Now do Stop Killing Games
Stop selling gambling as okay to kids. Gacha games equal gambling for minors.
This is especially funny in South Korea. Go to a Casino and burn $2000 and you may even get jail time, but gatcha is A ok.
At least at a casino you can get something of value. The games effectively reward you in company script.
Some people hate the eu but I swear I only hear wins
because the people who hate the eu are the people who are wrong.
It’s stuff like chat control that make me hate the EU sometimes.
Oh and the really really dumb cookie law.
The cookie law isn’t dumb, but at this point it should maybe be reformed. Basically as long as a website doesn’t do shady shit with cookies no cookie banner is required. Instead of complaining about the cookie banner law, people should complain about websites who sell their users’ data.
Will they get rid of games have 3 or 4 or more “currencies.”
Nice, good for EU
I wonder if this will in practice put an end to the scummy practice of badly sized in game currency pack sizes, one of the many scummy techniques they use to make people spend more.
Let’s say the thing most players buy costs 3 ingame currency (I love that my autocorrect made „insane currency“ out of that). The smallest pack you can buy is 5. So, the player buys 5, spends 3 and has 2 left with which nothing to do. If they want another 3, they have to buy 5 more. Spend 3, have 4 left. Spend 3, have 1 left. The cycle continues.
Or, just stop games from selling in-game content?
Every skin is a texture or model swap, every “exclusive” always exists in the files, every in-game currency is fabricated.
Games try really really hard to make you pay for something that is copy and pasted
Artificial scarcity in it’s barest form.
The fact that even some people think this shit is acceptable is very telling of how far we have yet to go, psychologically speaking, as a species.
Monkeys in fucking trousers.
If anything gaming culture has regressed, at least in this aspect.
Remember when the $2.50 Oblivion horse armor DLC was considered to be a ridiculous?
I find it interesting that it says it’s based on existing legislation. In that case I’ma bit disappointed that it took them so long to act. But, it’s of course a stop in the right direction.
How will this affect the Platinum market in Warframe?
These seem to be the four major points:
clear and transparent pricing and pre-contractual information; avoiding practices hiding the costs of in-game digital content and services, as well as practices forcing consumers to purchase virtual currency; respect of consumers' right of withdrawal; respecting consumer vulnerabilities, in particular when it comes to children;First one actually seems pretty well covered by Warframe already. Second point can be met just by displaying the real currency price next to the plat price, calculated based on what people on average give per plat when purchasing through the Warframe website. Third point… Yeah that’s going to be a point of contention for sure. That’ll require a redesign of the plat system. Fourth point I’d also say Warframe does. Their ‘oh shit’ moment when they ended up creating a slot machine with, what was it, kubrow skins? Demonstrates them actually caring about this already. Basically they saw people interacting with a new mechanic much like one would a slot machine, and then soon after rolled it back and refunded everyone who had spent money on it.
Considering you can’t sell platinum for money, you could add complexity by converting it to another currency when exchanging hands. No value lost, exact same ratio. You buy platinum, you spend it on the store or it decays when you give it to another player. Platinum carries real world value, decayed doesn’t. Would that work? The only reason for doing that would be to obfuscate the fact platinum has real world value. The players being constantly aware of the fact might mess with the economy.
Honestly, their monetization is really something I could never criticize.
Stay winning EU.
In-game purchases should display the exact cost in the local currency. In-game currency should be completely banned.
Depends what counts as an in game currency, does a game where you earn currency in-game and spend it in-game count as an in-game currency? What about if players can trade it?
We are talking about anything that has real monetary value, if you cannot obtain it through real money, then it’s not in the discussion. Of course it opens a whole new problem, where they could sell “boosts” to earning virtual currency etc. So that would have to be taken into account with the legislation.
They’re gonna have such a hard time parsing this for WoW… WoW gold is a major part of the game and they’ve been screwing with it for a while now, I don’t play it anymore but I heard about possibilities to buy tokens that you sell for gold in game but conversely you can also use the gold to buy game time or something? And then off course all the DLC stuff, it’s gonna be complicated for sure.
