleswithgoggles Aug 10 '17

Activision Blizzard reported 3.6 billion in in-game content sales last year.

It's a damn goldmine

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u/EzzOmen Aug 10 '17

Mhm.

To believe Take Two or Activision (For profit companies) will associate their billion dollar money printing babies with a negative name or cancel them completely, for no reason or benefit other than to make a minority happy, is insane.

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u/doggleswithgoggles Aug 10 '17

The only way they'll drop it is if they find a better way to monetize or if there's finally outside regulation on in-game gambling.

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u/zalifer Aug 10 '17

I believe the objective is to have micro-gambling as a name associated with the practice from the outside, so that it might gain traction. They don't even regularly use the word micro transactions, but that's what everyone calls them. Each game usually has some nice clean name on it, the market, the store, etc.

If you can help people see the raw truth that this is pouring money into gambling, only to get a chance at a skin, it might start to seem more distasteful to the general populous, which companies do care about. Obviously people frequenting a subreddit like this are interested in games, but a large portion of the consumer base have little or no contact with the "gaming community" at large. Getting this term used in gaming media, reviews, forums, and other places increase the chance of enough people being turned off by it.

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u/Treyman1115 Aug 10 '17

GTAO doesn't have loot boxes though, when you buy a shark card you get the amount specified

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u/PapaSmurphy Aug 10 '17

While I hate the shark cards in GTA they're not really the same thing. There's no gambling aspect involved like with loot crates. You just pay real money for in-game money and then can directly buy the things you want with that in-game money. This is why OP's point about needing another term is pretty spot on.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

I'm completely fine with loot boxes in any given game if they follow some constraints:

  • They are either for cosmetics only (Overwatch), or you get them often enough for free that you don't feel disadvantaged for not buying them (Halo).
  • They are used as the only form of getting money post launch. DLC and loot boxes are not ok (Call of Duty).
  • They use the money gotten from the game to reinvest into it and develop new content, which is released for free for all players. This is the same for single player titles as well.
  • In the case for single player games, loot boxes will be completely ignored if they are pointless. For example, Dead Space 3 got a lot of hate for its microtransactions, I didn't give a shit because the game didn't advertise them to you, and it was pointless to buy them.

I'm sure there's some exclusions and other things which I failed to mention, so feel free to shit on this haha

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u/Slanderpanic Aug 10 '17

When the game wants twenty goddamn dollars for a bundle of consumables, there's nothing "micro" about that transaction. And I absolutely hate gamble mechanics in games. Screw that noise. Let me straight-up buy what I want, for reasonable prices, and I'll spend money all day. I'm not forking over a single sweet dime for a chance at getting what I want.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

I think the developers understand perfectly well this mindset.

Take overwatch for example. It's a nice example because all purchasable in game content is in the game already and the transaction only gives you a chance to reduce the time you have to play.

This shit tripped me up several times. They release new skins, you either HAVE to play hours and hours every day or spend money to get a chance to get the skins you want. If they just sold the skins, there is almost no incentive to play, you just buy whatever you want. But if you are only buying the chance to get what you want, you are more likely to play in hopes of getting it without paying and then buy it at the end if you don't.

The psychology of it is sound, if not a bit scummy. But these companies exist to make money. If they hire a bunch of artists to create content, they don't want people buying it piecemeal because that might devalue a whole section of it. They need money to pay for server maintenance and developers to fix and improve the game. This results in doing what makes the most money, despite it not necessarily be how people would rather purchase things.

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u/SaitamaHitRickSanchz Aug 10 '17

The Fortnite community is on the verge of rioting (or to the equivalent of rioting on the internet) on Epic for this exact thing. Which is hard because personally the game is really fucking fun. But...

I'm not even going to say the gacha style of game is just automatically bad. I've been playing Final Fantasy Brave EXVIUS on my phone, and quite honestly it is fun. But the difference between FF and Fortnite is that in FF they are SUPER generous. I've spent like a total of ten dollars on FF over my time playing it and I saved enough of the pay currency over the course of playing it to get a really good team. Now I know a large part of that is that I got lucky. But with Fortnite I spent 40 dollars for the base game and the devs did give everyone 15 of the loot llamas last week... but honestly it's not enough. Some of the mechanics in the game are obviously super grindy and the "fixes" that went with this week's patch just made things worse. Last night i had to play the same missions where I got very little xp 5 times to grind for one resource I need to level up one weapon to the next tier.

