Comment on Games with loot boxes to get minimum 16 age rating across Europe

minorkeys@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• brsrklf@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  “Paid random items”.

  I’ve played many RPGs. I don’t remember one making me pay for every random battle. No, using a random number gemerator in a game isn’t the same as lootboxes.

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  • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    What about lootboxes you can optionally pay for, but the game constantly gives you free currency for it? Like, you can buy more currency, and one of the ways you can spend that currency is lootboxes, but you also get free currency that can be used on the same thing?

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    • brsrklf@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I don’t know how that’ll fit in PEGI ratings, but, IMO, this is jist a shady tactic to hide the same exploitation of gambling issues.

      Then you just make it technically possible but completely impractical to get some stuff, and go hunt for whales while pretending it’s just about giving players choice. You know, for their convenience.

      Just cosmetic is also not the defence game piblishers want it to be.These are games. There is no vital need here, everything you do in these is to get some satisfaction from it. Including, yes, collecting cosmetic elements. They know this works, and they don!t want regulators to know that they know.

      What’s wrong with just letting players know how much they!re spending and exactly what they are buying? Other than, you know, it would not be manipulative enough and thus probably makes less money.

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      • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I get what you’re saying, and agree that just showing the money prices is better, but I was just wondering if you knew how this would be considered by PEGI.

        Also, deleting currency probably would make it harder to give players free currency, because it might look like the developers/publisher is giving money to the player account and people would demand a way to withdraw money from the account, which I believe should not be allowed. Maybe a hybrid where the currency is free and you can split the difference with a real world cost? IDK. Game devs and publishers gotta make money to pay their bills and the developers, and being Free2Play makes getting money pretty hard without mTX/MTX.

        At the end of the day it doesnt really matter that much because parents don’t know or don’t care. Its the same in the US with ESRB. Sure, some stores would refuse to sell M rated games to minors, but most of the time parents would just buy GTA for little 8 year old Timmy and they didnt event know the game content, or didn’t care. So this isn’t really going to do much of anything to publishers in reality.

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