Incline The Death of Freemium? Microtransactions Under Global Scrutiny

[Tehdagah]

"Jimquisition"

 

[Gerrard]

Yeah, people love surprises!

Spoiler

Not much of a surprise when you just end up hitting every chest you come across.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

"Jimquisition"

I agree with a lot of his non-SJW opinions of the gaming industry.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...microsoft-to-require-loot-box-odds-disclosure

Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft to require loot box odds disclosure
ESA says platform holders will roll out new policy that would apply to new games and updates that add loot box features

The Entertainment Software Association has said that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are working on new policies to require loot box odds disclosure on their systems.

Entertainment Software Association chief counsel of tech policy Michael Warnecke announced the news this morning at the Federal Trade Commission's Inside the Game workshop on the loot box issue. The comments came after Warnecke recapped the industry's previous attempts to address loot box concerns: an in-game purchases label on retail titles and platform-level spending controls on consoles and the EA Origin PC storefront.

"That said, we are doing more," Warnecke said. "I'm pleased to announce this morning that Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony have indicated to ESA a commitment to new platform policies with respect to the use of paid loot boxes in games that are developed for their platform. Specifically, this would apply to new games and game updates that add loot box features. And it would require the disclosure of the relative rarity or probabilities of obtaining randomized virtual items in games that are available on their platforms.

"As well, many of the leading video game publishers of the Entertainment Software Association have decided that they are going to implement a similar approach at the publisher level to provide consumers this information and give them enhanced information to make purchase decisions."

Apple mandated lootbox odds disclosure for iOS games in 2017. Google followed suit with Google Play requirements earlier this year.

Update: The ESA has provided more details on the loot box disclosures, saying that platform holders are targeting to implement them in 2020. The trade group released a list of its member companies that have pledged to release loot box disclosure odds on all new games by the end of 2020. That list includes Activision Blizzard, Bandai Namco Entertainment, Bethesda, Bungie, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Take-Two Interactive, Ubisoft, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and Wizards of the Coast.

Some notable ESA member publishers who haven't made such a commitment include 505 Games, Capcom, CI Games, Deep Silver, Disney Interactive Studios, Epic Games, Focus Home Interactive, Gearbox Publishing, GungHo, Intellivision Entertainment, Kalypso, Konami, Magic Leap, NCsoft, Natsume, Nexon, Rebellion, Riot Games, Sega, Square Enix, THQ Nordic, Tencent, and Marvelous

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Doubt they did it out of the collective kindness of their hearts, FTC must be getting ready to bend them over.

 

[RaptorRex888]

Please consider the Catholic Church for all your spiritual needs.

 

[taxalot]

We're ready to call this incline but they actually have the power to ban the practice ?

It's hilarious what happened in Belgium with Animal Crossing. When Nintendo, that friendly company, realized that they couldn't do loot boxes and microtransactions to kids below 18, they forbade access to the game. "It's not worth it to us if you play for free although we keep telling you that you can play for free and that you never have to pay".

The entire hypocrisy of this whole business is astounding. And I'm a fucking taxman.

 

[gurugeorge]

We have laws to "protect people from themselves" all the time (e.g. dangerous chemicals and poisons). Were the world comprised of equally super-smart Objectivists, there wouldn't be any need for paternalism; but it isn't, so there is. (Curiously, the equality conceit, so overt and dominant on the Left, is alive and well in libertarian thinking, buried deep in the pretense that you can have a social system that doesn't have to cope with variations in intelligence and endowment, strength and weakness - that you can have a social system fit for very smart people, and everything will be ok. It's that lingering little bit of "please like me" in libertarianism. Although it's true that for some libertarians they just think. "To hell with it, let the morons suffer the consequences of their own choices." But to me that falls into the trap of lack of compassion. Nobody actually signed on to be stupid or weak in life.)

If you look at it on the individual level, sure, you can criticize any given individual for being weak-willed. But laws have to look at the systemic level too - given that there are all these weak-willed people, and that nothing you can do will change it short of waving a magic wand, what's the best way for collectively-organized law and power to deal with predatory corporations?

But of course that can go too far in the other direction too - "systemic" is easy to abuse, and easy to bamboozle people with, as an excuse for any old oppressive nonsense (as we see with SJWs).

So long as we remember that everything is always about trade-offs and that there are seldom measures of any kind, legal, economic, social, that are unalloyed goods, and so long as we keep monitoring laws to see if they get the intended results (and so long as we can easily ditch laws that don't get their intended results), it's definitely worthwhile trying out legal means to curb predatory corporate practices.

