Loot Boxes Declared Gambling By Belgium's Gambling Commission, Minister of Justice to Press for Action in Europe

Started by Xevross, Nov 21, 2017, 11:20 PM

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Xevross

Belgium says loot boxes are gambling, wants them banned in Europe | PC Gamer

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"The mixing of money and addiction is gambling," the Gaming Commission declared. Belgium's Minister of Justice Koen Geens also weighed in, saying, "Mixing gambling and gaming, especially at a young age, is dangerous for the mental health of the child."
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He said the process will take time, "because we have to go to Europe. We will certainly try to ban it."
The it he is referring to is any in game purchase where the outcome is random. He believes games should only be allowed to take money from you if you know exactly what you're getting.

Legend


DD_Bwest

were just going to see progression systems where you buy your upgrades with ingame currency,  then they will sell the currency for real money.

but this is a start i guess

Legend

Nov 22, 2017, 02:47 AM Last Edit: Nov 22, 2017, 03:05 AM by Legend


Interesting video. I hadn't released the general trend of releasing less games nowadays. Don't agree with everything but it's a good timeline of how we got here.


NeverDies

I'm not gonna lie, loot-box's are a stain on gaming.
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Cute Pikachu

Burn them with fire
The Vizioneck Nintendo Fanboy!

Switch Software Sales Guide:
http://vizioneck.com/forum/index.php?topic=5895.msg218699#new

Legend


the-pi-guy

Wow, this Loot Box thing is seriously blowing up.  :o

darkknightkryta



Interesting video. I hadn't released the general trend of releasing less games nowadays. Don't agree with everything but it's a good timeline of how we got here.


I didn't finish watching the video, about a few minutes left but... does he not realize what he's saying?  The ONLY reason costs have come down is because of publishers making practically no games.  They're making no games because they're making consistent money with DLC.  If there was no DLC they'd have to make money per game, which more or less leads to huge budgets, since you'd have to have 5+ games releasing yearly running around 20 million dollar budgets each.  That's a 100 million dollars just making games annually without marketing.  These huge budgets put a lot of companies last gen out of business.  The companies that survived WAS because of DLC.  He also doesn't prove that DLC is not necessary.  Even with Battlefront 2, for instance, it'd lose money without DLC (Don't think they need loot boxes at that point though).  He also mentions Hellblade.  Hellblade was designed specifically to keep budgets down.  Should all developers be trying to develop games with this mindset?  Of course, but most game developers are mismanaged.  You can't say "Oh Ubisoft can make Assassins Creed Unity with 5 million dollars" when they had 1000 people working on it.  I don't like where the game industry is going, I really don't, but to say publishers can release something like 5+ titles annually with huge budgets per game without going bankrupt is ludicrous. 

Legend

Well Jim sure is happy  ;D



Wow, this Loot Box thing is seriously blowing up.  :o
Yeah it's definitely the beginning of something. I was thinking about it the other day and ideally I think I'd like to see real games and gambling games separated into different sub industries, kinda like how we think of Japanese pachinko games as separate from normal Japanese video games. Hopefully this loot box thing doesn't go too far and bring back potential regulations for good games like we saw in the 90's.

I didn't finish watching the video, about a few minutes left but... does he not realize what he's saying?  The ONLY reason costs have come down is because of publishers making practically no games.  They're making no games because they're making consistent money with DLC.  If there was no DLC they'd have to make money per game, which more or less leads to huge budgets, since you'd have to have 5+ games releasing yearly running around 20 million dollar budgets each.  That's a 100 million dollars just making games annually without marketing.  These huge budgets put a lot of companies last gen out of business.  The companies that survived WAS because of DLC.  He also doesn't prove that DLC is not necessary.  Even with Battlefront 2, for instance, it'd lose money without DLC (Don't think they need loot boxes at that point though).  He also mentions Hellblade.  Hellblade was designed specifically to keep budgets down.  Should all developers be trying to develop games with this mindset?  Of course, but most game developers are mismanaged.  You can't say "Oh Ubisoft can make Assassins Creed Unity with 5 million dollars" when they had 1000 people working on it.  I don't like where the game industry is going, I really don't, but to say publishers can release something like 5+ titles annually with huge budgets per game without going bankrupt is ludicrous.  
Yeah the video somewhat says that per game the budget is increasing. Individual games are costing more to make but publishers overall aren't spending more to make games.

Battlefront 1 easily made money before factoring in DLC or microtransactions. It sold a ton and on the surface seems relatively inexpensive as a Battlefield reskinning.

Mostly I just liked the video for the data, not for his conclusions.