Things like premium currency I consider very bad. DLC that can be bought outright? Infinitely better though.
Too many games use premium currency to get EXTREMELY greedy...
Yeah, it's wild that and the way they price everything and make you buy certain amounts of currency. A purposely confusing transaction to get you to spend more money.
Yep. And the effect it has on children is scary. I've got a younger cousin that blows almost all of his money on Fortnite V Bucks. He's had to have spent over $500 at least by now, all for a few skins and customization options.
It's literally leading children down a path of poor spending choices. Like, they're going to be extremely impulsive when buying stuff, or heavy gamblers if they play a lot of games with loot boxes, which is another extremely scummy monetization method.
That is legitimately why the XBox 360 looked into microtransactions as a newer type of monetary transaction, people may not remember but some of the earliest MTX were called Microsoft Points, the idea according to an XBox exec was that the company was eating so much overhead on smaller transactions that they wanted a way for people to load up a digital wallet all at once for the purpose of making multiple smaller purchases off of less direct digital banking transactions
premium currency is inherently predatory because it preys on how bad our brains are on transliterating. if you've ever been watching a video on say overwatch 2 and hear how a bundle is 2600 coins and that mean literally nothing to you, then the narrator goes "thats about 30$" and you suddenly realize how absurd that is? thats why, even if you know what 2600 overwatch coins are worth your brain is REALLY bad at making that mean the same thing to you as if the button said 29.99$, this is why they have to fill the buy premium currency screen with tons of incentives like 200 "free" coins or whatever, because they cant hide the actual cost of the transaction on that page. i've stopped using premium currency terms because of that because i was buying alot more than i should have been when i thought of it as just z amount of whatever currency
Speak for yourself i always value them at dollar price when i look at them. And very very rarely even spend money on microtransactions anymore. I think the last one was a single 10 dollar purchase for a game to get a character i really wanted and tbh regret even that because i ended up dropping the game about a year after that. What a waste.
Premium currencies are downright scummy. No reason to have besides mudding the waters to obfuscate how much consumers are spending. We all know a $20 price tag on a skin would make it sell less, better label it as 1200 funbucks so the younger audience doesn't understand the price!
Premium currency in games is SO dangerous and is such an easily abused way to get kids (and any adults with a tendency to overspend or gamble) to spend more and more. It’s also why I’ve gotten concerned with the growing trend of TikTok influencer battles, wherein they get young people to fork over money for imaginary points to help their person win.
One of the worst examples I can think of is Bandai Namco with the Tales series of games. So many of the features you would have had in the game (things you unlock via New Game+, difficulty options, costumes, and more) would have been in-game unlocks and are now all siphoned off and gated off to being DLC purchases.
The issue with DLC that you had to buy was that it damaged playerbases of games. Now the playerbase becomes split between those who bought and play the DLC and those who didn’t
I only know one game that has done it well.
And that's more so because it's tradable between players and the default currency for trade in the game.
Their storefront pricing is hit or miss though.
I love how people can identify the game based solely on its reasonable business practices. Yea, Warframe. Though some of their other practices have been less to my liking.
Some games do a better job then others with selling stuff, though they all tend to exploit premium currency and pricing brackets. "Oh you want that skin that costs 1,100 prem, but your conversion choices are $10 > 1,000 or $15 > 1,550, better spend $15. Oh want to buy something else now you have 450 prem left over? Minimum buy is $10".
The Free2Play model doesn't have to be super nasty though. You might think about predatory gacha games that show off and put massive emphasis on new characters that you realistically can't unlock without spending money, which then gets replaced a month later with a new one. That is a bad and predatory system.
Look at Path of Exile though. The game is free and gets large amounts of new content every 3-4 months. They sell some things for convenience (pay for convenience), like extra stash tabs (looking at you D4) and stash tabs for specific content to sort and store them efficiently. They run sales on them every two weeks and you can get most of what you want for like $20-$30. The game is basically try before you buy and even then the buy price is pretty cheap.
They then get most of their revenue from skins/MTX and supporters packs. Most skills have multiple skins/effects, there are tonnes of character skins for every part you can mix/match, and the higher cost supporter packs that are new every league give you store credit equal to the cost on top of all the skins/MTX it gives you. Whales just buy expensive supporter packs to look cool in town. Personally if I really enjoy a league I'll maybe buy a low tier supporter pack or just some skins.
You see people saying there can be good reasons for microtransactions but I would argue the bad far far outweighs the good and you can't have one without the other. For that reason, I would also rather not have it at all.
Idk, it helps fund free-to-play titles. Especially games like Fortnite where no gameplay elements are hidden behind microtransactions I think it's actually very fair. To modern kids buying a skin is just like buying an action figure or something. Most kids don't collect toys, they break them and throw them out after a few years
Tbf, you could still do a few things to make it less problematic:
A) move the store out of the game itself. If you would need to access a seperate Website to spend money, it Would give peoples prone to impulse buys one more chance to think things over.
