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    Sean BondJason Schreier
    5/08/19 12:04pm

    This guy sounds like a douche-nozzle, but I’m okay with this bill. Loot boxes are predatory, and regardless of how I feel about general microtransactions, we’d be better off with loot boxes (at least ones that require real money) being axed.

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      reuthermonkeySean Bond
      5/08/19 12:10pm

      Definite douche-nozzle. Still, at least someone’s looking at this as an issue - even if it’s of the “think of the children!” variety...

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      EricSean Bond
      5/08/19 12:11pm

      I’m from MO trust me he is.

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    VeitJason Schreier
    5/08/19 12:40pm

    Loot boxes are definitely predatory, but this bill really sounds like it’s targeting a wide swath of DLC and microtransactions without regard for what parents are already able to do. I’m particularly wary of the scary language around developers monetizing addiction in children. That’s... well, that language is not scientific and is clearly being used to demonize video games as a medium.

    And to be clear, I say that as both an ABD psychology student, and as someone who doesn’t play MMOs anymore because I had a serious problem with them as a teen. There was a way to do this. This wasn’t that way.

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      SwagstallionVeit
      5/08/19 12:44pm

      I think there’s a lot to look at concerning Loot Boxes and “pay to win”, but I don’t trust these folks to know the industry well enough to know what they’re doing.

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      MonktardVeit
      5/08/19 1:07pm

      “Psychology student”

      Gotcha, that explains it

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    StorminMike2000Jason Schreier
    5/08/19 12:28pm

    This is great, depending on how the transactions are defined.

    I play Hearthstone and I’ve been playing CCGs for 25 years (give or take).  I do not mind “card packs.”  I don’t think they’re “pay-to-win,” I think they’re essential to the CCG/TCG game experience.  I don’t want to have to pay $200 to get the next expansion completely unlocked.  

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      R3507mk2StorminMike2000
      5/08/19 12:45pm

      Do you trust a conservative Senator with, I’m just guessing here, approximately zero gaming experience to do the defining?  Because that’s where we’re at.

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      StarryNight17StorminMike2000
      5/08/19 1:23pm

      Defining the transactions really is the key part though. While there are certainly obvious cases on either side that few-if-any people would argue with, there’s a vast degree of judgment involved in picking transactions.

      Even your example could be debated: If I’m playing with one of the free Hearthstone decks, can I compete with your deck loaded with the best from the card packs? And how many people who don’t buy extra card packs are seriously competing? If your answer isn’t “absolutely, in fact, the vanilla deck is entirely and completely viable”, then it’s at least a bit of pay-to-win.

      Is it enough pay-to-win that it should be banned? You’d clearly say no (and FWIW, I agree with you), but a parent whose kid spent hundreds of bucks on card packs because “I need them to play” would probably vehemently disagree.

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    drgnrbrn316Jason Schreier
    5/08/19 12:14pm

    I was a bit surprised to see a Republican was spearheading this initiative.

    As far as the bill itself, I’m sure EA/Activision/whoever can afford a few congressmen, so I doubt it will get much traction. Should this actually get passed, or at least cast a big enough spotlight on the issue, I imagine we’ll just see the big developers start doubling down on the “live service” model and clinging to the “it’s only cosmetic” argument to defend them creating an online gambling marketplace within their games.

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      Kalyx_triaDdrgnrbrn316
      5/08/19 12:46pm

      Conservatives don't like gambling and never liked gaming culture. This makes perfect sense.

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      Mandalorian_GTKalyx_triaD
      5/08/19 12:52pm

      What? Never heard of Sheldon Adelson? 

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    WraithfighterJason Schreier
    5/08/19 1:26pm

    ...oof.

    First: Definitely going to need to put up a giant asterisk noting that we haven’t seen any of the, you know, *text* of this proposed bill. Devil’s in the details and all that.

    But... okay, wanting to ban loot boxes, that’s hardly surprising, even if the whole “...soooo, what about other products with randomized rewards like supermarket gachapon machines or trading card packs?” thing is going to come up and probably be tricky to deal with.

    But taking aim at “Pay to Win Microtransactions”, that’s just... seriously? You want to try to deal with that fucking mess? At least Loot Boxes are fairly simple to define, but you want to try to legislate what “Pay to Win” means, when no one involved in the industry can agree on what the hell that actually means?

