Belgium’s Gaming Commission has declared that games like Overwatch and Star Wars Battlefront 2 constitute a form of gambling. As such, Belgium wants to ban games with loot boxes from Europe.
Belgium’s Minister of Justice Koen Geens said that mixing gambling and gaming is dangerous for the mental health of a child. Furthermore, Koen Geens wants to ban in-game purchases of things you don’t know exactly what they are (in other words, loot boxes).
Not only that, but Hawaii has announced action to address triple-A games like Battlefront 2. The State of Hawaii also considers Battlefront 2 as a Star Wars-themed casino, designed to lure kids to spend money.
State representative Sean Quinlan elaborated:
“One of the things that is disturbing about this to me is that this was previously a business practice that was mostly seen in the mobile gaming market. In your ipad, your ipod games. And now it’s moved into the main event. This is a triple-A title that’s been released by the world’s largest gaming studio. And it has the most popular intellectual property in the world attached to it.”
Sean Quinlan concluded that they shouldn’t allow Star Wars to encourage their kids to gamble.
And that is that. Things have escalated and it appears that countries are currently trying to address the loot boxes in video-games. Funnily enough, and before Star Wars: Battlefront 2, Overwatch had loot boxes and this did not piss a lot of people. Therefore, I think we have EA to thank for trying to capitalise on this. After all, its EA’s greed that came back and is now biting its butt.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Wow, really glad to see actual legislation being passed to prevent this crap. Good on Hawaii!
Overwatch lootbox were only skins they did not affect gameplay unlike battlefront 2…yet the whole idea of lootboxes in full priced games is not acceptable period.
It doesn’t matter skins it is or else that doesn’t affect gameplay. The idea is, if you spend money for a chance to get something it’s gambling, period.
It’s to protect the less intelligent, as most law are.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has also had “gambling” for years, but nobody’s said a word about it, the Washington State investigation dissipated into nothingness & that was the end of it as far as anyone was concerned.
Difference being, nobody really “likes” EA, whereas Blizzard has a cult of sycophantic shills ready & waiting to scream its praises to high heaven & Valve also has its share of blind-as-hell die-hard loyalist fanboys, not to mention that most people actually like them, regardless of their bullshit.
On the valve note, the issue that the Washington state commission was looking into was the fact that valve was basically turning a blind eye to those sites that let you play in a virtual casino or place bets using skins in place of money on pro matches being played. Once valve sent C&D’s to all of them there’s not much more they can do on their end aside from creating some deep learning AI that checks accounts and bans them if they fit the bill of being a “trade-bot” for those gambling sites. Other than that it was a system virtually no different to the cosmetics you get in overwatch.
The beginning of the end of loot boxes.
‘It’s a trap!’
(0.26)
Someone is actually trying to use the European Union to do something that’s actually good for the people?
Wow, it’s a miracle.
LOL 🙂
Enlighten us what European Union do bad for people?
Stealing their money, trying to impose immigration laws that makes no sense? Trying to globalize everything and everyone?
And govern everything as an armchair “know-it-alls”? While they are deranged from the reality to such an extend.
Who is governing everything though? Because last time i checked EU is a bureacratc mess that no one has any power to do anything. All the prime ministers have to meet up during eurogroups, decide what to do and push those laws in the parliament of their countries and vote for them.
There is no one running the damn thing. They just kick the can down the road until they decide what they want to do with the damn thing. There is no one who is actually in charge of it, it has a ton of presidents but none of them do anything at all.
The commision has this “ambassador” language or “know it alls” as you say because they are not in charge and cant make comments for or against something, so they appear deranged from reality as you say.
Until a large number of prime ministers decide to move the european project towards some direction ANY direction, they will be kicking the can down the road and the dissatisfaction you feeling right now will continue.
There is a group of people (commision) who are trying to control that bureaucratic mess. But overall yes – the whole system is terrible and needs to change. Seemingly nobody has control over anything, yet they suck a lot of money out of tax payers pockets – as most politicians do of course.
the commision has no power though and the likes of Junker, guess who elected him? The european parliament members, who you elected in european elections.