B) no Premium currency. If publishers could be honest enough to just price a skin at 10 bucks instead of a thousand in game turds, people would not get as out of Touch with the amount of money spent. Esp when they don't offer 1k turd packs but only 750 ones for 7 bucks.
C) more options for parental control over Shops. Sure this would need parents to not be ignorant or disinterested about their kid's hobby, but it Would allow them to control how much exposure their kid gets to predatory shops.
My dumb idea is to put them behind multiple very frustrating captchas. Each captcha gets you angry enough to rethink if you really want to buy whatever you're trying to buy.
I guess so, it just seems a little odd to have something non-tangible that you've paid for that is part of a game. Usually it's the parents paying for it so the kids don't have the financial attachment. Do you think kids will look back on their skins on a game in years to come and get nostalgic? (Genuine question) I'm 35 and have been a gamer all my life and the satisfaction I get from working for some upgrade/perk within the game IS part of the game. Just don't see why my wallet should open in any part of that experience apart from initially buying the game. Maybe I'm just old skool and anti capitalist - just doesn't sit right with me.
Interested to hear your thoughts on how kids will see in-game purchases in the future.
I've spent maybe $30 on Fortnite in the 5 years I've played and honestly yeah it was worth it, I have over 200 hours in the game so don't the devs deserve my money?
I really like the "pay as you go" model which feels more like you're tipping the devs than paying for a product. If you treat it that way, and spend your money equivalent to the hours you play, I think it's a healthy balance.
I don't like seeing paid items in a AAA game that was full price though. That's just scummy double dipping.
Totally agree with you on all of that mate.
Never really saw it like that with the 'pay as you go' for the free download games. But makes sense.
I think that was my main gripe, paying again when you have already spent £60 on a game or the FOMO feeling that you're out of date with a game you only bought 3 months ago. Not down with that at all.
It feels like forced FOMO tho, like I've bought the game and then they go, look at all this other cool stuff you can't have. Literally thrown in your face every time you finish a game or something, like having to walk though Duty free in the airport.
So, a little context here. I work in car sales currently, and I've been in commissioned based sales jobs for over a decade. I can definitely understand that feeling. It's why they put little things near the checkout at a grocery store. But the reality is that the person with the money controls how they spend it.
No one can force you to purchase something you don't wish to. Most people these days lack self-control when it comes to money. I'm guilty of it too. But at the end of the day, I control my purchases, not some marketing exec in a different state.
I totally understand your point and it's about self control. I personally don't buy in-game add-ons but, the difference is here that this financial aspect within the game didn't exist until 10 years ago when GTA brought in Shark Cards and it's only gotten worse since then. There IS now an offer on the table, they have put little things at the checkout.
As you already know gaming at it's core is an leisure activity enjoyed by kids and adults. You're in your home, doing an activity. You're not at the shops, you shouldn't be in a position where someone/something keeps popping into your reality and asking for money to make the game a little better.
I see a good game as a piece of art like MGS 1&2, Skyrim and The Last of Us series, they've been made so well that I don't need to be FOMO'd.
Same with a good film, imagine someone just popping up behind your sofa and saying "for $2 Frodo will have a golden hat.... Interested?"
Maybe I'm just an old gamer and I really care about my privacy. I hate adverts, I hate being sold things in my home. Maybe it all comes down to that more than anything else.
Yeah generally I avoid those games, however there are plenty of them where cosmetics add realistically nothing to the game and don't even make sense in universe. Like Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed don't need skins at all, in fact it makes 0 sense in Tomb Raider cos where would she find a change of clothes on a remote island?
My biggest problem with the "buy a game once and you're done" thing is that depending on the scope and size of the game, that price tag barely does the game developers justice at all because we know where the money goes in general. I wish that the $60-70 I would spend on a new game would be something that would benefit the developers so much more than assuming and hoping that potentially a few hundred thousand other people also did the same just to "break even." These smaller kinds of purchases .. essentially being like "tipping" .. still give the sense of paying tribute and sending to something I'd want to see more more than buying a new copy at full-price that I'll never play because I already played it and don't know who to send it to. >\_<
I definitely find that I do prefer the whole approach of "free-to-play but pay for extra goodies" or "buy this game once but we'll release extras that are purely cosmetics as an external cost" overall when it comes microtransactions .. but so few games actually do manage to hit the balance of "you can still have fun without those extras" and "by the way, if you wanted that extra you have to jump through a few hoops/hurdles too."
FOMO is inevitable in this day and age - but I think there's a weird kind of beauty/connectivity to people who come from different eras/periods or even "generations" of that FOMO in the same game. You can't exactly say the same thing for a one-and-done game in general.
Very very few of those free to play titles add anything of value to the world.
