Time to set a fixed price on the contents of the Goddess Blessed Cube and let us purchase the cosmetics we want directly, or get ready to rate this game M.
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In asia there are countries that made beforehand laws against gambling where the “rng” cannot be checked, so they send experts to verify or sue to court the fraudulents video game companies.
The loophole here is as long as they don’t have physical office in europe they can get away with “anything” or worst case the game is banned from the country.
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Valve tried this trick regarding refunds and got told to fix it or get banned.
Sophism means nothing in the face of power.
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You cant compare loot boxes to normal gambling. In gambling you use your money and have a “chance” to win something. If you lose your money is gone and you get nothing. With loot boxes you ALWAYS get something. The “value” of the won item is completely based on the players. You pay for virtual goods and you get 'em.
Also there is always a work around. If only one country restricts them companies simply stop offering the game there.
At least,You know the “chance” of winning games in real world.
Well in China they need to publish the odds for every item inside loot boxes. They should introduce this here as well so users know what they get if they “try it”.
Best example are the Goddess Blessed Cubes/Leticia’s Cube here - Even though the odds to get an A-Tier reward from Goddess Cube are 10% the item distribution seems to be unequal. Wings are more rare than Costumes, Costumes are more rare than other stuff (Fun Sub-weapons & those pose Consumables) and so on.
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^ This
It is a marketing trick employed almost everywhere. Similar to those “up to X% discounts”, where all items in that category will have varying levels of discount, the 10% tier has its own item probability ranking within.
Like for example:
The costumes/books might be 0.4% each within the tier while the other not as desired tier A items make up a huge % of it (2.2% per item ). Hence in total marketing side can market it as a total of 10% to entice players to buy more. Technically it isn’t wrong since 10% is the total %, it’s clever marketing to conceal the true nature on how low the odds are.
This is why I find it hard to justify buying goddess blessed cubes. The odds totally don’t stack to favor the player at all. Why can’t we be like kToS where they offer a costume pack for players to purchase and headgears kept in gacha?
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Gacha should be banned, it’s basically the cancer of the game industry, and I’d really appreciate if the EU comission would not only ban gacha as gambling but also sue the companies (especially Eyedentity/Nexon/other publishers of games like Dragon Nest where you simply can’t play in high content without buying gacha) and force them to pay the money back to the customers.
IMO it’s not just gambling but blatant fraud what some game companies do, not even presenting lists of everything in their gacha boxes and just advertizing the strongest/best items (you’ll likely never get or have to invest hundreds of Euros before having a chance to get them, which is especially bad in the case of Dragon Nest EU e.g., where ± every gacha is part of a set and without more than one piece of the set, you won’t get the bonus[the basic effect of one item is just bad]).
Let’s hope for some good results so that the cash grobber companies won’t get to lay their hands on innocent European children’s [and their parents’] wallets anymore for 1s and 0s that rapidly get outdated with new gacha/content.
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You sir are incorrect. Just because you are offered a small compensation it doesn’t mean that it gets excluded from gambling. If we decide to follow that logic, then casinos could simply offer you a small token, idk. let’s say a hat cough when you blow up your money in order to avoid any laws related to gambling.
Gambling - “take risky action in the hope of a desired result”
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the phrase risk it for the biscuit.
How can you tell the item you got is a “small compensation”? In the end you have strings of 0 and 1 - doesn’t matter if one turns into “Rusty Sword” and the other into “The Slayer of thousand Suns, Bringer of divine justice”.
Not to mention the moment you exchange your money into ingame cash the “deal is already sealed”.
Same for direct loot box purchases. You bought a digital good - trade done - What it does doesn’t matter.
Again sir, you are incorrect. By your interpretation, you go to a casino and buy their tokens - trade done, what you do with them, doesn’t matter. So if you decide to insert them into a machine, or bet them on a poker table, well… that’s on you. It might be a “smart” theoretical loophole, but in practice, the government will ■■■■on you.
The difference is that you “don’t buy” tokens you rather exchange them. Just like exchanging dollar into euro or whatever else. You can whenever it pleases you return the token and get your money back. If any casino would refuse this no one even bother playing there (and I’m semi-sure this is illegal). Those TOKENs have a real worth (In REAL money).
Meanwhile Steam is turning your money “worthless” (and the same for direct online game purchases) cause 10 Steam Dollar aren’t equal to 10 real Dollar neither are 100 TP. You could make thousand of dollars via community market yet this “money” is worthless outside of steam. Why? no payout option.
EDIT: The biggest problems in this case is how countries define stuff esp. “virtual” part makes things always a bit different. I mean every child can go into the store and buy “Kinder Egg/Surprise” a bit chocolate + a random toy yet this doesn’t count as gambling.
So you’re telling me, If I can actually return my investment, example: buy a pack of MTG cards and sell them afterwards, that’s gambling, but if I’m getting ■■■■■■over by spending my money on a random virtual item, that I can not trade, that is not? What kind of drugs are you on? The issue is about luring people into buying packages that may, or may not offer you the item you want, hence you are encouraged to repeat the action over and over again, not damn tax evasion.
The MTG card pack example is apparently pretty good - cause this one is considered NOT as gambling. It’s also fairly hard to find a “common regulation”. Should Blizzards “loot boxes” in Overwatch be banned now even though they only sell “skins” (neither power nor anything useable - PURE cosmetic - no necessity)?
