Belgium Considering Ban Loot Box Gambling

[TheFeniX]

I haven't read the whole thread, but it seems to me that a compromise for Belgian video game enthusiasts would be for EA to offer their premium content at its expectation value cost. In other words, if the drop rate for a thing is 1%, and the cost to buy a ticket for a random thing is 1 point, then sell the thing for 100 points. Or maybe 120 points.

Or is the worry that everyone would want access to that deal as well?

That would add "value" to the system which is what the lootbox system is specifically designed not to do. Basically, it's going back to the old system (which sadly is preferable in comparison) of "I want X skin/mod/upgrade: I will pay X EA bucks for it." The newer system is designed to instead sell you a box with a 1% chance to drop what you want that costs X/10 EA bucks. Once you GET that "upgrade" it's done. You can move on to the next. It has the added benefit of "oh man, John got lucky and pulled Y out of his box, let me get in on that."

Long story short, if they offered that: yes, everyone would want it. Because if you think about it, especially in a game that has direct stat upgrades, anyone is going to spend the money upfront to get the best stuff. This then leaves only the people who will NOT spend money as the Have-nots. And they don't matter. But if you can make someone who WILL spend money continue to spend money on a 1% droprate item vs selling it to them for even a stupid amount of money more, if they can buy the shiny, they will.

[bilateralrope]

Or is the worry that everyone would want access to that deal as well?

That's likely the EA's real reason. Give Belgium players a better system and players in other countries will want it.

Give Belgium players a crappy system and that might get players resisting any attempts other countries make to regulate lootboxes under gambling laws.

[SCRawl]

Well I don't see how EA has a leg to stand on here: the thing is clearly gambling. If you're selling a product, either you expect to get what you pay for with a reasonable level of certainty as to the thing you're buying and its purchase price or you're setting up a lottery, which is clearly gambling. I suppose there is then an argument that this means that packs of baseball or Pokemon cards are also a lottery, the answer to which is...yeah, I suppose they are. The only question remains is about whether or not any of these product models present a problem, and if they do, then they need to be regulated.

[TheFeniX]

You may want to read the thread then, arguments have been made both ways. Where (IMO) things like Magic differ from straight gambling is that there is always a "payout." You buy a pack and you get X commons, Y Uncommons, and a Rare. Sometimes you get a foil or Legendary. Though the VALUE of those varies, the payout is set. You aren't going to open a pack and get nothing but land cards (something wildly given out for free at near any card shop I ever went to).

There's also the difference in a physical product. I still have ALL my Magic cards and I can still look at them and play the game any time I want. Therein lies the problem. You'll end up with a lot of duplicates when playing Magic, but those duplicates aren't by nature useless (you can have 4 of a single card in a deck) and some duplicates can be worth money and/or you want multiple decks.

But the EA model as well as a lot of mobile trash is setup that the chance is stupidly high you will "lose," as in get something that is totally worthless. The win rates are incredibly low. Like in this trash Injustice 2 mobile game I play when I'm bored. The drop rate on the most expensive loot crate is 60% for 5 shards, 26.5% for 10 shards. Neither of those will even unlock a Basic Gold Hero at 3 stars (where they START becoming "not useless") as that takes 160 shards. So, it's a barely incremental gain towards a hero that costs like, I dunno $3? for the box. The chance to unlock 160 shards? 1%. Long time players say to new players: "Loot boxes are a scam, save your shards for guaranteed payouts." Such as the "offers" you get to auto promote heros for X Fakecurrency.

And that's just for heroes in a game I can't DO anything with. I can't handle them or even do something stupid like export the model assets. I just MIGHT get some electronic data to mess with until they pull the plug on the server.

[Formless]

There is also the fact that Wizards of the Coast officially does not recognize the existence of the secondary market for Magic: the Gathering and their employees specifically avoid referencing it. They (officially) do not make decisions about what to print or reprint or how large their print runs will be based on expected or existent market values. Indeed, in the most recent set, Ravnica Allegiance, the common card persistent petitioners is worth almost a dollar on the secondary market while most rares in the same set are worth half that much money or less. In fact, the current design paradigm explicitly ties rarity to design complexity, not just power, resulting in some rares (even some mythics) being essentially glorified uncommons with more rules text than normal.

If you ask Wizards whether the value of a booster pack depends on what you draw from it, the official answer is a firm "no." And arguably, that's semi-true. Its well known among Magic players that if you want to construct a deck you should really just buy singles rather than packs (ironically, since Wizards doesn't sell singles, you have to go through the secondary market...). Unless a set happens to have a valuable uncommon (like the infamous Fatal Push) you are rarely expecting to pull a card worth more than 2$ from a given pack. But whatever you find in your pack, you will most likely find some use for, because commons and uncommons remain the majority of cards used in the game. And if you are playing in a draft, then its true by default.

Now, granted, to my understanding a big reason for this policy has little to do with gambling and more to do with the Reserved List, which in hindsight they consider a mistake. But there are apparently some arcane laws that collectors could theoretically sue them under because they originally phrased it as a promise to their customers. They can't even print functional reprints of those cards (that is, new cards with different names but the same effects and so forth). They only place where they have come close to being reprinted is in digital formats, which technically the promise does not extend to. So the one time they acknowledged the secondary market officially they ended up tying the hands of the development team for the rest of the game's lifetime, or until Hasbro decides to suck it in and see if the collectors dare sue them over something nearly everyone who actually plays Magic hates and wants to at least see revised, if not abolished.

[Steel]

If they rebalanced the game in Belgium to have better gameplay, that would be a very blatant admission that they deliberately made the game miserable to play in order to sell loot boxes. Additionally, they would be admitting they knew a specific different balance would actually be more fun to play if they couldn't sell lootboxes.