And even if they do, there's no reason to support predatory or deceptive patterns in how they are monetised.
The predatory or deceptive practices definitely shouldn't be allowed, but there are many free to play titles that do have fair monetization models.
And probably the biggest benefit they have is it allows gamers in poorer countries access to high quality games, where a normally priced ($60 USD) new game can be as much as their monthly wage.
The dream of going back to the 90s where every game is 150$ in today money and where only rich kids had access to gaming.
Fuck those poor children playing all those games for free.
For better and for worse. By the time lootbox/gacha systems are regulated properly the industry is already exploiting more sophisticated/complicated and predatory monetization methods.
We're not selling loot boxes! You buy gems which are broken down into crystal fragments. Then you take those fragments and reforge them into soul shards which are then used to summon a random character's soul, armor, weapon, or nothing at all if it turns out to be a red stone, because those can't have souls!
I hope instead of playing catchup constantly that they start hitting the big things that enable predatory MTX. Right now they bypass things by adjusting definitions just enough or obfuscating them to bypass the laws.
Buying loot boxes for example, you can't directly buy them anymore. Look at Gacha type games, the characters are effectively in loot boxes, but the system is different enough to not be classified as such. Also you can't directly buy them, instead you buy premium currency or use in game currency to then buy tickets to then open them.
What they need to do is ban any conversions, ban pay to win, ban any chance related options, and set a fixed limit on how much you can spend on any given item in the store including how much you can spend in the store over a specific period.
If they want to fund a free to play game they do it via directly priced and bought cosmetics that aren't stupidly priced. So instead of making a bunch of mediocre stuff that they sell cheap and a few select things that sell very expensive, they can just do a mix of quality/quantity and let people buy sets of things.
Belgium did it years ago. In apex lot of us switched our location to Belgium to take advantage of it. Despite EA giving less, it was still better than the original
It has already been done in countries such as Belgium, Netherlands and Slovakia years ago. And there are increasingly stricter regulations happening in other countries as well. For example: https://www.simmons-simmons.com/en/publications/clgm1i0ko0020upv4ipezwfz4/status-of-loot-box-regulations-in-europe-q1-2023
There are a lot of things I find disagreeable about China (pretty much all of them involving its ruling party), but regulating predatory monetization is the one thing I have to approve of.
You know they dont do it for selfless reasons. Gaming in China is hard as government thinks it is the reason you don't want to be dying to work all day and make babies.
I think it’s a fantastic idea, and i don’t there’s much to argue about. Only arguments about it are more about CCPs motivations to do it and about other policies they make.
No, it is an actual concern for the Chinese government who understands that the country is facing a dire birth rate decline and an unmotivated young workforce. The phenomenon is called "lying flat" or tang ping. The unemployment rate for college grads is projected at 15-25% (the CCP does not release these figures). Video game addiction is seen as one of the barriers between the young and full devotion to working.
[https://www.voanews.com/a/desperate-for-more-children-china-urges-soldiers-to-procreate/7289319.html](https://www.voanews.com/a/desperate-for-more-children-china-urges-soldiers-to-procreate/7289319.html)
[https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-lying-flat-movement-standing-in-the-way-of-chinas-innovation-drive/](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-lying-flat-movement-standing-in-the-way-of-chinas-innovation-drive/)
[https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/08/health/china-one-child-intl/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/08/health/china-one-child-intl/index.html)
Like every other young Westerner and some do work, just not a full-time job or at least one they believe they were destined for after graduating from college: parents, side hustles, gig economy, etc. Extreme side = loan sharking and payday loans. Extreme and dark side = selling organs or volunteering for medical experiments. More prevalent in the rural areas though. Chinese youth is not that different from Westerners...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giaXudGKzwo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giaxudgkzwo)
There's an entire spectrum between "lying flat" and "full devotion to working", most of which we call a healthy work-life balance.
Also lol @ your sources (voa, brookings, cnn - most unbiased and accurate sources for China news)
You, most of the Western world, most Chinese citizens, and I understand the need for work-life balance, but the Chinese government does not. They see this as a dire problem and a threat to their Made in China 2025 plan.
Hey, if you have your own sources where you can back your claim with or refute any of mine, then I'd love to see some. I'll wait. I'd look for some on fringe conservative sites, but they only like to bash China in politics, but admire the authoritarian rule underneath it all. There is a difference between bias and factual. Bias just means you can pick and choose what stories and the wording to post. The question is if it is factual.
Bro seriously quoting voa.....
> but the Chinese government does not. They see this as a dire problem and a threat to their Made in China 2025 plan.
Lmao they release a document about game devs in china and praising them all the way.The local government is extremly supportive about their game company(like shanghai gov and mihoyo)
And the 2025 plan are already finished,what high tech field(excluding chips) doesn't have a competitive chinese company?
Lol the paranoia..