Meanwhile voting for the prime minister of your country doesnt really matter because he is either gonna get the eu laws and pass them trough your parliament and your elected politicians will vote for them…OR he will ignore them, like Uk has been doing with alot of eu laws.
OR you can vote for a anti eu candidate to get out of eu.
Jut stating the facts.
We did ignore a lot of EU crap as a Visegrad Group. We in fact ignored so much, that EU is really pissed with us lately.
But Europeans in the rest of Europe keep sympathizing with us, which says nothing about us and everything about EU and the love people have for it.
Thats not what i see really, what i see is tha anti eu politicians lose popularity (then again you never know if those polls are true with all those fake news) and that really no one cares about Uk or brexit at this point.
The anti-EU parties aren’t going anywhere. In fact, Merkel’s failure to make a coalition will only strengthen the AFD’s position, it’s one of the reasons why they’re all so desperate to avoid a new round of elections.
I don’t trust polls or predictions so much any more, and as for Brexit, oh they definitely still do, which is why they’re so desperately trying to swing their c*cks around, in order to make it look as if they don’t actually care.
There’s also the reformists like Macron now, though….. Supposedly.
Hey if Macron kills socialism in France, i got no problem with that, the french are hardcore socialists. Le penn on the other hand would have pushed for more socialism.
Le Pen wasn’t a Socialist, that was Hollande, the joke of a President they had for five years which did nothing but kowtow to the Americans while sitting on his *rse because he figured he’d get easily re-elected once he went up against Le Pen in 2017.
Regardless, the Socialist Party in France is dead, killed by their own incompetence. Its remnants briefly assumed they’d be able to gather up behind Macron, but he’s crushing the life out of them. Socialism in France is a passing concept, they’re far more about Gaullisme, it’s just that once in a while, they get caught up in the Socialist propaganda and elect one of “those” people for a term or two until they come back to their senses.
“last time i checked EU is a bureacratc mess that no one has any power to do anything.”
Führer Merkel disagrees.
It is true that nothing ever happens in eu unless Germany gives the green light, i cant dissagree with that one. I just find it stupid that people bash EU commision who is USELESS instead of Germany who is REALLY in charge.
Jack*ff Juncker is the one going out and saying “don’t make any more referendums, people, they’re anti-democratic, because they subvert my unelected, unsustainable position as leader of this sick joke of a superstate!”, though, which is why everyone is constantly targeting him & the Commission.
Especially as they have such absurd double-standards, like with Catalonia. As such, the more they open their mouths & b*tch, the more people have a basis upon which to target them, instead of Merkel, who’s position is collapsing further & further every day.
The people have to replace their “leaders” with representatives who actually work for their well-being.
Stealing their money, trying to impose immigration laws that makes no sense? Trying to globalize everything and everyone?
That’s infecting the United States, too.
Most European countries have been lured into the EU by corrupt politicians with the pretense of a free market.
Most of them ended up conceding regalian rights without agreeing to the political side of the agenda.
In cases where the people objected, the elite simply overruled democracy to push said agenda.
Were not in the EU but because were so close and trade with them were in EEA which means free borders and about the same rules as EU.
Without the benefits 🙁
“Most European countries have been lured into the EU by corrupt politicians ”
Completly true, Greekistan was shoved in the euro without qualifying, so they can get Italy in there, who qualified even less, but their currency had turned into a joke due to inflation, so they needed a new one.
“with the pretense of a free market.”
That is not true though, most of them were lured in there wit hthe pretense of socialism. especially the south european countries and the ex communist countries.
“In cases where the people objected, the elite simply overruled democracy to push said agenda.”
Not really, eu is incompetent and moves at the pace of a snail, the prime ministers of each country meet up and decide what laws they gonna push through their parliament. So your problem here is that the politicians you vote are pro eu and push for furhter integration.
Vote someone who wants to leave the eu.