 

[Zeriel]

It's funny, my issue with freemium is not so much it existing, as what it existing does to business incentives and the quality of games. It would be like if gambling was so lucrative that every bakery shut down, grocery stores didn't exist, because everyone was just setting up gambling dens instead. I'm not sure why video game companies proved so unable to resist the lure of money in this way where in the real world it doesn't quite get this bad, but there it is.

On paper, I am 100% for letting people decide for themselves, but in practice I just want this shit to stop before every gaming experience is destroyed by it.

 

[Cael]

It's funny, my issue with freemium is not so much it existing, as what it existing does to business incentives and the quality of games. It would be like if gambling was so lucrative that every bakery shut down, grocery stores didn't exist, because everyone was just setting up gambling dens instead. I'm not sure why video game companies proved so unable to resist the lure of money in this way where in the real world it doesn't quite get this bad, but there it is.

They are aiming for people with little self-control and a blind "I will win at any cost" temperement. In other words, it is aimed at millennials and sjws.

 

[Zeriel]

It's funny, my issue with freemium is not so much it existing, as what it existing does to business incentives and the quality of games. It would be like if gambling was so lucrative that every bakery shut down, grocery stores didn't exist, because everyone was just setting up gambling dens instead. I'm not sure why video game companies proved so unable to resist the lure of money in this way where in the real world it doesn't quite get this bad, but there it is.

They are aiming for people with little self-control and a blind "I will win at any cost" temperement. In other words, it is aimed at millennials and sjws.

Right, but this has proven so lucrative that it has taken over almost every publisher. Almost no one abstains, even people who said at first they would. Competitive advantage and all that forcing them to do it I suppose, but it's still way more intense than other industries it seems like.

Actually, now I'm curious. Can anyone name a publisher that doesn't engage in micro-transactions at all? Only one that sort of comes to mind is CDPR.

 

[Cael]

It's funny, my issue with freemium is not so much it existing, as what it existing does to business incentives and the quality of games. It would be like if gambling was so lucrative that every bakery shut down, grocery stores didn't exist, because everyone was just setting up gambling dens instead. I'm not sure why video game companies proved so unable to resist the lure of money in this way where in the real world it doesn't quite get this bad, but there it is.

They are aiming for people with little self-control and a blind "I will win at any cost" temperement. In other words, it is aimed at millennials and sjws.

Right, but this has proven so lucrative that it has taken over almost every publisher. Almost no one abstains, even people who said at first they would. Competitive advantage and all that forcing them to do it I suppose, but it's still way more intense than other industries it seems like.

Actually, now I'm curious. Can anyone name a publisher that doesn't engage in micro-transactions at all? Only one that sort of comes to mind is CDPR.

Gambling is a lucrative industry. Always had been. The Chinese takes it to a whole new level, of course, but all cultures have it in one form or another.

This fremium nonsense should be regulated like the gambling industry.

 

[Zeriel]

It's funny, my issue with freemium is not so much it existing, as what it existing does to business incentives and the quality of games. It would be like if gambling was so lucrative that every bakery shut down, grocery stores didn't exist, because everyone was just setting up gambling dens instead. I'm not sure why video game companies proved so unable to resist the lure of money in this way where in the real world it doesn't quite get this bad, but there it is.

They are aiming for people with little self-control and a blind "I will win at any cost" temperement. In other words, it is aimed at millennials and sjws.

Right, but this has proven so lucrative that it has taken over almost every publisher. Almost no one abstains, even people who said at first they would. Competitive advantage and all that forcing them to do it I suppose, but it's still way more intense than other industries it seems like.

Actually, now I'm curious. Can anyone name a publisher that doesn't engage in micro-transactions at all? Only one that sort of comes to mind is CDPR.

Gambling is a lucrative industry. Always had been. The Chinese takes it to a whole new level, of course, but all cultures have it in one form or another.

This fremium nonsense should be regulated like the gambling industry.

Some of this isn't gambling, though. Gacha games are their own thing, but slicing and dicing a boxed product into locked sections you have to buy to unlock, or making you pay money just to do basic stuff... isn't gambling at all, it's just abusive financially.

Delivering a broken product and saying it's fine because it's GaaS and it'll be functional at some point in the future unless not enough people buy it, in which case we'll abandon it... again, not gambling.