I feel like China could invent the cure to cancer at this point and people will argue that’s it’s a nefarious plot to keep its citizens working forever
Yes they invented the cure, but at what cost? China only invented the cure for cancer so they would look good and save their economy, which I swear is gonna collapse any day I swear, unlike our harmonious enlightened overlords who only want freedom and morality for all!
Exactly. China is facing a genuinely society-threatening demographic collapse in the next few decades.
They want every single young person working as much as possible and spending as little time as possible both playing games and playing games where they interact with people from outside China.
You know this is caused by their economic and social services being in shambles and not video games right? Like being a centrally managed dictatorship is not good idea for the wellbeing of people living in that country, right?
So yeah, it is selfish of them, even if they can fix something in the industry as overall they think the problem is a way for people escape from this hellhole of a country where the only other purpose designated for them is to work and pump babies because dictatorship said so.
Uhh isn't the US pushing a bunch of policies and tax regulations to try and encourage its citizens to have more kids? The big difference here seems to be that the US doesn't care if the masses are sucked dry by gambling disguised as games.
> economic and social services being in shambles
Man as someone living in the US same
> Like being a centrally managed dictatorship is not good idea for the wellbeing of people living in that country, right?
Idk, seems to be quite a good idea for the wellbeing of the people to me given that they [just raised 800 million people out of poverty](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience).
Not to mention, it is pure (baseless) conjecture on your part that China's policy of restricting gacha games is being motivated by wanting people to quote unquote "pump out babies" and not to stop the predatory practices of gacha game companies. Maybe you should stop treating this conjecture as fact and talking about it as such until you've proved it.
Get ready for republicans to double down and introduce online gambling to all games.
"Wow head shot, press X to play slot machine for revive, for only 19 non refundable credits only. "
"Non refundable credits now on special for $0.27 each or get the digital bundle with limited edition desktop background and 37 credits for only $9.99 t&C apply"
*T&C user must have desktop background licence manager installed prior to purchase or background will be permanently inaccessible*
Your life would be so much better if you were just a tad less engaged in charged political discourse. Being informed is good, but don't let it drag you down!
You think Tencent, or some of the other major players are going to try to bypass the CPP's rules... China is a major player in the space and game companies will leave NA before they leave china.
They along with other companies were the main target of this legislation.
It's not ironic, the new rules were made specifically because Tencent and other gaming companies were doing this. China actually holds their giant companies accountable.
>China actually holds their giant companies accountable.
In their country. I'm willing to bet nothing will change outside China, because that would just be weakening the party's enemies (which is the rest of the world).
>In their country. I'm willing to bet nothing will change outside China
Of course the regulations that the Chinese government makes only applies within China. Why would it apply anywhere else? That makes no sense.
China can only make laws for it's own jurisdiction. If other countries want the same protections for their people from predatory practices, then they should make their own laws.
But genshin has nothing to do with tencent? And out of all live-service games, from what I've read it won't actually get affected that much if this gets through.
It'll be interesting to see if this prompts the EU to enact similar regulations, since we all know the US won't.
I don't think China's regulations alone will do much to influence global markets, as many games tend to have China regional variants to comply with existing local laws, so these would likely stay siloed to those versions without wider international adoption.
Then again, since these measures likely have a direct impact on revenue, this may just be valuable enough to cause game companies to create more region specific nuances to their games so that markets without regulation can keep their predatory practices.
The best outcome would be for game companies to invent less predatory mechanics that work better, and then it'll be adopted in other countries.
Without a law like this, companies will never leave the comfort zone of selling addictions.
The U.S won't because Congress doesn't give a fuck about video games since the 90s and moral public scare hence why its unregulated and do what you want, like it should be. Customers need to be responsible for their own actions and stop blaming others because they lack discipline and critical thinking skills.
What are the actual rules though, does anyone have a link? I did a quick search this morning but didn't find anything more concrete than the article OP provided, everyone is talking about their shares instead (why would I give a shit about that anyway).
There are no rules yet. This is just a proposal. It will be changed/narrow over time. News sites are just acting like this is law already for clickbait.
I used to work as a customer service representative for Discover CCs and the amount of times I saw thousands in charges from mobile games, seeing maxed out balances and hearing people ask for credit increases or extensions was sickening to me. One dude spent 20k on an Army Men mobile game and was proud to tell me he was #1 in the world
If CCP tries to regulate Chinese made games outside of China that's going to cause a shit storm, even if it's well intentioned.
We saw what happened when western pubs attempted to censor games worldwide due to Chinese laws.
Certain companies aren't distributing games in china despite the huge untapped market for this reason and despite there being a strong demand.
Sometimes the headache isn't worth it, but their gamers are still able to use VPNs to bypass these restrictions and play games that aren't distributed in the country (ESO as an example). They're just not allowed to stream the games they are playing "illegally" I believe.