Italy was a founding member of the European Coal & Steel Community & when the time came, they pegged their currency to the Deutsche Mark alongside the others, so for them joining the Euro was both inevitable and expected of them, as a lot of this has always been about public appearances.
Besides, Northern Italy is home to some of the richest regions in Europe, so they couldn’t possibly let those go “unassimilated.” Greece, on the other hand, was all about maintaining their geostrategic position in the East Mediterranean.
Which is why Greeks might be the most euroskeptic, far more than Brits but they still say yes to eu, euro and the european army. Keeps their geostrategic position safe. Not kidding look up at the polls. Most euroskeptic country, totally with EU on everything…apart from austerity.
The EU made a study in 2013 that discovered that not only piracy doesn’t have any impact on media(except for blockbuster movies) but it also helped in added sales. They hid that study away for years until they were FORCED to release it recently.
No the pirate study made that study, which is really small, eu had no reason to publish a study by the pirate party. The study is right though. Dude you have no idea how many people are in the eu parliament, it takes over an hour for everyone to say what they think before they move on to the next topic, let alone the next law. Too many people too many opinions too many documents too many translators…and here is the best part FOR NOTHING, becuase the european parliament doesnt have any actual power.
But people vote for politicians to go to the european parliament and talk their mouths off while getting a ton of money for being elected members of the european parliament.
They didn’t just “not publish” it, though, they literally buried it and then repeatedly stonewalled the politician who actually found it, years later – and that’s after they used select portions of the study to further their agenda. So, yeah, they definitely had plenty of reason to publish it, regardless of which party commissioned the study in the first place.
I am not aware of that ifnormation.
Noooo dont swallow that blue pi…. too late
AMD propaganda is bad. What makes EU propaganda different?
“Well, sh*t, this really blew up”
The story partly pertains to the EU Member State of Belgium which is home to the terrorist breeding ground and sanctuary that is Molenbeek so your remark is eerily prescient.
Sadly the good news is being offset by the FCC’s attempt to railroad through anti-Net Neutrality legislation.
Huh, I thought the merger had already happened O.o
For the consumer? Absolutely.
All this really does is prevent the rise of loot boxes in the West. F2P is already dominating Asia & that’s not going to change, unless those nations specifically move against this as well. which they might just. Either way, this only affects loot boxes, not microtransactions, so as long as they’re not being greedy sh*ts & pulling an EA, they’ve really nothing to worry about.
So they switch over to the unaffected microtransactions model, which would be a win-win for everyone, as they get to keep making their “necessary” extra cash and we get to stop being f*cked over by an RNG mechanism.
So this is what AAA gaming has been heading towards, good job you greedy twits.
For quite some time now, starting with DLC.
Oh I know it, but I never thought we’d have gambling in games like this. It’s just pathetic and sad how greedy these companies are they have to prey on people who might have an addictive personality.
As long as costumers will buy it, they will keep making it. And there are even some (excluding paid shills and associates) who are actually doing all of this gladly and are raging at you about why are you trying to tell those poor souls what to do with their money.
Human stupidity is endless and those companies know that all right.
Not sure if a government ban is the way I’d want to see this crap stopped, but glad it see it’s getting attention at this high a level.
Only way this was ever going to be stopped, definitively. After all, besides the fact that they’re clearly violating anti-gambling laws in various US states & nations worldwide, they’re also clearly violating the age restrictions in the rest of those US states & nations worldwide by not restricting access to the gambling portions, or even warning about them.
They’re operating using a legal loophole that they’ve created for themselves & backed up with flimsy support, this was the only way it was ever going to stop, as it’s clear they don’t give a sh*t about what any of us think about them & they never have. Well, either this, or criminal prosecution across multiple states leading to some sort of mandatory response…..
I agree with your assessment. I’m more of a nationalist myself so my first impulse is to say national laws should stomp gambling out of video games instead of overbearing EU law. But the pessimist in me thinks we’re stuck with the EU and in that context using one EU law rather than a Swiss cheese of harsher and softer laws throughout the continent becomes appealing. I can see both sides.
