However this is very difficult to weed out through the free market when the free market has an oligopoly set up within it. At that point corporations have to either become large enough to collapse from the inside, or the power next in line (Governments) need to step in to sort this out.
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We also are one of the lowest state in terms of benefit (dollars) we get from the federal government compared to what we pay in.
Most of the states who complain about California’s regulatory power are likely getting lots of money that originated in California.
I would be happy to trade that regulatory power essentially applying to other states in return for that money.
The free market with absolutely no regulation grants monopolies.
There is a reason Roosevelt anti-trust action were extremely beneficial for the country.
The free market does not work without some framework of regulation.
How much it needs is the question. Some areas have too much, but other areas clearly have not enough.
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This is because loot boxes are being struck down by laws across Europe right now. Eventually it’ll make it to the U.S. and companies across the country that sell loot boxes for money will be forced to stop the practice, and to pay fines in some cases.
This is Blizzard just getting out in front of that.
There’s nothing ethical about it. This is them preparing for a legal fight within the next two years, considering HoTS has a declining player base but their revenue hasn’t dropped in unison. This is a red flag to regulators, so they’re scaling it back to not be as obvious.
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That is very true however, this is not a matter of monopolies and limits.
This is a matter of taking something we find distasteful and getting rid of it through law rather than simply using our money with a degree of responsibility.
It’s a slippery and dangerous slope.
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And I’ll say it again, if the ESRB and PEGI had stepped up and done some light to medium self-regulation regarding loot boxes governments would not be stepping in currently.
Most game Publishers, and some developers are all caught up in profiting as much as possible today and not caring about tomorrow. That is another issue with the “free market” that the existence of the Stock Market in relations to companies causes them to value these short term gains, as many executives have outcomes tied to short term.
I would imagine in a free market full of private companies we would be far better off.
Instead we’ll probably get regulation that oversteps what it needs to do.\
But, the game industry on the whole got itself into this mess. Let them deal with the fallout.
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Legal compliance does not mean it must be irrespective of morality. There is some overlap.
For example, it is not only ethically and morally right to not sell alcohol to minors, but lawful as well.
You’re right though, it doesn’t necessarily imply ethical behaviour on Blizzard’s part.
I’m just giving Blizzard the benefit of the doubt, here. I believe that is fair given the immense amount of criticism I lobby at them.
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Alright fine, you got me there.
Look at the end of the day, I really don’t like the loot box craze that everyone has been jumping on.
It’s been taken way to far in most cases.
But it does have it’s place in SOME games.
EU is moving to classify loot chests for money in games as gambling. If EU does it other players who haven’t already will too. So this is a cautionary move, rather than morality.
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This has been Blizzard’s downfall as of late, Overwatch’s success is largely to blame.
Blizzard used to iterate until their product was ready. For every released project, there was hundreds of shelves ones.
Overwatch was developed quickly, very quickly, but what management of Blizzard today fails to realize is all of the failures of project Titan that led to Overwatch’s creation. Blizzard is now focused on short term gain, rather than long term success from controlled releases.
We all know Soon™ as the butt of jokes about Blizzard’s release schedule, but it was this mindset that made them the innovative leaders of the industry in the first place. Sure, you can say that Blizzard just repackaged already existing games, but they perfected those genres.
This video is a spot on representation of what made Blizzard who they are today, and why the brand is degenerating lately. Blizzard used to be Legendary, it seemed they could do no wrong, but that stems from humble beginnings and their current short sightedness will be their downfall.
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You come across as a paranoid schizo my man. These systems were only ever designed to milk as much money out of players as possible, they were never made as a creative decision. You do not have to adopt a “think of the children argument” to see how awful these things are.
In case people were not aware, the reason for the removal of paid loot boxes is because they were starting to run afoul of gambling laws in many countries after last years big press attack on them. To combat this Blizzard has monetized all skins removing any aspect of money for chance from the game, and turned lootboxes into purely a chance based reward for player progression and another gold sink. If one wants to spend money, one now spends it like at a show where you know in advanced what you are getting and what to expect.
This movement is industry wide, and something all companies will have to do eventually.
Greed makes people do crazy things
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If it is to avoid the ‘gambling’ tag, or ‘gambling for non-physical items with money’, then why is Hearthstone still selling card packs for money? Will they have to stop and only allow you to buy specific cards with money, and random ones with gold only?
How are Heroes loot chests different?
I think Blizzard have figured out that making 3 of 6 of their franchises revolve around impulse driven ill thought out purchase decisions is NOT good for long term business. Took them a while figuring this out.
I get that this stuff would have generated a lot of income initially, but eventually it would fizzle out because it was just unsustainable and people caught on with the fact that they were being manipulated.
Doesn’t mean hearthstone won’t have the same decision. They need time to adapt to each individual system.
I believe it will. CCG’s are even more predatory than cosmetic loot boxes because the cards in a CCG are absolutely vital for playing the game.
You don’t need skins, mounts, sprays, banners, et cetera to play HOTS.
This is why I stopped playing Hearthstone, it requires way too much money to stay in the meta.
Then they will need more time to come up with an adequate system to replace it with. Honestly, I think it is about time companies give up on this loot box BS, it has gotten waaaay too far, and even if lawmakers don’t ban it, I think the player base is getting tired of it (or they grow up, go through the basic math classes and figure out it is a scam).
People still haven’t figured out that the lottery is a scam.
With that in mind, though, I think loot box games are losing their appeal. Younger generations are being smarter about their game purchases.
Most users only play maybe one or two games as a games as service model, so making EVERY game as a games as service model makes very little sense. My hope is loot boxesdie out as a result.
looks at Apex Legends
But lottery is a legal scam, you have to pay taxes and all for that, and in some EU countries there is a hefty tax on gambling.
But if loot boxes do get classified as gambling, 2 things will happen to blizzard:
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They will have to enforce the minimum age of gambling (18 in EU). While there is a minimum age requirement right now too, it is not enforced. They will need to rethink their entire in-app purchase to actually ask for evidence of age, which is expensive to implement.
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They will have to pay far more taxes on the income generated by the loot boxes, which will either result in decreased revenue due to tax, or increased prices for loot boxes. Either way it is bad for them.