Congress is trying to make an effort to prohibit gambling in video games

[AHeavyPyro]

https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-05/2019-05-08_Protecting-Children-Abusive-Games-Act_One-Pager.pdf

Joshua David Hawley, a Republican Senator from Missouri, is proposing an act that will prohibit lootboxes and other predatory gambling practices within the games industry. I saw this on a Discord server, so I wanted to read your opinion about this. Will this act affect the entire U.S video game industry, or is it too broad and vague to make a dent?

[Wwen]

Loot boxes are meh. It's the same reason I don't gamble. If I'm going to lose $20, I'd rather spend it on a sure thing.

[Shaddy]

I don't think it's wrong at all to prevent lootbox practices in games, many countries do it already and they haven't exactly collapsed. The thing people need to realize is that it's not going to hurt the business of any company worth protecting. Most predatory practices are kept up by game companies that already have fucktons of money and see this as a way to get more because they're greedy bastards. It's not going to bankrupt your small indie devs.

 

At its least effective it would signal a move to more concrete microtransactions, just being able to buy a cosmetic rather than buy a chance to get one, and that's still a lot better.

[kerdios]

Do note, that the post is from 2019  and the link is now dead, here is a correct link https://www.hawley.senate.gov/senator-hawley-introduce-legislation-banning-manipulative-video-game-features-aimed-children .

I wonder if this bill was ever even introduced to congress or got buried under the legislation needed for the covid crisis.

[BTGBullseye]

4 hours ago, kerdios said:

I wonder if this bill was ever even introduced to congress or got buried under the legislation needed for the covid crisis.

That is a very good question. I can't find anything about it.

[Shaddy]

It's regulation to prevent plutocratic companies from fucking over people even more than they already are, the same reason you outlaw child labor or beating your employees with a stick. They literally do nothing good for anyone, and have addictive properties that can and have destroyed lives, while not being restricted, regulated or outlawed the way regular gambling is, and all for the games themselves to be worse for having them. The biggest "victim" of banning them is shareholders and CEOs who didn't deserve the money they were making off of these mechanics in the first place, and still won't be taking enough of a hit for any real "problems" to arise.

 

EDIT: yo was the person I was responding to was literally an ad bot for a gambling site?

Edited April 12, 2021 by Shaddy (see edit history)

[BTGBullseye]

On 4/7/2021 at 12:06 AM, Shaddy said:

It's regulation to prevent plutocratic companies from fucking over people even more than they already are, the same reason you outlaw child labor or beating your employees with a stick. They literally do nothing good for anyone, and have addictive properties that can and have destroyed lives, while not being restricted, regulated or outlawed the way regular gambling is, and all for the games themselves to be worse for having them. The biggest "victim" of banning them is shareholders and CEOs who didn't deserve the money they were making off of these mechanics in the first place, and still won't be taking enough of a hit for any real "problems" to arise.

 

I agree, but free to play games that have stuff in those "lootboxes" that are completely within the means of obtaining without any money spent, and don't require obscene amounts of gameplay to obtain, are an exception I'm willing to make.

[DreamHollow4219]

Lootboxes have been an overall terrible idea for a while.

 

They seem moral on the surface because most games only store things like cosmetics in them, meanwhile you other games where actual equipment, perks, and powerups are stored in paid lootboxes. That's just seedy.

 

Overall though, I don't approve anyway. The AAA game industry is usually found secretly bragging about "whales"; addicted gamblers dropping huge amounts of cash for digital content. It's not even the same as paying for the games themselves because games are actually protected as goods. Instead this is in a whole new subcategory of goods within goods, creating a new sort of legal ground.

 

Honestly as slow as the legislative process is for so many parts of the world.. it's going to take some time for meaningful laws and resolutions to be passed that the public actually agrees with. You're going to get a lot of flipflopping.

Edited April 10, 2021 by DreamHollow4219 (see edit history)

[Shaddy]

On 4/9/2021 at 12:45 AM, BTGBullseye said:

I agree, but free to play games that have stuff in those "lootboxes" that are completely within the means of obtaining without any money spent, and don't require obscene amounts of gameplay to obtain, are an exception I'm willing to make.

An exception that the execs routinely don't make, though. If players can just get the money-making part of the game by playing normally, they're not going to view it as profitable, and most AAA companies will either give them up or move to a more properly-evil model instead.

 

There are better and worse versions of lootboxes, but ultimately there's no non-evil version. If there was, it'd be abandoned immediately, because we get more money if we do it the other way.

 

I don't like regular microtransactions either, but at least with those, you know what you're buying. If you forced every game with paid lootboxes to just say what was in them on the tin, 100% of those games would be objectively improved, and zero people would suffer. Because it's not like the devs are choosing this, it's always an executive decision, that's why you basically never see things like this in indie games, or anything that won't be making enough money to get away with it anyway.

[kerdios]

Isn't Magic the Gathering one of the biggest lootbox games?

[BTGBullseye]

On 4/11/2021 at 2:06 PM, kerdios said:

Isn't Magic the Gathering one of the biggest lootbox games?

Pretty much.

[kerdios]

8 minutes ago, BTGBullseye said:

Pretty much.

And yet it is advocated so much harder than any other gambling game out there.
My mind is just boggled about how people completely miss or completely don't care about this.

It's like the majority of gamers are saying "We want to become addicted to gambling, please make more things with completely random chance"

[BTGBullseye]

That's because gambling in general is addictive. It's very nature is such that it will drive you so low in despair and expectation that the "high" from winning exceeds that of many extremely addictive drugs. You get addicted to it very easily.