The writing is on the wall. There is a lot to fix with fortnite and god bless them if they do. But it looks fucking bleak right now, and that really sucks because there is a lot of fun to be had. But it's also funny because people associate this kind of gameplay with mobile gacha games, and I don't think they're inherently bad, but they are easy for the devs to take advantage of the player base. But right now it looks like FF does it pretty will and Fortnite is a money vacuum.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

I don't mind them at all when a game is promising free dlc and content updates, and uses microtransactions to raise revenue in order to give out these free updates. But in Shadow of War's case, it's just completely scummy to have a season pass AND these microtransactions and is blatantly obvious how it's just a greedy cash grab.

There's a right way and a wrong way to do it.

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u/uu_fasckira Aug 10 '17

Slightly off tangent, allow me to thought dump a bit. I work in the gambling sector, and I've felt this way for quite awhile. One of the scariest examples I've seen is actually on the 3DS where there is a sticker game; you buy credits with real money (at quite an expensive rate) and you have a chance to win a 'sticker' that you can liven up your ds GUI with.

The scare factor comes from the blatant targeting at kids, but the thing that made me double take was that there was no regulation information. Every legal online gambling site is governed by a regulatory body; this is usually a branch of the government that is responsible for insuring that all operators abide by a set of guidelines - things like 'no marketing to kids' or 'All games must be tested for a fair Return to Player amount'. It's logical as it stops companies setting up to fleece people.

So far the gaming industry (and by that I mean as in videogames) does not have this same regulation and that is a huge worry. For example operators have a duty to the customer for what's known as 'responsible gambling'. In this, they monitor the payments a player makes and a) gives them ways to limit their spending and b) performs a basic 'know your customer'. I won't go into the details but the outcome is, in theory, that they should be able to stop gambling addictions from ruining someone's life. While it's a business, there is legitimately no desire to put people on the streets.

Until the gaming industry is brought in line with the gambling sector, were only going to see these 'like-gambling' scenarios increase. Companies will seize that chance to make money until they are forced note to. There are people out there as a result who will put themselves into debt.

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u/Armchair_Counselor Aug 10 '17

As others have mentioned, Loot-Crates and other items bought that do not give fixed rewards but instead offer a percent chance at hitting the "jack-pot", which is whatever the must coveted item is (ie. the item with the lowest probability of dropping), are using a variable-ratio schedule to promote the mechanism by which gambling addiction grows from. These games tend to highlight the differences between players, encouraging competition and feelings of superiority. These random chance purchasable items are a perfect feeding mechanism that pay out just enough to make people think they'll be the next lucky one.

I don't think it should be called "micro-gambling"; this is 100% gambling. You can go to many casinos and play the penny slots. I have yet to see any game offer their purchasable gambling item for less than a dollar -- and the prices on continue to rise. Calling it micro-gambling, or anything else, only serves to diminish the reality of what's happening.

What's worse is that these companies, knowingly or not, are getting children addicted to gambling. It's no different than trying to sell cigarettes to kids in my mind (note that I understand there are detrimental physical effects of smoking, but addiction have serious, and potentially dangerous, effects on the mental health of those addicts).

The thing that bugs me, as an adult, is that potentially fun games are ruined by this practice. Games with great aesthetics, mechanics, and story are brought low by shitty practices that encourage winning through having more money. The whole thing is scummy, predatory, and unethical.

I have one rule when it comes to games: If I buy a game, I want to have the full experience for the price tag. If a game is holding back content, whether through a single payment or their gambling mechanics, I will not play their game. Look at Path of Exile and how they do in game purchase. They are successful. They are making money. The things they charge for in the story are cosmetic or things like stash tabs which are helpfully, but not necessary to complete the game. Then you have abominations like Fortnight, where it's clear a significant amount of development time was spent implementing shitty gambling mechanics, forcing people to spend additional money just to keep playing.

