
Belgium says loot boxes are gambling, wants them banned in Europe - Daiz
http://www.pcgamer.com/belgium-says-loot-boxes-are-gambling-wants-them-banned-in-europe/
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Artemix
Thanks to premii, I was able to read the actual article, but fuck pcgamer.

If you try to access the website with disabled javascript or while blocking
ads, you'll be redirected to a HTML page that kinda only says "We know you are
using a blocking script and want you to disable it".

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dkersten
More and more sites are doing this, and more and more am I realising that I
really don't care to read the articles enough to enable javascript/disable
adblockers. A nice side benefit is that I'm consuming much less content that,
really, I don't need. Most news articles for example don't affect my life
other than, perhaps, depressing me. If its not actionable, I don't need to
know. These sites are helping me (slowly) unravel my internet addiction. So
really, I should be thanking them :)

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Artemix
That's the positive side of it.

The most negative ones would be: \- Content blocking: you limit access to your
news to a very precise subset of people, so implicitly easily targeting and
closing users's views. \- Heaviness: you limit access to your news to mainly
desktop targets, as most mobile networks have very limited bandwidth usage.

Also it have a positive impact on you, also me (as I decided to add it and all
its subdomains to my blocklist) but a lot of users will keep living under
those website's constraints, but also gaining the habit of that, thus starting
to think about it as "normal" where it's really the Web and net neutrality
cancer.

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baszalmstra
How do loot boxes compare to all the different kind of booster packs out there
in terms of gambling? I feel there is little difference, should they then be
banned too?

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mcv
My thoughts exactly. Randomised booster packs are basically a kind of
gambling. And I know from experience that they can be addictive.

But if gambling should be banned, why are lotteries still allowed? They are
arguably the worst kind of gambling.

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yvdriess
Gambling is not banned in Belgium, it is regulated. There is a state-owned
lottery, plenty of casino's, sportsbetting companies etc. One thing that is
banned is selling gambling products to minors.

You are right that booster-pack based collectible card games are basically
gambling (and they are definitely also targeting minors). However, there is
also a significant difference between a game that front-loads this gambling
(you know what you are getting into, and you buy and construct your card deck
before a game) and a game that tacks it on an existing game. It a gray zone if
the loot box contents offer no in-game advantage (e.g. Valve sticks to purely
cosmetic items for their games), but is pretty sinister from both the game
design and ethical perspective if it offers an edge in the game. It's back-
loaded gambling, where a pay-gamble-to-win scenario is dangled in front of the
player after getting killed in a shooter.

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manfredo
This is interesting. What's the difference between a lootbox earned in game,
vs the act of killing a mob or raid boss and having the RNG determine what
drop you get? You can't pay for the latter with real money, but you do need to
put in more gaming hours (and thus pay more real money for a subscription) in
order to get good drops. So in effect you still have to indirectly pay for the
chance to get loot. Would this make all forms of random drops gambling?

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ThrowawayR2
Can't speak to Belgian law but in the US, the definition of gambling has 3
elements IIRC: consideration (i.e. something of value the player offers up for
the chance to win, usually money), prize(s) (i.e. something of value the
player wants to win), and chance (i.e. whether the player wins a prize is
primarily determined randomly rather than though application of some skill).

Online games dodge these three elements:

-In terms of consideration, the subscription fee doesn't count because it grants players access to the game world, which includes much more play elements than just the drop system, and the player's time doesn't really count since nothing of value to anyone else results from their play time. Note that this gets more murky for Asian-style gachapon-monetized games where the player directly spends virtual currency purchased with real money to roll for virtual items.

-In terms of prize, the fine print of most online games' TOS say quite explicitly that the player has no property rights or ownership of any items they get within the game.(If this weren't the case, they would have to compensate players for the loss of property when the game closed down or if the player were banned.) Since one doesn't "own" a drop, there's technically no prize _per se_.

-In terms of chance, most likely gaming companies would argue that killing a mob or raid boss counts as some sort of skill. Again, Asian-style gachapon-monetized games are on much shakier ground here.

That being said, it's not impossible that new legislation could expand these
definitions to include online games and it's arguable that they should be; you
have to admit that there's something unsavory about intentionally exposing
minors to gambling-like systems to hook them into playing your game.

(I am not a lawyer and nothing said above should be construed as legal
advice.)

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rad_gruchalski
Like Kinder eggs. They should ban them too.

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dkersten
At least with kinder eggs you know you're getting the chocolate, and you know
you will get one of half a dozen toys. But sure, I guess its not that
different...

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lawnchair_larry
They really don't have much in common. If you want more kinder eggs, you have
to walk to the store. When the mechanics are based on exploiting a skinner box
as they are in games these days, breaking engagement like that pretty much
ruins the whole thing. If EA or Caesars Palace required you to go to the store
and buy a physical card to play again, revenue would plummet.

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adityapurwa
Gambling is always bad, should ban them everywhere.