 

[Cael]

It's funny, my issue with freemium is not so much it existing, as what it existing does to business incentives and the quality of games. It would be like if gambling was so lucrative that every bakery shut down, grocery stores didn't exist, because everyone was just setting up gambling dens instead. I'm not sure why video game companies proved so unable to resist the lure of money in this way where in the real world it doesn't quite get this bad, but there it is.

They are aiming for people with little self-control and a blind "I will win at any cost" temperement. In other words, it is aimed at millennials and sjws.

Right, but this has proven so lucrative that it has taken over almost every publisher. Almost no one abstains, even people who said at first they would. Competitive advantage and all that forcing them to do it I suppose, but it's still way more intense than other industries it seems like.

Actually, now I'm curious. Can anyone name a publisher that doesn't engage in micro-transactions at all? Only one that sort of comes to mind is CDPR.

Gambling is a lucrative industry. Always had been. The Chinese takes it to a whole new level, of course, but all cultures have it in one form or another.

This fremium nonsense should be regulated like the gambling industry.

Some of this isn't gambling, though. Gacha games are their own thing, but slicing and dicing a boxed product into locked sections you have to buy to unlock, or making you pay money just to do basic stuff... isn't gambling at all, it's just abusive financially.

Delivering a broken product and saying it's fine because it's GaaS and it'll be functional at some point in the future unless not enough people buy it, in which case we'll abandon it... again, not gambling.

Then it is up to the people to buy the product or not. Look, it is not as if people go into it blind. They know what they are buying. I am not even all that supportive of gambling regulations in the first place, and I don't gamble as a rule. If people have so little impulse control as to go crazy with the gambling and buying (which is really no different to buying a flash car they can't afford in the first place, or borrow from the bank to go on a 20k cruise), then it is their own bloody fault when their stupidity bites them in the arse. Social Darwinism is a good thing.

 

[anvi]

I don't like banning things, adults should be able to gamble if they want to. But it is incredibly evil to have it in games for kids. At the very least there should be an 18/21 age rating on any games that have gambling mechanics of any kind that require real money. Also the concept of gold/gems should be banned to make the price clearer. All transactions should be price in $ for exactly this or that. And there should be restrictions on where and how they can advertise the game. Basically if you make a game with loot boxes or whatever, then it should be treated like online poker.

 

[Average Manatee]

It's hilarious what happened in Belgium with Animal Crossing. When Nintendo, that friendly company, realized that they couldn't do loot boxes and microtransactions to kids below 18, they forbade access to the game. "It's not worth it to us if you play for free although we keep telling you that you can play for free and that you never have to pay".

How else would you stop kids from buying stuff though?

It's not like 8 year olds have a credit card. The 8 year olds racking up thousands in microtransactions are doing so with their parent's credit card. If what they were already doing wasn't good enough, where were they supposed to go from there? Bear in mind that they would probably be facing hefty fines if their new course of action wasn't sufficiently draconian enough to please all of the relevant bureaucrats.

 

[taxalot]

It's hilarious what happened in Belgium with Animal Crossing. When Nintendo, that friendly company, realized that they couldn't do loot boxes and microtransactions to kids below 18, they forbade access to the game. "It's not worth it to us if you play for free although we keep telling you that you can play for free and that you never have to pay".

How else would you stop kids from buying stuff though?

It's not like 8 year olds have a credit card. The 8 year olds racking up thousands in microtransactions are doing so with their parent's credit card. If what they were already doing wasn't good enough, where were they supposed to go from there? Bear in mind that they would probably be facing hefty fines if their new course of action wasn't sufficiently draconian enough to please all of the relevant bureaucrats.

My biggest issue is that most of these are not even designed as games with F2P mechanics. They _ are_ not_ games.
I've played my fair bit of F2P shit. I got addicted to a few of them, to be honest, although I have enough sense to have never spent a dime. The gameplay is more than shallow : it is built in a way so that your choices are inconsequential. It gives you always the illusion of being able to develop, build, progress in the direction you want but the dices are loaded. You will lose when they want to, and even worse, you will win when they want to. You can be a crap player, you can't do a terrible build in those kind of RPGs. You can have half a brain, provided you were patient enough to upgrade your base, whatever strategy is going to work on most adversaries. They are not games. They are illusions of games only there to put your brain into a dopamine addiction mode. They prepare your brain for microtransactions while you do not realize you are not even playing a game.

And of course it works this way.

Imagine if the player had any agenda in this game, for example, in the Sim City F2P for Android. Well, said player could definitely fuck his town beyond salvation. What happens when you want to sell the player loot boxes, but you have already pissed him off to a point of no return by screwing his town ? Good luck selling that guy anything, most of us are sore losers !