And let’s not forget that the European Ratings Board (PEGI) and their UK brethren already passed on dealing with this issue in favour of blatant pandering, hand-in-hand with their US counterparts (ESRB), so they really do deserve to get b*tchslapped with this on an EU scale, in my opinion.
But yeah, you do make a fair point, indeed ^^
I agree – buyers need to vote with their wallets. But most of them seems to be m*rons, so they keep supporting those practices.
Dude that would be the best but that is utopic. If buyers/consumers in general the people were capable of things like that then the world would be a different place.
I know man. It’s a pain, but the way it is. That’s how EA, Ubisoft and those leeches keep surviving.
GOOD! Great news! Purge this cancer killing gaming! Get rid of season passes selling cut content and nickle and dime dlc in general and maybe I will find faith in humanity once more.
Well POE is what all F2P should really be like(game is amazing, I spent $70 just out of respect on how good the game was. I did not even use the cosmetic stuff I bought.). Having said that those F2P that are doing it wrong will just go away or adapt to what is the right way of doing F2P.
It is a good thing in the big picture for customers with out doubt.
As soon as possible please
Yes, only F2P games will most likely be P2P games now.
I keep seeing this “but games prices have been the same for decades” and “bu bu but increased development costs” argument…
Now when I was a lad in the late 80s/early 90s it cost £5 for a brand new game for my Amstrad CPC and Spectrum. Around the time Kingpin LOK and EQ came out in 1999 standard price was £10-£15. 2004 when Hl2 released the standard price was around £25 and by the time Xbox 360 was released they went up to £40 and now £40-£60 so the “same price for decades” argument is nothing but BS from people that probably just started gaming.
Development costs cant have increased that much either since games nowadays are usually annual rehashes made on an in house engine that receives slight modifications and some of the same assets from a previous game for “new” games that follow (COD, AssCreed, FarCry are examples of this) or they use licensed game engines the likes of Unreal, Unity and Cryengine which have gotten cheaper due to competition since they all do pretty much the same thing.
What is driving the cost of video games up is mass hiring of staff to meet those annual deadlines and the cost of brainwashing/marketing/advertising a game to make sure people notice that there is a new one out and it is amazing with so much new stuff -you have to buy it!
Adding micro-transactions and gambling boxes is greed, pure and simple. The most profitable games that exist today are F2P games that rely solely on micro-transactions and companies like EA and Ubisoft know this. If the extra revenue generated from them pays for anything -then its more marketing and more staff to pump out faster rehashes. So if you think this is acceptable and want to make excuses for it then you are the problem, just like you were with tack on DLC you kept buying that seems to be standard now.
games have become way more expensive to make. stop comparing this to the past because its a different world. i mean how many mid sized studios do you know? theres a reason most died down.
and how would you go around making F2P games without micro transactions? that doesnt make sense. also, cant see anything wrong with loot boxes if all they contain are stupid skins. im actually glad they exist as they mean more money for the devs of the games i play which means more updates that i didnt have to pay a dime for
(the only game i play that does this is path of exile, thought id mention it)
It’s about time! I want this tumor purge from the gaming industry
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/80cfc27d2fe9c1e9a07b0c1139dfdf88ed5f29180a5bebfa83c270709c0d89f3.gif
Sorry buddy, I had to downvote because seeing that gif make me sick.
is this a racing game?
Oh god what has the world come to. microtransactions on a racing game.
Bernie Ecclestone would doubtlessly approve!
It’s the new cr** Need for speed coming from EA. These greedy bast*** want a casino in their videogame.
This is great, but we need to keep our attention on the net neutrality situation.
EA was so blinded by greed that it’s aggressive push to become the leader of microtransanction and lootboxes instead threatened one of the most lucratice business practices video gaming have ever seen. I could only imagine other game-as-service proponents like Blizzard, Ubisoft, Activision and Take Two must’ve slapped their forehead in disdain watching EA ruining their neat little party.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c14c5561b6a5edf99e59dd4575b66079bc021564c80904fe9bc097c67dd02372.gif
Did you ever hear the tragedy of EA the Greedy? Ironic, that EA is the one responsible to bring end to Lootboxes.