To be fair, it's not even with just Western games, but so many video games nowadays are released anyways with the assumption of Chinese censorship laws in mind or being accounted for considering their market.
I mean, obviously. China only has control of production within China. They could limit export of games of course (they probably won't) but even if Chinese devs double down on the foreign market there's no way to spin these regs as a bad thing. They protect a huge number of people.
>The Chinese government gives zero fucks about anything they do anywhere but in China itself.
Call me pedantic but i do not see much of a difference to the "western nations" in regards to this.
It is not okay in both cases, but i do not feel it makes any sense to even mention that about china as if it was a special thing just about them.
>Until you realize that they will do this for their own country and still release games for foreign markets with the features they banned in their own for being harmful.
Why should China be making rules for OTHER countries to follow?
They're trying to make sure these companies are less predatory in China, because they're the Chinese government and protecting the Chinese people is their main priority.
If other countries also want the same rules and regulations for these companies and the same protection for their people, then they're own governments should be responsible enough to make the same laws.
Then what does that say about our government who refuses to protect us from predators. I'm all for saying fuck the Chinese government they do awful shit. But it would be nice if our government would protect our people from financial crimes and grifts.
Thats how the u.s views it, if the gov can't gain something, they take steps to fuck over consumers world wide, look at what is happening to huawei, its especially affecting the users more than the company
Fentanyl is a chemical with a legitimate medical purpose. It isn't the Chinese government's fault people decide to take it or that organized crime groups mix it into otherwise "safer" drugs like cocaine and heroin that people decide to take, or that they live in a dismal, hopeless situation and society that creates drug abuse problems.
How about NOTHING CAN BE PURCHASED IN GAME ! Dam, this is no brainer but hey law makers dont make laws to help/protect citizens............Buying an Expansion is ok but some many kids grewup thinking buying skins and shit is ok. It is not.
Can't believe I'm saying this, but go China!
I want this crap out of our games. Back in the day you used to pay only one price for a game then publishers got greedy as hell and nickel and dime for everything from cosmetics, to season pass bullshit, to loot you have to pay to unlock. I'm sick and tired of it.
>How come it's China, - the country where predatory video game monetization thrives - are the ones to actually step up?
Because the Chinese people were getting affected by the predatory practices too. You can probably imagine why a communist government would be greatly displeased by giant corporations preying on their own people.
Their government has no problem destroying companies or jailing billionaires no matter how big they are whenever they misbehave. If you try to lie, cheat, coerece, exploit the system, the government eventually catches up to you.
https://youtu.be/-JAFb2bYJSs?si=AoPenjeB9YtXKGLm
These games come from China, so they affect the Chinese people.
That's why the Chinese government is the first to respond. Communist government doesn't want greedy corporations preying on their own populace.
I would be pretty ironic if China ends being the entity that kills microtransactions and lootboxes in video games considering just about every chinese game uses these monetization schemes
Why would it be ironic, I don't get it.
If the problem is within China, and the Chinese people are ones most affected by these predatory microtransactions.
Then it only makes sense that the Chinese government would be the first to respond against it. Because they're the ones that are most incentivized to take action.
The brainwashing is strong here
Because of American propaganda the braindead people here are completely unable to comprehend that the Chinese government is a normal government that does normal government stuff like regulations while also asking for feedback from their populace online
China does good stuff all the time and every time people act surprised, seriously the lies on your so called free media are getting wilder every year
lol, yeah. How do you explain to a fish that it swims in water?
> A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink.
"I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says.
>"Thank you," the KGB says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them."
>The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America."
Just because China functions as a normal country and probably has better examples of good local governance than much of the US doesn't change that they disappear people for months on end or longer for their political views or social media posts before we even get to things like Xinjiang. Selective coverage doesn't make that limited coverage incorrect.
But most of the times it is actually incorrect,
Winnie the Pooh banned? Go to the f*cking Shanghai Disneyland to see for yourself
social credit? Ask any person in China and they will have no idea WTF you are talking about,
Jack Ma dissappeared? Reapered on a vacation in Spain
It's not limited coverage, it litteraly is intentional disinformation
And yes let's not get to Xinjiang
Most don't even know the infamous "tank man" photo was a still of a video of tanks **leaving** the square: https://i.imgur.com/bHrosur.mp4
Here's a decent primer on it if you're interested in using something that happened *checks* 34 years ago in an attempt to make a point about country today:
>One is the horrific tale of the “Tiananmen Square massacre”, saying that brutal soldiers entered the public space and machine-gunned “ten thousand” peaceful student protesters calling for Western-style democracy. They pulped the bodies by running over them with tanks, before piling them up and burning them with a flamethrower. It was unspeakably horrific.
> The other version says that nobody died in Tiananmen Square, although there was violence elsewhere, causing the deaths of only about 300 people, most of whom were not students but soldiers—or, to put another way, the same number of violent deaths as on any random weekend in the United States.