Yeah, same with OSRS, you buy a bond which you can turn into 1 week membership, or trade it other players. Which is honestly fine, it lets people get membership without spending real money, but I’d rather none of the better/fairer systems exist if it means removing the egregious ones. Really we just want to target systems that make you buy a virtual currency to just sell you microtransactions, but how do you write legislation for that? It’s very tricky, which is why it’s probably never going to happen.
There are many many examples of predatory uses of in game currencies, but here are some big reasons devs use them besides being scummy.
- Giving currency for free: giving people real money isn’t something any dev wants to deal with, so giving in game currency allows this to happen. This also applies to games where you can convert free currency to premium currency.
- Local currencies: currency packages can be set to local prices without having to localize the in-game economy itself. This simplifies development a lot.
- Weak promotion support on distributor platforms: believe it or not, iOS and android have incredibly weak promotion and sale support. By giving in-game currency, it gets around that failing of the platforms because the game can do whatever it wants with the in-game currency.
Transparency is good, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Giving currency for free: giving people real money isn’t something any dev wants to deal with, so giving in game currency allows this to happen. This also applies to games where you can convert free currency to premium currency.
But this is how gift codes work, no? You’re not giving money away directly. Just give a voucher for a real currency if you want to gift users.
Can you give me an example of one you’ve seen?
The original poster was saying paid currency shouldn’t exist, so I think in that scenario, you could only have vouchers for a whole in-game item. So for example if an item costed $5, then yes you could give away codes to redeem that item.
There’s also an operational overhead to doing it that way compared to in-game currency though, because setting up products in google play/iOS can be kind of a pain compared to adding them to your own systems. Generally the dev wants as much to be under their control as possible because they have more flexibility that way compared to making products in the app stores.
Also worth noting that iOS will block your app if you provide ways to get products (meaning things that cost real money) through ways other than the app store. So that means the dev wouldn’t be able to ever give you something in the game itself if that thing can also be bought. They could only give coupon codes (these are manually generated) for products to use in the app store interface.
I’d be interested to hear an example of one you’ve seen because it might be a way to approach it that I’m not thinking about.
What baby? In game purchases? That’s not a baby, that’s a big shit somebody took in your tub. If transparency is too hard to implement, publishers should feel free to get rid of them altogether.
Also in some games players can trade the currency
- Give store credit for free. Easy. Let them turn ingame currencies into store credit.
- That might be difficult, i give you that, but given the amount of work companies put into their monetization schemes, i am sure a converter can be worked out. Or use dollar/euro/ruble/yuan equivalents, depending on the largest market near a smaller currency.
- See 1. Give away store credit.
Store credit is not necessarily simple. There are tons of laws about that kind of thing that differ country to country and in the US state to state. For example in my state, gift certificates can’t expire, so once you give one away as the dev you have to track that on your books forever, even if no one ever uses it. In your free example it’s even worse, because the company has to write that money off as real money, because it can never expire. It’s basically the same as giving away real money from a bookkeeping perspective (at least in my state). Someone with more bookkeeping knowledge can probably give a better answer but that’s my limited understanding of that as a sole proprietor who does my own books.
I would also question if store credit is actually any less predatory than a premium currency. If the premium currency is transparent and easy to understand it’s basically the same thing, no? Hypothetically, if I’m a scummy developer, I could sell $5 in store credit, and then make all the items on the store cost $8. That’s the same result for the player as bad monetization schemes with premium currency. I know in your example you’re saying give it away, but somewhere in there the developer is going to need to make money. They can’t give credit away for in-game currency and hope to stay afloat as a business for long without some deeply predatory stuff going on like in roblox.
At the end of the day I think everything you’re saying is probably feasible in some form for a AAA dev, but not for small devs. Personally I’m also thinking about small devs without an army of compliance specialists and lawyers. I’d like indies to also be able to make money, not just the conglomerates.