HAHA! ROFL! way to shoot yourselves in the foot EA. Doing something so greedy that it garnered so much backlash and opening a way for a better future of gaming. I guess there’s a silver lining in all this shi* that EA have been doing
Nah, the hive will be stirred for a couple of days and then all will come back to normal. As it always has. It’s like a river. There are occassional ripples, but the stream is flowing steadily one way all the time.
F2P can continue being F2P. There are no lootboxes in games like Path of Exile, Warframe, Fornite Battle Royale…
wth do you think “mystery boxes” are in path of exile?
I didn’t knew there were mystery boxes, that feature was not present when I played a couple of years ago
Thats the end of ea!
Not hardly. If you look at the financial statements from EA for the last few years they were making plenty of money. They have just turned the greed up a notch too high this time.
I hope this doesn’t just blow over and EA gets the message in the only language they understand. Money. I hope they get fined and have to spend a lot on legal fees.
I’m ok with that. Ban that shyte.
such a non issue
The industry can’t take pot shots at each other, they’ve too much sh*t in their own back yards 😛
CDPR vaguely insinuated some things about other companies, they didn’t specifically name EA. And besides, CDPR is both independent & has very little to be called out on, so they can act as morally superior as they want, unlike the AAA Publishers.
Blizzard was rallying its Cult to their defence, nothing new there. And besides, Blizzard vomits out lies even more often than the others.
“bailouts”, “eu coastguard”, “eu army”
Bailouts; i.e. the legalised theft of taxpayer’s money to prop up some failing economy that’ll just need another one in a few months.
“EU Coastguard” & “EU Army”; at a point in time when the EU distrust is sky high, they think they can garner support by shifting us away from NATO in favour of their directly-controlled “Protecting the Unity of the European Union. Even Under Armed Occupation” alternative, because, yeah, that’s exactly what we need right now.
Sure, in many regards they’ve done a lot of things right which will be missed if the EU collapses, but some bureaucratic quality of life improvements hardly offset all the bullsh*t these animals routinely inflict on us.
Especially after 2015.
Hey Greece is one thing, that doesnt want to do reforms, the rest on the other hand did reforms and are doing ok now…. but italy, italy is a prime example of a crash ready to happen. If Italy crashes, they cant bail it out and it will take out eurozone with it.
“but some bureaucratic quality of life improvements hardly offset all the bullsh*t these animals routinely inflict on us.”
Well, i dissagree because those “animals” dont exist, just stupid politicians in the eu parliament voting for laws and the idiotic prime ministers of each country decide to push them through their own parliament. Who is at fault here? Those who propose laws or the prime ministers who cant think for them selfs and just take those laws and vote them in their parliament?
The european project cant move forward if those prime ministers simply dont implement those laws you know. So you got the situation we see today. Some prime ministers implement those laws, others dont and its one gigantic mess, like say the USA having one state in the euro, another one who doesnt want anything to do with the cia and another one being California, that by itself is bad.
It just doesnt go anywhere. After the crash in 2008, the european project is put into a hold, so all the good or bad things that eu might have done to europe, simply dont go anywhere. So everyone is pissed becuase nothing is happening. Their lives are not improving, quite the opposite and its litteraly impossible for everyone to agree on something and move foward…towards any direction.
So the lying and corruption and bureacracy is of the eu might be one thing, but the same problems appear on the prime ministers of each state, so in the end everything is trash and everyone is pissed and no one moves towards any direction and everyone is angry.
The next 14 months they were going to move towards more integration but with Germany being basicly ungoverned right now, we gonna have to wait till spring to get new German elections going and then, when Germany has a new government, then we will have to wait 14 more months to see where this thing is going…and where brexit is going.
Hint: Its going nowhere, the train is dead in its tracks…and no one is going to leave eu because there is nothing better on the horizon…or elections for that matter.
