An incognito screenshot of Twitch I captured just now https://i.imgur.com/fgXDAHB.png - The biggest streamer on the platform is currently streaming real money (crypto) online Slots gambling to 100k+ viewers, and a second streamer in the top 5 category is also streaming Slots.
Supposedly these streamers make millions per month from these gaming sponsorships to pretend to lose their own money in order to convince their already primed audience to become addicts to these same sites.
Children brought up on gaming have been conditioned into becoming the perfect audience for unregulated crypto gambling companies to advertise to and ruin their lives
Most of this stuff is actually worse than casinos. Casinos have a social component, employ people, and are often at least a little regulated so that the odds can’t be absolutely 100% toward the house. Also you win actual money not a virtual game item.
I have the same feeling towards the stock market. Sure, it can be well researched information on the stock in question, but it's all a bet your interpretation of that stock is right.
Maybe some of that is available now with crypto? Index funds? But with how heavily the bigger cryptocurrencies are price-correlated, I don't think you get good intra-asset diversification benefits.
Personally within my asset allocation, crypto is a tiny fraction of a percent.
Your approach reminded me of a joke:
Three statisticians go deer hunting with bows and arrows. They spot a big buck and take aim. One shoots and his arrow flies off three meters to the right. The second shoots and his arrow flies off three meters to the left. The third statistician jumps up and down, yelling "We got him! We got him!"
[1]: Niantic for Pokémon Go, DeNA for Mario Kart Tour.
[2]: Nintendo is bound to have the final say.
[3]: For now?
FromSoftware is another bastion of hope. The popularity of Elden Ring is no coincidence.
BTW gamer community is fucked up and people will judge each other on every single detail so you are not far off.
All the games are ad free and IAP free.
Even with Amazon Kids, though, the games are still their free to play selves without purchases, so I still see these games where dopamine hits (get coins!) are a main mechanic :(
The idea of self-regulation is a lie told by corporations who don’t want regulation.
Corporations will do literally anything to maximize their profits.
Is it impossible to imagine the industry creating a similar system around online transactions or gambling?
If I got lucky on a csgo case, I could go buy a different video game
Now if I get lucky in most of these other models, I can't even use that luck to buy more cases
Turbo capitalistic exploitation of games is festering; and now it's more important than ever to support the good-spirited studios.
It means that you, the user, don't get to play the games you want to play or it will have no effect. Publishers will figure out ways around it and you're never going to stamp it out as long as there is demand for it.
I don't like Diablo Immortal's monetization, so I don't play it. I suggest everyone else should do the exact same thing. If you're a parent then you should forbid your kid from playing games like that too.
Getting lawmakers involved in regular video games is just going to end in disaster. They're not exactly known for making sensible laws or even understanding the subject matter.
The fact that the Belgian and Dutch governments label these predatory microtransaction schemes as gambling, shows that they understand the subject matter perfectly fine.
Yes, you and I can sensibly choose not to play those games or spend money on them. But lots of people can't. That's why laws regulating gambling exist.
Nobody is saying that you can't play these games. Those gaming companies just have to accept that their products are a form of gambling and will be regulated and taxed as such.
The Dutch and Belgian government quite literally are saying that you can't though. Of course, in practice it just means Dutch and Belgian players will pretend they're from another European country via VPN.
>Those gaming companies just have to accept that their products are a form of gambling and will be regulated and taxed as such.
I'm not sure if you're saying this in bad faith, are ignorant of gambling laws or truly believe this. If you were to regulate video games with gambling laws then that video game ceases to exist.
Nobody can afford to publish even a remotely complex game while following gambling regulations, because every single country makes their own rules on that. You would essentially be creating a game for one country only. And at that point why bother? Just push out another actual slotmachine. You cut development costs by multiple orders of magnitude and increase accessibility of the game.
Of course, in practice the countries that regulate it would just be banned. And the players would play the game via VPN.
Also, what I'm saying is that when dozens of countries come up with new rules some of them are going to do something stupid with them. You're asking for legally mandated region locks in gaming.
Just to be clear, I don't like these games either. I hate that game companies do this.
Activision Blizzard doesn't want to do that. Not the fault of governments
And as for the (im)possibility to develop games that follow the laws of all countries: that had been successfully done for decades. It just doesn't involve predatory microtransactions
In other words, they're saying that you cannot play the game.
>Activision Blizzard doesn't want to do that. Not the fault of governments
If I were Dutch and wanted to play the game, then it wouldn't be Blizzard stopping me from playing. It would be the Dutch government. That is quite literally their fault.
The Dutch government is saying that they know how I should live my life better than I do.
>And as for the (im)possibility to develop games that follow the laws of all countries: that had been successfully done for decades. It just doesn't involve predatory microtransactions
Yeah, good luck with that. Hope you have some extremely deep pockets to fund it yourself, because nobody's going to invest in it if the projected returns suck. Video game prices have stayed at the same level or even decreased over the years while costs to develop have gone up, because players aren't willing to pay the inflation adjusted price for them. They also expect way more complex technical work on the games.
And even when you make all that work the players will still jump to games like Diablo Immortal instead, regardless whether your local government bans the game or not. Getting around region locks in gaming isn't exactly new.
My problem with this is that ultimately it ends up limiting my choices because I happen to live in Europe. I can choose not to play games that I think are trying to take too much advantage of me (or complain about ones that try to), but it's much more difficult to play a game that isn't permitted to be playable in my region.
I am a Dutch player who played D1, D2, D3. I won't play Diablo Immortal. First of all the condescending comment about phones as well as the launch of D3 which made whatever this game is quite sour. Then they made it a reskin by NetEase; it only uses Blizzard IP it isn't developed by Blizzard. Then they made it P2W, as this item proves.
