Stop selling gambling as okay to kids. Gacha games equal gambling for minors.
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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This is especially funny in South Korea. Go to a Casino and burn $2000 and you may even get jail time, but gatcha is A ok.
At least at a casino you can get something of value. The games effectively reward you in company script.
Scrip.
Games reward you in game mechanics, same as most games at a casino.
It'd be fine if it was limited to like 1-5 dollars per account monthly with a yearly maximum. Not a 100 dollars at a time.
Some people hate the eu but I swear I only hear wins
because the people who hate the eu are the people who are wrong.
It's stuff like chat control that make me hate the EU sometimes.
Oh and the really really dumb cookie law.
The cookie law isn't dumb, but at this point it should maybe be reformed. Basically as long as a website doesn't do shady shit with cookies no cookie banner is required. Instead of complaining about the cookie banner law, people should complain about websites who sell their users' data.
Basically as long as a website doesn’t do shady shit with cookies no cookie banner is required.
That is actually the status quo. If a website only uses cookies that are needed to make the website function, there is no need for a banner or dialogue. These cookie banners are there deliberately to be annoying so you'll agree to more than is necessary.
The dumb bit of the law is the fact that websites are allowed to put up an annoying banner that says either accept cookies or individually deselect 240 checkboxes.
As @apotheotic@beehaw.org mentioned, that is actually not allowed and against the spirit of the "cookie banner law". But since hundreds, if not thousands of sites break this law, it takes quite the time for government workers to sift through all of that (provided they even get around to it).
They're not actually allowed to do that, by my understanding. It must be equally simple to accept all cookies as it is to deny cookies.
The newest take on cookies, is "accept all, or pay to read". Quite shady, if you ask me.
and illegal.
Now do Stop Killing Games
I wonder if this will in practice put an end to the scummy practice of badly sized in game currency pack sizes, one of the many scummy techniques they use to make people spend more.
Let’s say the thing most players buy costs 3 ingame currency (I love that my autocorrect made „insane currency“ out of that). The smallest pack you can buy is 5. So, the player buys 5, spends 3 and has 2 left with which nothing to do. If they want another 3, they have to buy 5 more. Spend 3, have 4 left. Spend 3, have 1 left. The cycle continues.
Or, just stop games from selling in-game content?
Every skin is a texture or model swap, every "exclusive" always exists in the files, every in-game currency is fabricated.
Games try really really hard to make you pay for something that is copy and pasted
This is one of those radical ideas that people are terrified of, because it would kill the business models of a lot of massive corporations. It's easy to spin that as the death of the game industry, rather than what it is: the death of a business practice.
Like the laws against underage smoking probably wiped out billions in shareholder value, but that was objectively a good thing. Banning (or heavily regulating) in-game purchases would also be a good thing, no matter how much it affects existing players. If it leads to the death of name brands like EA, Ubisoft, etc. then who cares? The market will readjust and new players who were able to adapt to the changed environment will take their place.
Artificial scarcity in it's barest form.
The fact that even some people think this shit is acceptable is very telling of how far we have yet to go, psychologically speaking, as a species.
Monkeys in fucking trousers.
If anything gaming culture has regressed, at least in this aspect.
Remember when the $2.50 Oblivion horse armor DLC was considered to be ridiculous?
In-game purchases should display the exact cost in the local currency. In-game currency should be completely banned.
There are many many examples of predatory uses of in game currencies, but here are some big reasons devs use them besides being scummy.
- Giving currency for free: giving people real money isn't something any dev wants to deal with, so giving in game currency allows this to happen. This also applies to games where you can convert free currency to premium currency.
- Local currencies: currency packages can be set to local prices without having to localize the in-game economy itself. This simplifies development a lot.
- Weak promotion support on distributor platforms: believe it or not, iOS and android have incredibly weak promotion and sale support. By giving in-game currency, it gets around that failing of the platforms because the game can do whatever it wants with the in-game currency.
Transparency is good, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
What baby? In game purchases? That's not a baby, that's a big shit somebody took in your tub. If transparency is too hard to implement, publishers should feel free to get rid of them altogether.
Giving currency for free: giving people real money isn't something any dev wants to deal with, so giving in game currency allows this to happen. This also applies to games where you can convert free currency to premium currency.
But this is how gift codes work, no? You're not giving money away directly. Just give a voucher for a real currency if you want to gift users.
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They can give items for free instead. Without currency they cant give you 90% of what you need and force you to overpay for extra.
A variable for a value is trivial. It already works perfectly fine in the store!
Sure sales on mobile... (sounds like Apple and Google would get some needed pressure to improve this area) but thats another problem, none of these purchases should be expensive enough to even warrant needing a sale in the first place.
The real reason they want in game currency is not any of these, it's for the deception factor, avoiding refunds, upselling etc
Also in some games players can trade the currency
- Give store credit for free. Easy. Let them turn ingame currencies into store credit.
- That might be difficult, i give you that, but given the amount of work companies put into their monetization schemes, i am sure a converter can be worked out. Or use dollar/euro/ruble/yuan equivalents, depending on the largest market near a smaller currency.
- See 1. Give away store credit.
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Depends what counts as an in game currency, does a game where you earn currency in-game and spend it in-game count as an in-game currency? What about if players can trade it?
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Stay winning EU.
The CPC Network, coordinated by the European Commission, is publishing a set of guidelines today to promote transparency and fairness in the online gaming industry's use of virtual currencies.
That doesn’t seem binding.
Nah thats usually how those start out afaik. They start with a guideline and a grace period. Then when the grace period is over there is a warning period and after that it goes straight to fines.
The CPC Network will monitor progress and may take further actions if harmful practices continue.
Lets see what happens.
It is in part. They are hosting workshops and publishing these guidelines so companies can work on it on their own merit but they will also take further action if the harmful practices continue
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Nice, good for EU
I find it interesting that it says it’s based on existing legislation. In that case I’ma bit disappointed that it took them so long to act. But, it’s of course a stop in the right direction.
Will they get rid of games have 3 or 4 or more "currencies."
I hope it doesn't affect EVE Online. As I remember it their system didn't involve any deception or confusion, even though there was in-game currency you could spend € on if you wanted to.
Well I mean there was plenty of deception and confusion among and between the players, but none from the game itself.
If the conversion rate isnt 1:1 or its not directly using € in the game then i would call that confusing or deceptive.
The interesting thing about EVE is that the economy is completely player driven. That means you can even sell PLEX (Im pretty sure I got my name before eve named their money that, and I definitely didn't know EVE back then!) and therefore even buy PLEX with in-game resources you 'worked' for.
Because of that, I agree that EVE is a special case. If that PLEX currency did not exist to be bought with real money, that means that the in-game items are no longer able to be traded for essentially real money. Though perhaps there is some smart way to do it better and with less real world capitalism
For real. We need to get rid of games where 10 Red coins = 2.2 mystic gems = 1256 diamonds = 1.56 flowers and you can only buy red coin and only spend flowers and each conversion has a 1 green coin processing fee and you have to convert in that order. It's predatory and so sad that people get duped by it.
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