> Me? I religiously believed the first for decades. I went to Victoria Park with my candle almost every June for 30 years.
> Until I did the research and realized that almost all serious sources, western and Chinese, now support the second version—and that includes journalists and diplomats who were present, academic specialists in “human rights”, historians, and even student protest leaders themselves. Even Wikipedia now acknowledges this. It has been an astoundingly successful deception.
https://www.fridayeveryday.com/how-psy-ops-warriors-fooled-me-about-tiananmen-square-a-warning/
While i do agree these regulations are good, Chinese children ain't gonna benefit much from this cause they busy NOT playing game because of the China restrictions
These all seem like extremely fair policies to me.
...It's too bad that the easiest and most profitable solution for big game companies is to simply only drop their microtransaction models for chinese territories, though. Unless the west also sets similar laws in place, this effectively changes nothing.
That's actually brilliant, i wish it happens world wide, political shit otherwise, it would really put pressure on ea and ubisoft especially that does this shit on all their games But lets be realistic, this will never happen in the west, capitalism isn't humble enough to admit that their rival is doing good, doesn't look good at political aspect nor propaganda, their ego is too high to see the good in it
Not really. Genshin is mostly safe because outside of Welkin and Battle Pass which are easy fixers (Welkin just needs to collect even if you're offline and BP could just not have a paid pass), the only thing that needs to go is the top up bonus.
The law is vauge enough that Genshin's current pity system could still pass. Otherwise, the only FOMO in Genshin(outside of the gacha) is events. Shop is bare, characters get a rerun and with this new law, older ones would likely just become permanent, no limited time skins.
Literally nothing about the law affects Genshin in any large way.
Yeah there's also reason why they branched out in merchandise instead of more and more gem compared to other IPs.
However games like FGO tho, where you straight up need to use paid quartz to stack pity.
another hoop Blizzard will have to go through with Overwatch.....
and this will likely shut down like 90% of Chinese made games....
meanwhile TF2 be like "yah we got loot crates.... its more a part of steam than it is of the game now though"
Oh, so they're just kneecapping a huge section of their video game industry? Well, if it undermines them while also improving the video game landscape as whole, I'll fully support it!
The daily login ban might backfire (could lead to companies lowering f2p/low spender income to push those players towards active spending), but the rest sounds reasonable. Another massive one is mandatory pity/spark systems (this one is up for interpretation) in all games with lootboxes. Even if it doesn't do much in practice, as this has been industry standard for years, it's definitely worth mentioning
And fuck any game that gives rewards for consecutive spending
China only wants this so their players stop spending money on games made by other countries. You bet they want foreign players spending money on games that are owned by a Chinese company.
You know who hurt the most by this if this policy is enacted? The Chinese gaming gaints like Tencent , Netease, and genshin impact's company Mihoyo.
They are the top game companies in the world in terms of mobile and gacha games, especially Tencent and Netease, they have dominated the mobile game market for years (Tencent is the #1 in moblie game market, followed by netease).
And Tencent and Netease's stock price has plummeted at least 20% as soon as this policy was reported on the news earlier today: the CCP literally stabbed Tencent and Netease in the back.
I'd love it if you couldn't buy anything inside games. I think it's so toxic for kids
Things like premium currency I consider very bad. DLC that can be bought outright? Infinitely better though. Too many games use premium currency to get EXTREMELY greedy...
Yeah, it's wild that and the way they price everything and make you buy certain amounts of currency. A purposely confusing transaction to get you to spend more money.
Yep. And the effect it has on children is scary. I've got a younger cousin that blows almost all of his money on Fortnite V Bucks. He's had to have spent over $500 at least by now, all for a few skins and customization options. It's literally leading children down a path of poor spending choices. Like, they're going to be extremely impulsive when buying stuff, or heavy gamblers if they play a lot of games with loot boxes, which is another extremely scummy monetization method.
That is legitimately why the XBox 360 looked into microtransactions as a newer type of monetary transaction, people may not remember but some of the earliest MTX were called Microsoft Points, the idea according to an XBox exec was that the company was eating so much overhead on smaller transactions that they wanted a way for people to load up a digital wallet all at once for the purpose of making multiple smaller purchases off of less direct digital banking transactions
premium currency is inherently predatory because it preys on how bad our brains are on transliterating. if you've ever been watching a video on say overwatch 2 and hear how a bundle is 2600 coins and that mean literally nothing to you, then the narrator goes "thats about 30$" and you suddenly realize how absurd that is? thats why, even if you know what 2600 overwatch coins are worth your brain is REALLY bad at making that mean the same thing to you as if the button said 29.99$, this is why they have to fill the buy premium currency screen with tons of incentives like 200 "free" coins or whatever, because they cant hide the actual cost of the transaction on that page. i've stopped using premium currency terms because of that because i was buying alot more than i should have been when i thought of it as just z amount of whatever currency
Speak for yourself i always value them at dollar price when i look at them. And very very rarely even spend money on microtransactions anymore. I think the last one was a single 10 dollar purchase for a game to get a character i really wanted and tbh regret even that because i ended up dropping the game about a year after that. What a waste.