> I'm not sure if you're saying this in bad faith, are ignorant of gambling laws or truly believe this. If you were to regulate video games with gambling laws then that video game ceases to exist.
Of course they can work around it by not having P2W. Its that simple, really. How about make a damn good game and sell it?
I can only hope more countries start regulating crap like this, as should happen with ML/AI ('algorithms') as well.
Because the average player is not going to pay $100 for a game. Also, now you're lumping P2W and gambling together.
But all of this is beside the point. If you do not like games like this then you shouldn't play them. I want to still be able to play the games I choose. I don't need the government to try to "protect me" from this.
Do I like that games do this? No, but I can always choose not to play them. If people chose to not play them then they wouldn't monetize games like this, but it's pretty apparent that people are okay with this. You want to use force via the government to stop those people from doing something they want to do and using "it's for your own good" as an excuse.
Games will absolutely shut out countries where they feel that handing regulation is too much for them. This will include games that don't conflict with the regulation, but it's simply too risky to figure out whether they do or not.
This is both P2W and gambling, and its the combination which is the issue. RNG alone isn't an issue. Also, it is aimed at youth, who not yet can deal with gambling. How come a country where you may drive at age 16 and drink at age 21 doesn't care about digital gambling via the internet?
The argument is the same about other things like heroin, gambling, LSD, etc. The law is there to protect the people. If you want to break the law, then you are on your own, with all the repercussions which may come with it including: that your Battle.net account gets disabled/banned, that Blizzard or the player gets a fine, that you become addicted, that you have to pretend you are from another jurisdiction in order to play it, that you move to a different jurisdiction, or vote for different politicians in your jurisdiction. There's plenty of options for you to influence the current outcome.
> If people chose to not play them then they wouldn't monetize games like this, but it's pretty apparent that people are okay with this.
No, it is not "pretty apparent". Stop projecting.
> You want to use force via the government to stop those people from doing something they want to do and using "it's for your own good" as an excuse.
Yes, such is the basis of law.
> Games will absolutely shut out countries where they feel that handing regulation is too much for them. This will include games that don't conflict with the regulation, but it's simply too risky to figure out whether they do or not.
That's fine, I'm not missing out, hopefully more countries follow suit and may it provide incentive to change this rotten to the core industry.
"Well, if I just don't buy any drugs, that'll take care of the problem."
Obviously, government interventions can have negative impacts (see drugs parallel again) but the answer is encouraging sensible regulation, not pretending, against all evidence, that it can't work.
As far as I can tell, gambling laws don't stop gambling either. In fact, it's usually the government that's the biggest provider of gambling services (the lottery). It seems like it's more about eliminating competition than anything else.
Banning rarely accomplishes anything, it just moves one appearance of the problem out of sight for a period of time.
Is it useless to ban children from using cocaine and rocket-propelled grenade launchers in the US just because they’re not banned in Somalia?
I don't think it affects the point you're making, I just thought it might be interesting to share.
[0] https://otbfirearms.com/airtronics-llc-rpg-live-dd-modernize...
If there is worthwhile money to be made they'll already be going to those countries regardless what countries with regulation do.
They could just block the EU region and publish to other countries instead. Plenty of games, especially from Asia, already block all EU countries from playing. Usually they're looking to sell a license or don't know how to enter the market. Nevertheless, they are absolutely willing to block the EU region.
I see so many Europeans repeating the line that if Europe regulates X together, then companies will have to care, because they can't ignore the European market. This might be true in other industries, but it's not true in gaming. I would even say that it's more common for the European market to be treated as second class than not when it comes to online games.
Also, it's not about the children. Children don't make their own money - they only have money that parents give them. Even if these games banned children from playing them, a lot of the people complaining about it still wouldn't stop. The problem for them is that they can't make their friends stop playing these games, so they want the government to stop them instead.
I don't like when games monetize stuff like Diablo Immortal does. I hate it. But I'm certain that when legislation does arrive it'll be broad enough that other stuff gets caught up in it and the people advocating for it will just shrug their shoulders and go "lol i didn't care about games anyway".
> They will just move on to countries with less regulation, which usually means poorer countries with less educated people. You can probably see where this is going.
Great - they've moved on from my country because of the ban.
> Banning rarely accomplishes anything, it just moves one appearance of the problem out of sight for a period of time.
Just above you told me what it was accomplishing. And if it "just moves one appearance of [capitalism making it so that businesses have desirable incentives that would make them willing to literally instill gambling problems in children] out of sight for a period of time" then also GREAT! That's what the legislation was FOR.
If the legislation stops working, we can discuss again then.
* According to the perversity thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy.
* The futility thesis holds that attempts at social transformation will be unavailing, that they will simply fail to "make a dent."
* Finally, the jeopardy thesis argues that the cost of the proposed change or reform is too high as it endangers some previous, precious accomplishment.
This is #3, a threat that any type of action will harm poor people.
> Banning rarely accomplishes anything, it just moves one appearance of the problem out of sight for a period of time.
This is #2, futility in its widest sense. Not just this ban won't work, no bans work!
This knee-jerk application of libertarian ideology makes even less sense in this situation than usual. The gaming industry is dependent on improving computer hardware hardware, in-game sales rely on consumers with at least a certain degree of expendable capital. The core markets will always be countries that are well off, companies cant 'just go elsewhere' without significantly sacrificing their potential income.
Also you do realise that the wealth of a country does not correlate directly to it's levels of education?
Edit: Not any more. Even Algeria finally got their show together in 2021.
If the ban is easy to enforce I do not think this is true. IMO it is when the ban is next to impossible to enforce when the crime just shifts (drugs, for instance)
The stance of NL and belgium of just banning all games that have gambling elements, is truly the only path forward. There will be no self-regulation. The studios have to be stopped from selling to care anymore.