Game companies now lean heavily on loot boxes to monetize their products. Legislators around the world are threatening to impose regulations on the boxes, claiming that they’re gambling. Industry groups, however, insist that the boxes are not.
I play games that are funded with loot boxes. My favorite game of all time, Dota 2, is funded almost exclusively through loot boxes. Regulations that tightly restrict or absolutely prohibit loot boxes will definitely hurt the gaming industry and will hurt, perhaps even fatally, games I love. There will definitely be economic harm, and games companies will have to figure something out to fill the monetary gap. It’s no surprise that game companies are defending the practice.
But here’s the thing: loot boxes are gambling. The essential features of the transaction match those of gambling, the reward pathways and addiction mechanisms are those of gambling, and playing dumb about it, as the industry is currently doing, is a bad look.
I wholeheartedly agree. Loot boxes in gaming lead to real addictions and all its associated problems, and while I’m never a fan of outright bans – I’m Dutch, after all – I do think we need to have an honest and open discussion about protecting especially younger and more vulnerable people from the effects of gambling.
Gaming was much better back in the times when loot boxes didn’t exist. Maybe it’ll force valve to turn to making quality games that people want to buy, again.
Well it goes both ways, Gaming will never be in such thriving manner if it wasn’t for mobile gaming and loot box.
And it is funny these regulations and questions happens in US and EU first before Japan and China, the latter both have a much higher spending count in the top 5%. ( Just ask Tencent how they became $500 Billion company ).
I really like the direction Apple is heading though. You are required to disclose the % of the loot up front. The next sane step is to force a maximum spend per time / per app. Or some pops up reminding user how much they have speed on this App already. The freemium model, has allow us to play PUBG Mobile or Fortnite for free. I am worry an outright band will means no more of these coming. And will basically kill the industry in one shot.
Maybe it’s a cultural thing? The idea of loot boxes existed long before mobile gaming (or video gaming in general) came about, at least in Japan. When I lived/worked there, you’d get physical loot boxes (usually in arcades or stationery shops) of sorts where kids put it coins and twisted some knob and got random egg/round-shaped ball things containing little toys or TV/anime memorabilia.
Hm, such physical loot boxes (with toys/minifigurines IIRC) ar at a swimming pool (mostly frequented by kids) in my small Polish city…
PS. And aren’t Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs loot boxes, too?
It’s not like I’m a hardcore gamer, but I am at least somewhat familliar with modern games and play one or two on occasion… Yet I still have to ask: what are “loot boxes”? Any examples?
I don’t have examples (I stick to stuff like GOG.com’s collection, where I pay once and own it, DRM-free, for life.) but I understand the basic concept.
It’s the digital equivalent to buying booster packs for a collectible card game like Magic: the Gathering.
You pay for an in-game loot box with real money and, just like a lottery ticket, there are certain odds of getting something good.
Edited 2018-05-29 07:13 UTC
I have no idea either.
A couple of months ago, I rediscovered my old Nintendo DS. Now I’m replaying my 10+ yo games. No updates, no IAP,… Just fun. It’s a good thing they are in cartridges, if they were downloads I’m sure I had lost them years ago. Now it’s my main playing machine.
The general concept is pretty simple:
You have some RNG-based item generator that people get to use some limited number of times based on various factors. Depending on the game, uses may be earned multiple ways:
* By simply playing the game (Overwatch and some MMO’s do this).
* By reaching progression milestones or completing achievements.
* By getting free uses as part of a promotional event (most games that have loot boxes do this).
* By paying with in-game earnings.
* By paying with real money (well, usually with some in-game currency backed by real money, and this is the one that’s usually the problem).
Also depending on the game, the items obtained from this RNG may be either purely cosmetic, or they may directly impact gameplay.
Overall, though, most of the issue here is games that require you to pay either to obtain or open the boxes, where you can only get some content through the loot box system or cna get certain content exponentially more easily by just paying 50 bucks for a bunch of rolls of the loot box.
They’re fine as long as they don’t interfere with the overall gameplay (eg competitive advantages, making the game extremely hard/long to complete unless you pay more).
The’re also the discussion about the size of the games that have increased considerably. Just adding support for 4k / 8k textures will make users download additional GB of data even from Day one (just because they could not fit it on the disk).
Not sure how long will this last though or if any concern should be taken here on the long run.
Companies push forward with pay-as-you-play cloud services which will be much more profitable for companies.
Just imagine paying 10 – 15 bucks for 1 week access to the game. On the plus side they will have to hand over everything free of charge as long as you keep paying the bill.
Edited 2018-05-29 10:59 UTC
While for my own gaming I agree, I also have a son who is now 14. When he was 13, he became heavily into Counterstrike Global Offensive. This included an obsession with loot boxes, and attention from scammers on the network to get high value rewards from him. He effectively became addicted to gambling and a target for scammers at a young age.
I’m glad to say he has moved on now.
Most of the issue with content size is how games are distributed. Those higher resolution textures aren’t optional, and neither are all the translations that you’re never going to use, because the CDN’s that are used don’t provide this as an option.
There have been some games that are sensible enough to make such things optional (World of Tanks for example lets you choose whether you want the high-resolution textures or not), but they are unfortunately few and far between, because everyone wants to use the standard CDN’s like Steam.
News at 11. Give me Doom( I or II only), tetris and snes mario cart or give me no games at all.
The solution to all the loot boxen, graphics card/dram shortage problems:
https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/29/intellivsion-lives-tommy-tallaric…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box#History
Turns out the buy loot boxs are only about 10 years old.
Loot boxs as a term did appear in the older games before the buy for cash loot boxes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_system
Yes but those older loot boxs where in fact a box with random items put in it by the loot system. Also no fancy animation it was the same as picking up any other items. Its only 2008 and latter do the fancy animated loot boxes start appearing.
Please note pokie machines animation is party to make you think you are winning while you are losing.
Really when you start comparing current loot boxs to pokie machines you find a insane number of commonalities.
The problem with loot boxes is not just that it’s gambling and addictive, but that it serves a monetization model where the majority of gamers can play the game for free at the cost of a minority of whales which are generally people with serious gambling issues.
It has reduced the value of games (and greatly contributed to the race-to-the-bottom in app stores) by utilizing a social “hack†and loophole in gambling laws which up until now went over the heads of lawmakers because games are generally not on their radars unless enough people start complaining.
Now almost everybody expects mobile games to be free and it’s hard for small developers to compete with larger companies developing crappy F2P games.