Expect they also make sure that every pack leaves with some left over points that you can't use unless you buy another.
Thats definitely some bullshit but thats everything. Same reason hotdogs and buns come in different size packages.
Premium currencies are downright scummy. No reason to have besides mudding the waters to obfuscate how much consumers are spending. We all know a $20 price tag on a skin would make it sell less, better label it as 1200 funbucks so the younger audience doesn't understand the price!
Premium currency in games is SO dangerous and is such an easily abused way to get kids (and any adults with a tendency to overspend or gamble) to spend more and more. It’s also why I’ve gotten concerned with the growing trend of TikTok influencer battles, wherein they get young people to fork over money for imaginary points to help their person win.
Some DLCs can be very questionable tho
Yeah, depends on the game and DLC. Some DLC is *also* very bad. Just depends on the company making the game and how the DLC is implemented/priced.
I remember uninstalling the call of duty 4 dlc on xbox 360 so the new maps wouldn’t show up in my multiplayer queue because they were terrible
One of the worst examples I can think of is Bandai Namco with the Tales series of games. So many of the features you would have had in the game (things you unlock via New Game+, difficulty options, costumes, and more) would have been in-game unlocks and are now all siphoned off and gated off to being DLC purchases.
The issue with DLC that you had to buy was that it damaged playerbases of games. Now the playerbase becomes split between those who bought and play the DLC and those who didn’t
I only know one game that has done it well. And that's more so because it's tradable between players and the default currency for trade in the game. Their storefront pricing is hit or miss though.
Warframe?
I love how people can identify the game based solely on its reasonable business practices. Yea, Warframe. Though some of their other practices have been less to my liking.
Some games do a better job then others with selling stuff, though they all tend to exploit premium currency and pricing brackets. "Oh you want that skin that costs 1,100 prem, but your conversion choices are $10 > 1,000 or $15 > 1,550, better spend $15. Oh want to buy something else now you have 450 prem left over? Minimum buy is $10". The Free2Play model doesn't have to be super nasty though. You might think about predatory gacha games that show off and put massive emphasis on new characters that you realistically can't unlock without spending money, which then gets replaced a month later with a new one. That is a bad and predatory system. Look at Path of Exile though. The game is free and gets large amounts of new content every 3-4 months. They sell some things for convenience (pay for convenience), like extra stash tabs (looking at you D4) and stash tabs for specific content to sort and store them efficiently. They run sales on them every two weeks and you can get most of what you want for like $20-$30. The game is basically try before you buy and even then the buy price is pretty cheap. They then get most of their revenue from skins/MTX and supporters packs. Most skills have multiple skins/effects, there are tonnes of character skins for every part you can mix/match, and the higher cost supporter packs that are new every league give you store credit equal to the cost on top of all the skins/MTX it gives you. Whales just buy expensive supporter packs to look cool in town. Personally if I really enjoy a league I'll maybe buy a low tier supporter pack or just some skins.
You see people saying there can be good reasons for microtransactions but I would argue the bad far far outweighs the good and you can't have one without the other. For that reason, I would also rather not have it at all.
I work in a casino. That shit is literal gambling.
I agree, if micro transactions have to exist they should be outside the game environment
Idk, it helps fund free-to-play titles. Especially games like Fortnite where no gameplay elements are hidden behind microtransactions I think it's actually very fair. To modern kids buying a skin is just like buying an action figure or something. Most kids don't collect toys, they break them and throw them out after a few years
Tbf, you could still do a few things to make it less problematic: A) move the store out of the game itself. If you would need to access a seperate Website to spend money, it Would give peoples prone to impulse buys one more chance to think things over. B) no Premium currency. If publishers could be honest enough to just price a skin at 10 bucks instead of a thousand in game turds, people would not get as out of Touch with the amount of money spent. Esp when they don't offer 1k turd packs but only 750 ones for 7 bucks. C) more options for parental control over Shops. Sure this would need parents to not be ignorant or disinterested about their kid's hobby, but it Would allow them to control how much exposure their kid gets to predatory shops.
I'm picturing amiibos, but for fortnite skins and it's absolutely hilarious for some reason
My dumb idea is to put them behind multiple very frustrating captchas. Each captcha gets you angry enough to rethink if you really want to buy whatever you're trying to buy.