    He’s not just talking about “selling power” either. To quote his press release:

    Manipulation of a game’s progression system – typically by building artificial difficulty or other barriers into game progression – to induce players to spend money on microtransactions to advance through content supposedly available to them at no additional cost

    That includes “Pay to Not Wait” mechanics, which... yeah, lots of people hate, and when they show up in premium titles it makes me cringe. But that’s also a pretty bedrock mechanic in a lot of F2P games.

    Lots of people are going to be celebrating this because no one likes “Loot Boxes” or “Pay to Win”. But the proper title for this might as well be the “Killing Free to Play Games Act”, given what it’d do to the market...

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      marshknuteWraithfighter
      5/08/19 2:08pm

      There’s a difference between “Pay to not wait” and “pay for the chance to not wait.”

      The former is paying directly for an in-game feature. The later is paying for the chance to win an in-game feature.

      So there’s no issue with Forza Motorsport allowing players to spend real-world money on in-game credits to unlock expensive cars, but there is an issue if they only make certain cars available via randomly-generated prize crates. 

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      Wraithfightermarshknute
      5/08/19 2:14pm

      Except that he’s talking about banning “Pay to Not Wait” while conflating it with “Pay to Win”. You can read the text of it here: https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-05/2019-05-08_Protecting-Children-Abusive-Games-Act_One-Pager.pdf

      Forza would be in violation of the act he’s proposing, because it “induces players to spend money on microtransactions to advance through content supposedly available to them at no additional cost”.

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    NoelVeigaJason Schreier
    5/08/19 2:09pm

    This is... actually terrible news.

    I mean, it’s hard to tell, because the language being used is all PR and lacks any kind of precision, but in a worst case scenario, the use of randomization and loot tables (which are key to games from Diablo and World of Warcraft to Skyrim) becomes an AO rating cue or straight up illegal. I don’t think it’ll get to that, because the outcome is nonsensical, but I do see this outlawing Magic the Gathering (you’ll notice the name of the bill says “games”, not “videogames”, and by the definition here, both physical and digital CCGs would be infringing).

    And if those extreme interpretations weren’t terrifying enough, this will immediately axe a TON of games industry jobs. Mobile gaming is 80-90% microtransaction-driven right now and probably over 50% of the gaming industry. Of that money a nontrivial chunk is coming from the US. A lot of game developers would lose their jobs overnight, and the rest would be faced with a bunch of desperate, cheaper competition. You think game developers have a hard time organizing these days? Those guys putting up a fight in Riot this week will have bigger things to worry about , both because in case you didn’t notice, paying a couple bucks for a character is a gameplay-impacting microtransaction AND because they’re about to get much cheaper to replace.

    So if you think this won’t hurt your single player triple A games... well, it will. And if you think it won’t hurt all the loot games you actually like... it will, also. I’m not saying that predatory microtransactions are good, but the market was way ahead of regulation in this, and you really have to search for a major triple A game to have any paid loot boxes these days. Instead, these old politicians are gonna come into the china shop with the stampede from The Lion King and a bunch of good games and good game developers are going to get severely damaged or taken out entirely.

    So yeah. Not good. Here’s hoping they backtrack on this, as they have in the past.

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      omnichadNoelVeiga
      5/08/19 3:36pm

      Yeah, no. Nothing of value will be lost.

      And if you think it won’t hurt all the loot games you actually like.

      Which is zero.  I don’t enjoy games based on addictive or grinding play.  It’s actually a way to avoid making a good game and just occupying the player’s mind with mindless things.

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      AkridesNoelVeiga
      5/08/19 4:38pm

      Counterpoint: Not all the industry is made of games with MTX and lootboxes. Those that abuse them would be taking a terrible hit. And guess what: I’m fine with this because THEY are the ones who defaced the industry with those kind of things.
      If you will be impacted by this, my condolences. It must be infuriating to see games you like being defaced and IPs that will sink because of this. But know that the industry AS A WHOLE will not crumble and that a new balance will be struck again.
      Unfortunately, actors within the industry will suffer, and not the right people will be impacted. But that’s not a reason not to do anything. It would be like saying you can’t dismantle the mob because they have familly to support.