EDIT: The steam thing I was referring to is that the “virtual steam” money is only as much worth as people think it’s worth because you can’t turn it back (without non-steam services). Same for the ingame items… under the line IT’S ALL WORTHLESS. You could throw your money out of the window and you’d have the same.
The answer is: Yes. Blizzard loot boxes only exists because they are profitable to Blizzard. It’s a full price game, allow players to purchase the skins that they want to purchase, without the RNG.
That’s where you’re wrong. Steam wallet money can be used to buy virtual copies of games you could also buy in the supermarket as physical copies for real currency.
Also, by your logic, if virtual content had no monetary value, noone could ever sue anyone for spreading virtual copies of movies/music/games or create their own MMO server with a stolen server software.
Virtual content has the exact value the developer/publisher deems fit, and as long as there is an official exchange rate for real money into virtual currency, this currency has the exact value as the exchanged amount of real money.
To counter your example :
- That could also be said about specific countries currencies. You can’t buy anything with them in another country that doesn’t accept this currency, and some countries might even refuse to exchange your money (e.g. if it’s highly inflational), so it’d have no value/cashback option in another country.
- You can get a cashback by RMT. Yes the game services deem it illegal, but you could sell tradeable ingame items to another person in the real world for real money, so it’s not irrefundable.
Law related stuff is rather tricky - there is no real “yes” or “no”. You commonly start with a question, then you define terms followed by arguing (using similar work, court decisions, logic, “your own opinion”) and based on this you come to a result. If this result is “valid” depends on whoever is in charge.
Using the description on wikipedia (not very academical, lol)
Virtual goods are non-physical objects and money purchased for use in online communities or online games.
Digital goods, on the other hand, may be a broader category including digital books, music, and movies
This means the money on steam is virtual money while the games are digital goods - physical goods like Steam Controller are also mention worthy tho.
My reasoning behind saying “virtual goods/money” are worthless is not only the exchange back. While you have direct control of your money you have at home/on your bank account you don’t have this with virtual money. Here is also the difference between digital goods (in my opinion). You have direct access to the data of a digital good, you can download it to your own System and use it, multiply (pirating ahoi), store them on a physical storage device and so on. On the other hand your virtual money is a bunch of data associated with “your” account stored on a server controlled by whoever owns it. You can’t access this data directly and even if the server owner would hand them out to you they would be useless cause the data only servers its purpose as “virtual money” in connection with the system on the server.
Also notable using the Oxford Dictionary definition for Money (lawyers commonly use different definitions taken from court decisions - even though they are “somewhat written down” they are not part of the laws)
- A current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes; coins and banknotes collectively.
1.2 The assets, property, and resources owned by someone or something; wealth.
(skipping those unrelevant/clearly “no” ones)
1:Virtual Money neither has the form of coins or banknotes (data on a server).
1.2: This one is hard tbh. It’s rather unclear if you can consider said data as asset or resources, it’s some “sort of property” owned by the server owner “you have access to” - really depends.
So your money only preserves its worth inside the country (system). Any attempt of using it outside doesn’t work cause it’s seen as worthless. A workaround here: buy with your “worthless” banknotes/coins goods that “have worth” outside of your country (e.g. gold).
This also “in theory” works with Steam -> you purchase a digital/giftable copy of a game and sell it for “real money” (as you stated). However RMT should be on Steam (and is in every online game) against the terms of service. And here also kicks in the part of “you don’t own the virtual money” and thus in my opinion it’s worthless. If Steam/Tree of Savior realizes your account is using RMT they could simply terminate it (and ALL virtual goods/money associated with it). It’s rather questionable if you could now by “law” demand a refund of the unused money (you clearly accepted the Terms of Service before using the Steam - but if you charge 1000$ and your account gets deleted/banned with said 1000$ “virtual money” on it for whatever reason do you have the right to demand it?).
Going back to the basic problem. Can lootboxes be seen as “gambling”? There are many ways to argue and there is “no 100% correct solution”.
Valid point here: the problem IN MY OPINION is that other system (just like MTG or other Trading Card games) abuse something similar legally: the guys behind MTG simply say each and every card is worth in the production process exactly the same (paper/ink).
Also the point I tried to explain earlier (virtual goods/money have no worth) is another thing. The problem here are Games where you can exchange your “virtual money” for ingame money/items (Guild Wars 2, Star Trek Online, Spiral Knights… list is long). In theory this “only ingame existing currency” could be interpreted as “virtual money” (having a real market value) as well. Now if said games come with any “gambling like” feature (see Tree of Savior cube rerolling) should this fall under the gambling regulations?
EDIT: Also mention worthy: If a game or a platform shuts down could you demand a “payout” for your virtual goods?
EDIT EDIT: Good example I experienced myself: I played Battleforge long ago (RTS + Trading Card game). I spend a few 100 Bucks on it to get some Cards and virtual “ingame” money. Cause the game was hosted by EA and they ran it down just like any game (no updates + give money policy only) it was shut down deleting all data related to it. Following the idea “virtual money” and goods have a worth I could have told them “I want my payout”. However EA simply says all data related to my account belongs to them and is worthless… Baam - everything gone.