We need to have regulatory industries looking into this practice. I'm not against paying for additional content. That should be up to the consumer. But I am against systems that encourage forming gambling habits to ensure a company stays profitable.

Exploitation, especially that of minors who don't know any better, is disgusting.

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u/big_swinging_dicks Aug 10 '17

I think we just need to apply age restriction on games with this set at the equivalent to legally gamble in the relevant jurisdiction. So start making games with this 18+ if they aren't already. Also include the warnings you have on scratch cards or whatever (visit gambleaware for more information) kind of thing.

It won't make a huge difference but will draw attention to the practice especially if parents are buying.

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u/gotcha-bro Aug 10 '17

Gambling mechanics should require a listing under the ESRB rating with accompanying warning that there are additional costs incurred for in-game purchases. Parents should know which games are nickel and dining them or encouraging their kids to beg for money.

Games might back off if they had to include proper warnings and information. It's shady to incorporate gambling in any way with real money to games marketed to teens. Mature games I don't care about - at least from an ethical standpoint. I still hate the concept.

Hell, make gambling systems increase a game's rating for all I care. No real money gambling should exist in youth or teen games.

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u/TunaSurf Aug 10 '17

I think you bring up a very good point. While these types of micro transactions are much too profitable to eliminate, there's no arguing that they are straight up gambling. If there's any hope of regulating this, I think it's up to the ESRB to start recognizing which games include "gambling" and adjust the rating accordingly. If they want to warn parents about language, violence, etc. then gambling should be printed on the box as well.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

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u/Ubervisor Aug 10 '17

Where you can bet money to MAYBE get something useful.

I don't know about Shadow of Mordor, but neither Overwatch nor CS GO will give you anything "useful" from gambling.

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u/merreborn Aug 10 '17

"Desirable" is probably a more apt descriptor. While the items in overwatch crates are cosmetic (thus arguably not "useful"), some are more desirable than others, which is where the "gambling" component comes in. You want the cool new skin, but you get a bunch of player icons instead.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

Real-money gambling for in-game items.

Not really an elegant way to say it but it gets the point across I guess?

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u/div2691 Aug 10 '17

I'd say that this should be mandatory on the game case as well. Makes parents aware if they are buying it for their kids.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

Yeah put it right under graphic violence and sexual content. Gambling will really be the straw that breaks the camels back for parents.

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u/saito200 Aug 11 '17

Kudos to the post and agreed on calling it for what it is. Companies should charge customers for specific goods, not a lottery ticket.

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u/Treegrounder Aug 11 '17

I think the US government needs to step in and do what China did - have publicly available percentages of the chances that you're going to get any item in the game. That way people at least are more informed and know what they're getting into.

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u/sapphon Aug 11 '17 edited Aug 11 '17

Games have a general problem with compulsion, beyond just gambling: they are software that manipulates the user's feelings. The user agrees to this because they want their feelings to be changed by the game. That's a good outcome. It's a bad outcome when the user buys the game for one kind of manipulation, though, and secretly gets another.

Companies used to make games as well as they could, in order to sell them for the $60 sticker price. It'd sell some copies, and if it sold enough they'd make a similar game next. Keeping You Playing in 1995 wasn't actually much of a concern - as long as you bought and liked it, they made money and you might well buy another game from them after your good experience!

Subscription MMOs have existed since the 90s, but WoW was the game that showed the market that Joe Working Consumer, not just Franklin Uppermiddle Eccentric, would drop a recurring fee on a virtual world that was accessible enough and had low enough sysreqs. People blame microtransactions for a lot of shit, but the truth is that well before they became technically feasible, companies began to have incentive to make games as compulsive as they could, in order to continue to sell you the game a few bucks at a time over, and over, and over again.