I don't think they want to make those kinds of admissions (again).

[houser2112]

Not only would they not want to offer that deal to anyone, but more importantly they wouldn't want to publish the odds.

[Civil War Man]

That would add "value" to the system which is what the lootbox system is specifically designed not to do. Basically, it's going back to the old system (which sadly is preferable in comparison) of "I want X skin/mod/upgrade: I will pay X EA bucks for it." The newer system is designed to instead sell you a box with a 1% chance to drop what you want that costs X/10 EA bucks. Once you GET that "upgrade" it's done. You can move on to the next. It has the added benefit of "oh man, John got lucky and pulled Y out of his box, let me get in on that."

That actually brings up a good point. If they made it so Belgian players could buy certain cards for a set number of points, it could actually strengthen the legal argument that the loot boxes are gambling, since it indirectly assigns a concrete monetary value to the item being purchased. You could then use that to calculate the equivalent monetary payouts of the loot boxes, and show that loot box A handed out the equivalent of $X worth of stuff, while loot box B, which cost the same number of points to purchase, handed out $Y.

[Vendetta]

That actually brings up a good point. If they made it so Belgian players could buy certain cards for a set number of points, it could actually strengthen the legal argument that the loot boxes are gambling, since it indirectly assigns a concrete monetary value to the item being purchased. You could then use that to calculate the equivalent monetary payouts of the loot boxes, and show that loot box A handed out the equivalent of $X worth of stuff, while loot box B, which cost the same number of points to purchase, handed out $Y.

If everything in them also has an up front price, and the loot box costs the same as the cheapest thing in it, then the gambling nature of lootboxes is massively undercut because your best case outcome is a discount on a thing you could have bought anyway.

The only ones I know of that work like that are Path of Exile's though.

[Lost Soal]

They won'y rebalance or change anything because the hope Belgian gamers complain to get the law changed or FIFA exempted. Plus they don't want to give the rest of their playerbase the idea that this gameplay mechanic is utter shit and theres a better way.

[JakeWarm]

Why Loot Box in particular? It's not the only gambling office, or maybe they've broken some rules.

[bilateralrope]

Why Loot Box in particular? It's not the only gambling office, or maybe they've broken some rules.

Which others are you thinking of ?

[Dominus Atheos]

I think maybe he's very confused and thinks they're going after a specific company, and I think he got it mixed up with the service Loot Crate that sends people random boxes of nerd stuff each month.

[NecronLord]

Why Loot Box in particular? It's not the only gambling office, or maybe they've broken some rules.

As people have already responded I'm not going to do anything but be careful not to resurrect old threads without too much context.

[embertrizze]

Could you imagine the backlash is back in the 80s/90s you could walk up to an arcade fighter and pay double the norm and boost your HP? Attack Damage? Recovery times?

[bilateralrope]

Could you imagine the backlash is back in the 80s/90s you could walk up to an arcade fighter and pay double the norm and boost your HP? Attack Damage? Recovery times?

Yeah. That could piss people off for the multiplayer arcade cabinets. But paying for extra lives didn't create much of a backlash for single player games.

But we are talking about lootboxes here. The arcade equivalent would be that you put in a coin to continue, you get some nice animation, and then most of the time all it does is increase the time left on the continue countdown.

[TheFeniX]

But we are talking about lootboxes here. The arcade equivalent would be that you put in a coin to continue, you get some nice animation, and then most of the time all it does is increase the time left on the continue countdown.

This is actually a really good approximation of the system. Arcades are by design "quarter suckers" but they have guaranteed "payouts" , at least the last I bothered with them. There have been changes to the system. Such as in older racing games, if you made first place, you kept playing on the same purchase. That's dead now in any modern racer: you get one race, that's it. However, on it's surface that's fine because it's not gambling. It's one "payout" per credit. Such as one race, one level, one fight. Even if arcades ditched "Winner stays, loser pays" and each player had to use 1 credit win or lose: that's still an upfront "payout" system.

Versus, as you said, paying another credit and not getting a continue, just more time, or getting half a continue, 1% of one, etc etc. For the record, even arcades had P2W:

Thing is, under an EA system, this would be a drop-rate of like 95% some cosmetic, with possibly getting a gameplay upgrade. But some kid COULD drop in quarter after quarter for all the upgrades. IIRC, the game saved your progress if you put your name in, but obviously, that's one reset away from being gone.

[bilateralrope]

For the record, even arcades had P2W:

How did it affect their popularity among players ?

[TheFeniX]

For the record, even arcades had P2W:

How did it affect their popularity among players ?

Super Off-Road was a very popular racing game for the time, but obviously fighting games would dominate the field. I can't speak for other venues, but no one wanted to be the kid being made fun of for dumping $5 to max out their truck. Around where I lived, I would assume if fighting games allowed you to pay extra credits for more damage, more health, etc: being seen doing so would likely lose you some teeth.

There's a bit more concept of ownership with microtransactions for a gaming account these days* and it's not like people can see your upgrades without looking/digging. My point was really only that P2W is not a new concept. I would say it's stayed out of fighting games for so long just due to the nature of the system. Even today, Injustice 2 has the ability to disable gear scaling.

*For instance, all my unlocks and shit, I may have or have not paid cash money for, in Warframe are tied to TheFeniX until the servers go down. Meanwhile, my character in DnD: Tower of Doom is totally at the whim of the arcade owner. There's value in this, across a lot of games with loot system, cash shop or otherwise, the concept that "you" own certain things for your account, as said, has value.

Also, probably one of the oldest and most abusive examples of P2W would be how Sierra adventure games were specifically designed to be as obtuse and illogical as possible, to get owners to buy hint books or call the 900 hotline. While P2W is considered a mostly PvP system, I would say it's prototype was carved out in PvE.