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    SwagstallionJason Schreier
    5/08/19 12:10pm

    It will be interesting to see where this goes, if anywhere.

    Like most things concerning games, I’m guessing they have no idea what they’re talking about. Do they want to ban them or keep them away from children?

    If such a ban does pass, there’s a lot of things to consider. A big one is what the companies overseas that make the vast majority of mobile games will do. Will they block Americans from micro-transactions, or just pull the games from American players?

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      Admiral AsskickerSwagstallion
      5/08/19 12:32pm

      The most straightforward way would be to label games with these mechanics at Adult Only (AO), however history has shown that that is equivalent to banning the game when it comes to everything but niche games. This would be fought hard.

      A next logical step is that games of this form would still be solf, but you have to “prove” that you are of legal age to utilize the mechanics/purchases. However devs/publisher could simply institute porn-site level of “verification” and simply have the person check a box saying they are over 18, and they will argue that is enough (while knowing that it does basically nothing).

      Mobile game will be split. The candy-crushers of the would will have to reckon with the above, but that poses the question of how much of their revenue is from minors versus adults. Some of the more niche Gacha style games users probably skew more towards 18+ to begin with, so may be less affected.

      At the end of the day, I wonder how much money Loot Boxes make from Minors versus Adults.

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      SwagstallionAdmiral Asskicker
      5/08/19 12:41pm

      My bet would be on adults.

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    devourbooksJason Schreier
    5/08/19 12:30pm

    I totally support this. If you want to sell cosmetics, sell cosmetics. There is absolutely no reason to ever use a purchase-able loot box other than to trick people into gambling or gambling-like habits. Some of the % on getting rewards on the loot boxes are absolutely ludicrous.

    This also speaks to a deeper issue in gaming in general, but I don’t really think you can make a law around that. Stuff like raiding in MMORPGs is essentially a battle for a random loot box, it’s just fun cuz you kill a big boss for the loot box. Still, it creates ridiculous addictive habits where people keep going back to get one item. You can’t really create a law around that (I don’t think, I haven’t given much thought as to what that would look like) but such deep randomization of rewards is a gross part of games.

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      Nilfydevourbooks
      5/08/19 1:17pm

      The bill is referring to paying real money for loot boxes not in game rewards.

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      Dheinamardevourbooks
      5/08/19 1:25pm

      Well, personally for me WoW raiding was always fun because it’s situation which allows big group of people to coordinate with one another and solve difficult task together creating satisfying feeling of both hard achieved victory and social necessity and unity at first place. Thus I don’t see such issue as the one you’ve mentioned in games yet.

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    Santos L. HalperJason Schreier
    5/08/19 1:21pm

    I feel like it’s a bit of a disservice to lump loot boxes from a game like Overwatch, which are completely cosmetic and add nothing to your ability to win the game, to the ones that give you power ups to beat a game or advantages over other players.

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      ThreeOneFiveSantos L. Halper
      5/08/19 1:30pm

      Eh, disagree. Gameplay is irrelevant to the issue, lawmakers don’t care about preserving gameplay balance - they care about not marketing gambling to kids.

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      Santos L. HalperThreeOneFive
      5/08/19 1:52pm

      Yeah I get that, lawmakers won’t know or care about the difference.  But Jason lumped them together, which maybe for the purposes of this, makes sense.  But if you take this tack on it, you have to look at trading cards and games as well.  You are basically gambling a small amount of money to hopefully get a valuable/good card.

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    ColdFuryJason Schreier
    5/08/19 1:22pm

    I think people cheering this are being way too short sighted. This has the potential to crush mobile gaming (at least free to play), multiple Triple A franchises, and probably some developers and even publishers.

    If this bill passes as described, it will play havoc in the industry and will probably be spoken about in the same terms as the Atari crash.

    I would like to say that Congress wouldn’t be so short sighted, but... these days...

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      AuroraFirestorm (Alcoraiden)ColdFury
      5/08/19 4:24pm

      This is going to fuck up gaming company stocks if it passes.

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      wtf_GColdFury
      5/09/19 7:27pm

      The games this would affect and ‘crush’ would get zero sympathy from MANY gamers.

      You know there was a time not very long ago when we didn’t have in-game purchases as an option, had $60 AAA games, and nothing was collapsing?

      It’s a shocker, but it was real.

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