There's only one way to prevent this : make sure he doesn't lose, put him into an eternal state of apathy, of non-success and yet non-failure as long as he plays. They are illusions of games, and even paying to progress is not fulfilling in any way because it makes you just progress faster on an intended line. It doesn't help you because you don't need help, for failure is not an option.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Cael]

It's hilarious what happened in Belgium with Animal Crossing. When Nintendo, that friendly company, realized that they couldn't do loot boxes and microtransactions to kids below 18, they forbade access to the game. "It's not worth it to us if you play for free although we keep telling you that you can play for free and that you never have to pay".

How else would you stop kids from buying stuff though?

It's not like 8 year olds have a credit card. The 8 year olds racking up thousands in microtransactions are doing so with their parent's credit card. If what they were already doing wasn't good enough, where were they supposed to go from there? Bear in mind that they would probably be facing hefty fines if their new course of action wasn't sufficiently draconian enough to please all of the relevant bureaucrats.

My biggest issue is that most of these are not even designed as games with F2P mechanics. They _ are_ not_ games.
I've played my fair bit of F2P shit. I got addicted to a few of them, to be honest, although I have enough sense to have never spent a dime. The gameplay is more than shallow : it is built in a way so that your choices are inconsequential. It gives you always the illusion of being able to develop, build, progress in the direction you want but the dices are loaded. You will lose when they want to, and even worse, you will win when they want to. You can be a crap player, you can't do a terrible build in those kind of RPGs. You can have half a brain, provided you were patient enough to upgrade your base, whatever strategy is going to work on most adversaries. They are not games. They are illusions of games only there to put your brain into a dopamine addiction mode. They prepare your brain for microtransactions while you do not realize you are not even playing a game.

And of course it works this way.

Imagine if the player had any agenda in this game, for example, in the Sim City F2P for Android. Well, said player could definitely fuck his town beyond salvation. What happens when you want to sell the player loot boxes, but you have already pissed him off to a point of no return by screwing his town ? Good luck selling that guy anything, most of us are sore losers !

There's only one way to prevent this : make sure he doesn't lose, put him into an eternal state of apathy, of non-success and yet non-failure as long as he plays. They are illusions of games, and even paying to progress is not fulfilling in any way because it makes you just progress faster on an intended line. It doesn't help you because you don't need help, for failure is not an option.

There are worse types:
Travian, War2Glory, Wartune, Grepolis and dozens of others are wargames where you can be destroyed utterly or lose consistently unless you pay for the premium stuff. Wartune is the worst of the lot because the premium stuff are gambled. You buy a loot box and there is a 0.2% chance of you getting the premium item you want. Not only do you pay to win, you gamble to win.

In Wartune, it is an open secret that the publisher insert trolls into the game that go around taunting, harassing and bullying everyone in hopes that people will gamble for the premium stuff to beat the troll. It also has a multitude of competitions where you can become first (arena ladder, best clan, strongest xyz, best inter-server group, best party to go through xyz dungeon, guy doing most damage in world boss of which there was three, etc.) to tempt you even more to gamble to win. It is a scam of the highest order, a fixed casino table. People who play that kind of online games and spend tons of money on it deserve to be impoverished.

 

[Average Manatee]

It's hilarious what happened in Belgium with Animal Crossing. When Nintendo, that friendly company, realized that they couldn't do loot boxes and microtransactions to kids below 18, they forbade access to the game. "It's not worth it to us if you play for free although we keep telling you that you can play for free and that you never have to pay".

How else would you stop kids from buying stuff though?

It's not like 8 year olds have a credit card. The 8 year olds racking up thousands in microtransactions are doing so with their parent's credit card. If what they were already doing wasn't good enough, where were they supposed to go from there? Bear in mind that they would probably be facing hefty fines if their new course of action wasn't sufficiently draconian enough to please all of the relevant bureaucrats.

My biggest issue is that most of these are not even designed as games with F2P mechanics. They _ are_ not_ games.
I've played my fair bit of F2P shit. I got addicted to a few of them, to be honest, although I have enough sense to have never spent a dime. The gameplay is more than shallow : it is built in a way so that your choices are inconsequential. It gives you always the illusion of being able to develop, build, progress in the direction you want but the dices are loaded. You will lose when they want to, and even worse, you will win when they want to. You can be a crap player, you can't do a terrible build in those kind of RPGs. You can have half a brain, provided you were patient enough to upgrade your base, whatever strategy is going to work on most adversaries. They are not games. They are illusions of games only there to put your brain into a dopamine addiction mode. They prepare your brain for microtransactions while you do not realize you are not even playing a game.

