The government has spent nearly three years on plans to regulate the use of loot boxes.
  • MomoTimeToDie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    112·
    1 year ago

    I hate nothing more than when government regulation, or threat thereof, is a primary factor in how games are designed.

    • smeg@feddit.ukEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Maybe if they weren’t being so greedy and exploitative that even the fucking Tory government felt the need to reel them in then they’d have been alright. They delved too deep and too greedily and have awoken the balrog. Or, as the kids might say, they fucked around and now are finding out.

      • MomoTimeToDie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        14·
        1 year ago

        By that fucking standard literally every single thing the government could ever possibly do is automatically justified because, in your words, “[the victim] delved too deep”.

        • smeg@feddit.ukEnglish
          21·
          1 year ago

          You’re missing my point, the Conservative party are not generally in favour of restricting businesses in favour of people (because they love money and hate people), so the fact that even they have stepped in here is indicative of just how exploitative this was getting.

    • True Blue@lemmy.comfysnug.spaceEnglish
      52·
      1 year ago

      I would agree if it was about genuine game mechanics or story or things like that. But lootboxes aren’t designed for fun. They’re designed to exploit vulnerable people for maximum profit, and trick others into giving those vulnerable people an incentive to spend away their life savings on thinly-veiled gambling for virtual prizes.

      We have much to gain from lootboxes (at least in their current state) being removed from the equation entirely.

        • True Blue@lemmy.comfysnug.spaceEnglish
          51·
          1 year ago

          I have not ever bought a single game that used those monetization strategies as a part of its core business model, and I never plan to. The problem is that people like me (and presumably you) aren’t the ones they’re making the bulk of their money off of. It’s the vulnerable people with addictive tendencies, the “whales” as they call them in the industry, that they’re getting the vast majority of their profits from. It’s predatory.

          When they’re targeting people who are struggling with addiction, “voting with your wallet” doesn’t work anymore.

    • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
      2·
      1 year ago

      Sometimes there’s no way around it.

      The fact that there’s even a single country on the planet that hasn’t outright criminalized making it possible for a single kid to buy a single loot box is obscene. It’s very obviously gambling and very obviously designed to make kids gambling addicts.

      It should be a felony count per child exposed for the CEO.