For example, saying a system could be worked out to localize an in-game economy is a hand wave. Every game works differently under the hood and in how it paces things, and this would be a huge undertaking to implement and maintain (probably a nonstarter for a small team). It involves more than simple conversion.
Does someone from a weak currency country get different rewards by playing the game than someone from a strong currency? How does that work if that reward is a whole item, not a bit of currency? Do we really want capitalistic shenanigans to extend into the gameplay directly? Personally I prefer that stuff to be cordoned off in the in-game shop.
That’s my take on all that. I’m not a lawyer and I don’t work for a AAA dev, so take this stuff with a grain of salt. My experience comes from having to tackle all these issues as a tiny indie dev.
Even 2 isn’t difficult. If they can set a price on the currency itself then they can set it on each item trivially.
Store credit lets them manipulate you. They can say the minimum top up is $5. Then put the cheapest items at $3. Want two $3 items? You have to deposit at least $10! It goes on and on.
No. Just make it so you add items to a cart and purchase their exact value with real money, no in between, no scummy tactics.
(But if it was up to me, I would ban MTX altogether)
They can give items for free instead. Without currency they cant give you 90% of what you need and force you to overpay for extra.
A variable for a value is trivial. It already works perfectly fine in the store!
Sure sales on mobile… (sounds like Apple and Google would get some needed pressure to improve this area) but thats another problem, none of these purchases should be expensive enough to even warrant needing a sale in the first place.
The real reason they want in game currency is not any of these, it’s for the deception factor, avoiding refunds, upselling etc
The CPC Network, coordinated by the European Commission, is publishing a set of guidelines today to promote transparency and fairness in the online gaming industry’s use of virtual currencies.
That doesn’t seem binding.
It seems they are saying that these are already enforced:
The key principles and the Common Position are based on the existing general rules of EU consumer law directives that apply to digital services and digital content provided to consumers, including video games. The Commission will continue to examine these topics in the context of forthcoming consultations on the Digital Fairness Act.
Nah thats usually how those start out afaik. They start with a guideline and a grace period. Then when the grace period is over there is a warning period and after that it goes straight to fines.
The CPC Network will monitor progress and may take further actions if harmful practices continue.
Lets see what happens.
It is in part. They are hosting workshops and publishing these guidelines so companies can work on it on their own merit but they will also take further action if the harmful practices continue
I hope it doesn’t affect EVE Online. As I remember it their system didn’t involve any deception or confusion, even though there was in-game currency you could spend € on if you wanted to.
Well I mean there was plenty of deception and confusion among and between the players, but none from the game itself.
If the conversion rate isnt 1:1 or its not directly using € in the game then i would call that confusing or deceptive.
For real. We need to get rid of games where 10 Red coins = 2.2 mystic gems = 1256 diamonds = 1.56 flowers and you can only buy red coin and only spend flowers and each conversion has a 1 green coin processing fee and you have to convert in that order. It’s predatory and so sad that people get duped by it.
As I remember it: It’s an online game, so you need a monthly subscription to play. That is a set price in whatever real-world currency as normal. But you can buy as many months as you like in advance; and if you buy more than you need you can sell them in-game for whatever you can get on the open market which is controlled by players.
It was a long time ago, no idea if it still works that way. But it seemed to me like a good system, for a game in which in-game market trading between players is a big part of it.
P.S. Actually come to think of it I think they went free-to-play at some point. I wonder if my account still exists.
When I played, 1 plex = 1 month but they eventually converted it to 1000 plex = 1 month or something?
You can use ISK (in game currency) to buy plex and sell plex for ISK. The exchange rate of plex to ISK fluctuates depending on market demand so putting a hard real world currency equivalent value would be tough.
Just putting a reasonably-up-to-date real-world value estimate next to any price in parentheses would be a big step forward though.
The first two principles for virtual currencies that they have listed are “Price indication should be clear and transparent” and “Practices obscuring the cost of in-game digital content and services should be avoided”, so if EVE is honest and up front about it then it should be fine
What does this mean for me, a capital G gamer? /s
But seriously, will I still be able to earn gold in MTGA?