I mean, we litteraly have to wait for Germany to get an new government, the italians to vote someone who is not stupid and corrupt and then maybe the stars will allign properly and a goat will be sacrificed during the eclipse and then maybe, just maybe things will move towards something….anything……aaaaand get stuck in bureacracy…as always.
Kinda hard to hate all of that, because they are not “evil” or some great villain, they are just incompetent, too many factors too many people too many organizations, too many groups, the whole thing is pretty much ungovernable.
Italy won’t crash, the north makes too much money. The only chance it has of crashing is when the automobile manufacturing industry crashes in a few years, but that one won’t be exclusive to Italy, but also to Germany, so it’ll have massive effects across the entire Eurozone, rather than “just” Italy, specifically.
The National Governments exist to further themselves, the European Government exists to pander to Socialists and Globalists. There’s a difference. We have control over one of those and we’re destroying their strongholds with every election, as every Socialist party loses major seats and their supports and coalition partners go down with them, as well. The European Government, on the other hand, doesn’t give a f*ck what the national governments do so long as they’re pro-EU, as that means a continuation of their paychecks.
Besides, when one nation stands up and tries to fight the EU on something, look at what happens; they get bullied into submission. Just look at Wallonia and CETA. Just look at how we allowed Fuhrer Merkel to impose her immigration agenda upon all of us, and just look at how they’re harassing the Visegrad Group into submission because they continue to refuse to take in “their rightful share” of this illegal farce.
Hell, even the bailouts to Greece were in fact illegal by German law, but hey, nobody sued her, so it doesn’t matter. Things are changing now, though, as Euroskepticism is reaching levels that cannot be ignored, no matter how desperately that old drunk f*ck (Juncker) wants everyone to.
Besides, nobody wants more integration, not at this stage. Yes, the EU does, but the people don’t. They’re tired of the EU stealing power from the national governments, they’re tired of the bullsh*t the EU government is constantly trying to push & they’re tired of the EU’s incompetency, all while they keep screaming for “more power.” Okay, sure, let’s give you more power….. so you can waste more money on Greece and let in more immigrants, sure, why not.
Further integration isn’t the answer, it’s just what the idiots in the EU government want, because they think the more power they have the safer they’ll be. They’re mistaken, it won’t work, but good luck explaining that to them.
As for Brexit; this continuing delusion that it won’t happen is ridiculous. It is happening, it will happen, and it will be done, one way or another. If they don’t have a deal, it’ll suck for them, but it will happen, regardless. As for anyone else leaving; we’ll see, as it really does depend on a lot of factors.
As for the Italians, regardless of which party ultimately wins, reforms for the Italian state will definitely be on the agenda, regardless of who the coalition government is comprised of, or whatever else. Whether they’ll be somewhat pro-EU (i.e. in support of Macron’s reform movement) or outright Euroskeptic is the only question left to answer.
I agree and I don’t even have to read anything, it really sucks what is happening to their IPs and how the company is being run 🙁
This is what former CEO of EA Mr. Moore said after the last golden poo award:
“Yes, [being named Worst Company in America] was ridiculous. And this was also the time of sub-prime mortgage crisis; banks are dumping hundreds of thousands of people out onto the street. You try and be defensive and say this is stupid, this is ridiculous; and then you go, ‘Maybe there’s a kernel of truth here.’ Maybe this is a moment we can step back, look in the mirror, look at who we are, look at how we’re perceived, and figure out what we need to do to do something about it. Perception is reality so if their perception is that we’re not a company that puts players first, then how do we change that?”
Guess he didn’t leave a memo.
An idiot’s diary I guess of a soul-less money grubbing b*stard. EA is a sh*t stain on gaming right now.
>Uneducated morons like you are the reason the gaming world is going to sh*t for everyone else.
what we say on some random forum matters on the market now? the “gaming” world aint going anywhere. stop being such a crybaby.
i mean i dont even have a single game that has microtransactions or lootboxes other than path of exile. but if you insist im the reason the industry is changing more power to you :p
also, stop being so hostile, not sure why you take this so personal.
Another demonstration of your lack of reading comprehension. Also stop crying over something I said.