And of course it works this way.

Imagine if the player had any agenda in this game, for example, in the Sim City F2P for Android. Well, said player could definitely fuck his town beyond salvation. What happens when you want to sell the player loot boxes, but you have already pissed him off to a point of no return by screwing his town ? Good luck selling that guy anything, most of us are sore losers !

There's only one way to prevent this : make sure he doesn't lose, put him into an eternal state of apathy, of non-success and yet non-failure as long as he plays. They are illusions of games, and even paying to progress is not fulfilling in any way because it makes you just progress faster on an intended line. It doesn't help you because you don't need help, for failure is not an option.

You didn't answer the question.

 

[Drakron]

On paper, I am 100% for letting people decide for themselves, but in practice I just want this shit to stop before every gaming experience is destroyed by it.

Thats the problem, we seen what happens with games that embraced the "as a live service", look at AssCreed Odyssey were they fucked up the experience to force people into paying for boosters and this is clear because of their reaction with user created missions that basically did the same for free and this is a single player game were cheating should not be a problem to begin with, even Young Blood were the first thing they patched was a cheat engine exploit that is a co-op game.

Its already been destroyed, people pay for a game that heavily incentivizes then to continue to pay because of deliberate barriers set for then to pay up as otherwise just shelf the game because you are not meant to have fun until you pay extra and keep paying that extra, that is the basic of "as a live service", keep paying and paying to enjoy the game and not in the sense as say Car Mechanic Simulator were there are DLC cars that expand the experience by offering different engines and cars to work on, "as a live service" are meant to push people into paying to have a satisfying experience.

And that is not even entering multiplayer games because thats a whole other can of worms because your decision is then affected also by having to compete with others and that adds a extra pressure since there are no many "quality of life" that can be monetized so you stand a chance along the whales.

 

[Zeriel]

Right, and it keeps getting worse, so things that would have formerly been considered a fictional dystopia or an exaggerated joke are now becoming more and more likely. You look at how hard they want to push cloud-gaming and these monetization practices, and I really don't want to know what mainstream gaming looks like in 2030.

 

[anvi]

Dad I wanna buy something in a game.
What is it?
A new hat for my character.
Sigh ok, how much is it?
500 gems.
What, 500 gems?
You can get 2000 gems for 10,000 gold.
So how much is 10,000 gold?
It is $20 for 20,000 gold and you can get 4000 gems for that price.
I.... what? Ok so you can buy more hats?
Yes but I only want one.
So what you are asking me to do is spend 20 bucks to buy you one virtual hat?
I don't care about that game anymore, I want some horse armor now.

 

[taxalot]

To add to my previous, F2P games also sometimes have dubious random number generators. And it's very difficult to prove.

One example that comes to mind are the King.com games, Farm Heroes Saga and Candy Crush Saga, two games I never spent a dime but will admit I have played quite a while to spend time on the shitter.
Eventually, the game becomes really difficult ; but said difficulty depends also on how lucky you get on levels. If the right items are spawned, it can be easier to clear a level. Corollary, sometimes, the RNG fucks you so bad it's almost impossible to complete a level.

I would sometimes get stuck for days, weeks, on a single level of these games. Which is odd, because at some point, the RNG is _BOUND_ to get in your favor and help you pass a level. Well, that never happened, and a couple of times it made me furious enough to quit the game for a couple of months.

You'll never guess what happens when I unvariably decide to "give it one more try" a couple of months later : yup, success. On the first try. I asked around for similar experience, and people who played the game also had similar "luck" occurences happen to them, which made me think that the RNG is tricked to fuck you at some point until you pay. However, when it decides that instead it should get you hooked again, it will give you the right incentive, the feel of success and that yes, you can do it.

It's odd, and it can't be proved. But it really is part of the entire dopamine ecosystem these games have bought. Did you notice how money in management games doesn't get added to your accounts automatically, but that you have to click, and this action provides a satisfying animation of coins rolling in your pocket with a nice sound confirming you did well ? It's details like that that show the level of care and attention to mind manipulation they put in those games. They hire neurologists, for fuck sake ! This alone should be a huge red flag !

 

[Gerrard]

All those patents from EA and Activision, and all the cases that were caught, about manipulating games under the hood to "incentivize" players are enough proof shit is rigged. There's is literally no reason why it wouldn't be.