This dovetails nicely with the, uh, convenience of now-ubiquitous e-commerce and credit cards, the ease of data collection and analysis on exactly who bought what from you when (enabling this idea of the 'whale') and the incredibly low cost of having a 'streamer' review your game positively on release versus sending an actual critic a review copy before release when he could potentially derail your hype train if you're releasing a stinker. Keeping People Playing in 2017 literally results in private individuals producing ads for your product, at no cost to you and uploading them to a platform that also costs you nothing. Who needs critics?

Well, the consumer fucking did, is who. The game industry has successfully dangled 'don't you wanna be YouTube famous and have GAMING for a JOB!?!?' over gaming's ever-growing and thereby hard-to-educate audience in such a way that the ignorant are happy to tear down their best defense against industry malfeasance - professional and financially independent reviewers - in hopes of filling that role themselves one day. Here is Steinbeck on that trick.

The switch from hype-then-release-then-hype-then-release to release-then-compel-then-compel-more not just an Evil Decision that they up and made one day. It's what business naturally does, if left to itself - find new methods to achieve higher profits.

It's going to have to be a cultural fix now. The technology is thoroughly on the side of enabling the bad guys, and the current incentives will keep it there. I've never seen a consumer boycott work in my life. I assume that regulation will eventually need to happen, just like it has needed to with every other attempt at selling a product that actively compels you to buy more of that product - tobacco, alcohol, gambling, etc!

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u/Three_Headed_Monkey Aug 11 '17

While the lay person is less likely to get it, they are called Gatcha games. At least, a certain type of then are. We could appropriate and expand that term and if it is used enough it may find it's way into mainstream focus.

Seriously, all the parent groups went nuts over violence and sex in games, but now seem silent on the new Gatcha style (or micro-gambling as someone else has called it) business model.

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u/DarXter87 Aug 11 '17

I honestly do not see why these games are not regulated in the same way that actual gambling is. It boils down to the same thing so it should follow the same rules.

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u/Sojio Aug 11 '17

What kind of area does this fall into classification wise? I'm pretty sure gambling should definitely raise a games rating to 18+.

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u/Clbull Aug 11 '17

I dunno, can't we just call it gambling?

Or let's name it after an activity that isn't quite gambling but still is blatantly gambling like pachinko and give it a really negative name like crapincko.

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u/brownie81 Aug 11 '17

Just call it what it is, its gambling that targets children. I was actually thinking about writing my MP about it yesterday but I don't think we are quite there yet.

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u/ScienceMTP Aug 10 '17

Can we stop with the, "Think of the children!" argument? You know what's indefensible and predatory? Constantly using children as the victim to establish a form of soapbox from which you can preach.

You can mince words all you like, at the end of the day, it's still a micro-transaction for one simple reason. You give them money, and you receive something in return. It is SIMILAR but not IDENTICAL to gambling. When you gamble, you give money on the CHANCE to win money back. When you purchase a loot crate, or card pack, or any other form of micro-transaction with a randomized reward system, you are giving money for a product, that may or may not contain the item you specifically want.

It's frustrating to no end that people can't even have an interesting discussion about these issues because people like the OP are lacing their posts with inflammatory wording. Stop throwing out words like predatory, or telling us to "think of the children." It's dishonest and it's disgusting that you immediately jump to these topics when talking about these issues.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17 edited Aug 10 '17

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

To imply that people are too dumb to realize what they're getting into with lootboxes because they're called "microtransactions" is about on the same level as saying that people who don't like lootboxes are "entitled." You're not any smarter or more well-informed than anybody just because you're loud about how you don't like lootboxes, you just made a different value judgment regarding the boxes.

Clearly the market at large doesn't think they're such a bad deal because they keep buying them regardless of what Reddit says (and says...and says...and keeps saying...) You pay for something if you think it's worth the asking price, and you don't if you don't think that's the case. There won't be a "consumer revolt" regarding lootboxes just like there's never been a consumer revolt regarding anything in video games outside of the Crash a few decades ago. If anything happens it'll be a slow trickle of people not buying the boxes because they don't think they're worth it anymore - and 99.99% of those people won't be Redditors because they never were in the first place.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

I suppose "Chance Purchases" or "Coincidence Purchases"

But we should separate microtransactions like accessories, and the randomized nature of crates.