shiftysatchmo said in Are loot boxes count as gambling?:
Pre orders are gambling too because you could get a steaming pile of garbage on launch day
Maybe not, everyone expects garbage on launch day these days… so not sure if it’s gambling if the chances are 100% of getting what you expected… but I’ll retract this statement if it means digital pre-orders get banned.
Getting married is gambling, you sure as Shizzle don’t know what you’re getting lol
Wouldn’t CCG booster packs be gambling then?
syncrosis same for having kids XD
One good point I’ll make about some of the joke answers. You can’t get married AND know what you’re in for. You can’t have kids AND know what you’re in for. The idea of physical loot boxes of monthly random tat literally is the entirety of the advertised product… BUT you CAN have a video game without gambling, preorder tat, and multi-tiered versions.
gord0 yeah the loot boxes seem like they aren’t gambling in honesty. You’re paying an amount and you know you’ll receive one of the available outcomes. There is no chance of paying and not receiving anything, it’s just not necessarily what you hope to get. It’s like buying a pack of baseball cards (if people still do that).
shiftysatchmo said in Are loot boxes count as gambling?:
gord0 yeah the loot boxes seem like they aren’t gambling in honesty. You’re paying an amount and you know you’ll receive one of the available outcomes. There is no chance of paying and not receiving anything, it’s just not necessarily what you hope to get. It’s like buying a pack of baseball cards (if people still do that).
No, I meant the physical loot boxes like loot crate and japan crate and bobble head crate are fine. The entire product is a random box of shit. In-game loot boxes are bullshit and without them the game still exists. If you take the random box of shit away from say nerd box or 1up box…then there is no product.
Point being, removing the bullshit doesn’t hurt games. What it does hurt is bullshit in general.
gord0 I agree they are dumb, I’m just saying I don’t think they are gambling.
shiftysatchmo said in Are loot boxes count as gambling?:
gord0 I agree they are dumb, I’m just saying I don’t think they are gambling.
How are they diff than a slot machine? Pump money in, might get what you want. Probly won’t. Then the entire game is altered in efforts to get you to buy loot crates.
Slot machines and loot boxes are the same thing to me. Gambling 100%
gord0 because with a slot machine you might not get anything at all. With a loot box you are paying a fixed amount to receive a digital item and you are guaranteed a digital item. You know you’ll receive something. It’s not technically winning. The person paying is agreeing that a random digital item is worth what they are paying. That’s how it’ll be argued anyway. People sure are stupid, eh?
shiftysatchmo said in Are loot boxes count as gambling?:
gord0 because with a slot machine you might not get anything at all. With a loot box you are paying a fixed amount to receive a digital item and you are guaranteed a digital item. You know you’ll receive something. It’s not technically winning. The person paying is agreeing that a random digital item is worth what they are paying. That’s how it’ll be argued anyway. People sure are stupid, eh?
If we’re going to maintain the slot machine analogy, we would have to agree that items the user does not want are equal to nothing.
gord0 I wonder if they’ll make it so random is slightly cheaper, but is guaranteed to be something you don’t have, and then sell the sure thing for more money.
shiftysatchmo said in Are loot boxes count as gambling?:
gord0 I wonder if they’ll make it so random is slightly cheaper, but is guaranteed to be something you don’t have, and then sell the sure thing for more money.
Here’s a thought. WHY NOT FUCKING LET PEOPLE BY THE ITEMS THEY WANT WITHOUT THE RANDO BOXES!.. oh because they would make less money because people will drop all of their cash until the rando box gives them what they want. Instead of one single small purchase.
gord0 like I said, people are stupid. The key is for people to stop buying those but we both know they won’t stop.
I’ll play Devil’s Advocate.
Lootboxes aren’t gambling, same as blind bags or TCGs.
This doesn’t make them good or even necessary. In fact their one of the shadiest parts of the industry now, even more so than Season Passes. Simply because without a SP you can still choose to buy the content separately, but you can be damn sure the game is focused towards getting you to fork out for Lootboxes, impacting the quality & enjoyment of the product. If it’s a free to play game, then fine by all means generate revenue through them, if they only have cosmetic items, then brilliant, it doesn’t affect the gameplay of anyone who doesn’t buy them; but as soon as they unlock content as opposed to cosmetics, in a game that I paid for they are awful. I’d like them banned because they’re anti-consumer, but not because they’re considered gambling.
sgt_t8ie said in Are loot boxes count as gambling?:
I’ll play Devil’s Advocate.
Lootboxes aren’t gambling, same as blind bags or TCGs.
This doesn’t make them good or even necessary. In fact their one of the shadiest parts of the industry now, even more so than Season Passes. Simply because without a SP you can still choose to buy the content separately, but you can be damn sure the game is focused towards getting you to fork out for Lootboxes, impacting the quality & enjoyment of the product. If it’s a free to play game, then fine by all means generate revenue through them, if they only have cosmetic items, then brilliant, it doesn’t affect the gameplay of anyone who doesn’t buy them; but as soon as they unlock content as opposed to cosmetics, in a game that I paid for they are awful. I’d like them banned because they’re anti-consumer, but not because they’re considered gambling.
I see where you’re coming from, but gambling is our best legal means of shutting the shit show down. So I really hope the uk legal peeps sort this out proper!
gord0 hopefully publishers take note, that gamers are getting increasingly unhappy with these shenanigans. My only issue would be that the action gets overturned because it doesn’t meet the legal definition of gambling & therefore publishers decide that makes it OK to carry on even further down this hole.
But then again, there’ll always be somebody stupid enough to part with their money and that’s what publishers are counting on.
sgt_t8ie said in Are loot boxes count as gambling?:
gord0 hopefully publishers take note, that gamers are getting increasingly unhappy with these shenanigans. My only issue would be that the action gets overturned because it doesn’t meet the legal definition of gambling & therefore publishers decide that makes it OK to carry on even further down this hole.
But then again, there’ll always be somebody stupid enough to part with their money and that’s what publishers are counting on.
Well the uk got us 2 click steam returns, so hopefully this works out too.
Ex-Bioware dev interview about microtransactions and loot boxes