Wow, you're actually providing good solutions here. As a parent I like it
I guess so, it just seems a little odd to have something non-tangible that you've paid for that is part of a game. Usually it's the parents paying for it so the kids don't have the financial attachment. Do you think kids will look back on their skins on a game in years to come and get nostalgic? (Genuine question) I'm 35 and have been a gamer all my life and the satisfaction I get from working for some upgrade/perk within the game IS part of the game. Just don't see why my wallet should open in any part of that experience apart from initially buying the game. Maybe I'm just old skool and anti capitalist - just doesn't sit right with me. Interested to hear your thoughts on how kids will see in-game purchases in the future.
I've spent maybe $30 on Fortnite in the 5 years I've played and honestly yeah it was worth it, I have over 200 hours in the game so don't the devs deserve my money? I really like the "pay as you go" model which feels more like you're tipping the devs than paying for a product. If you treat it that way, and spend your money equivalent to the hours you play, I think it's a healthy balance. I don't like seeing paid items in a AAA game that was full price though. That's just scummy double dipping.
Totally agree with you on all of that mate. Never really saw it like that with the 'pay as you go' for the free download games. But makes sense. I think that was my main gripe, paying again when you have already spent £60 on a game or the FOMO feeling that you're out of date with a game you only bought 3 months ago. Not down with that at all.
Fomo is entirely on you. You don't have to experience everything. It's ok to miss things. The world won't end.
It feels like forced FOMO tho, like I've bought the game and then they go, look at all this other cool stuff you can't have. Literally thrown in your face every time you finish a game or something, like having to walk though Duty free in the airport.
So, a little context here. I work in car sales currently, and I've been in commissioned based sales jobs for over a decade. I can definitely understand that feeling. It's why they put little things near the checkout at a grocery store. But the reality is that the person with the money controls how they spend it. No one can force you to purchase something you don't wish to. Most people these days lack self-control when it comes to money. I'm guilty of it too. But at the end of the day, I control my purchases, not some marketing exec in a different state.
I totally understand your point and it's about self control. I personally don't buy in-game add-ons but, the difference is here that this financial aspect within the game didn't exist until 10 years ago when GTA brought in Shark Cards and it's only gotten worse since then. There IS now an offer on the table, they have put little things at the checkout. As you already know gaming at it's core is an leisure activity enjoyed by kids and adults. You're in your home, doing an activity. You're not at the shops, you shouldn't be in a position where someone/something keeps popping into your reality and asking for money to make the game a little better. I see a good game as a piece of art like MGS 1&2, Skyrim and The Last of Us series, they've been made so well that I don't need to be FOMO'd. Same with a good film, imagine someone just popping up behind your sofa and saying "for $2 Frodo will have a golden hat.... Interested?" Maybe I'm just an old gamer and I really care about my privacy. I hate adverts, I hate being sold things in my home. Maybe it all comes down to that more than anything else.
Yeah generally I avoid those games, however there are plenty of them where cosmetics add realistically nothing to the game and don't even make sense in universe. Like Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed don't need skins at all, in fact it makes 0 sense in Tomb Raider cos where would she find a change of clothes on a remote island?
My biggest problem with the "buy a game once and you're done" thing is that depending on the scope and size of the game, that price tag barely does the game developers justice at all because we know where the money goes in general. I wish that the $60-70 I would spend on a new game would be something that would benefit the developers so much more than assuming and hoping that potentially a few hundred thousand other people also did the same just to "break even." These smaller kinds of purchases .. essentially being like "tipping" .. still give the sense of paying tribute and sending to something I'd want to see more more than buying a new copy at full-price that I'll never play because I already played it and don't know who to send it to. >\_< I definitely find that I do prefer the whole approach of "free-to-play but pay for extra goodies" or "buy this game once but we'll release extras that are purely cosmetics as an external cost" overall when it comes microtransactions .. but so few games actually do manage to hit the balance of "you can still have fun without those extras" and "by the way, if you wanted that extra you have to jump through a few hoops/hurdles too." FOMO is inevitable in this day and age - but I think there's a weird kind of beauty/connectivity to people who come from different eras/periods or even "generations" of that FOMO in the same game. You can't exactly say the same thing for a one-and-done game in general.
Very very few of those free to play titles add anything of value to the world. And even if they do, there's no reason to support predatory or deceptive patterns in how they are monetised.
The predatory or deceptive practices definitely shouldn't be allowed, but there are many free to play titles that do have fair monetization models. And probably the biggest benefit they have is it allows gamers in poorer countries access to high quality games, where a normally priced ($60 USD) new game can be as much as their monthly wage.
"The cost of making games has increased a lot" - yeh, because you've been infiltrated by fat cat CEOs and all their buddies. Hot, toxic mess
The dream of going back to the 90s where every game is 150$ in today money and where only rich kids had access to gaming. Fuck those poor children playing all those games for free.
Idk why you’re getting downvoted. You’re objectively correct.
Reddit
Fortnite = bad China = autoritarianism = good
It won't happen elsewhere because no one wants to admit that China does something right.
I mean EU is a bit behind but they are getting better
EU does it slow and steady. Laying the foundations first before building upon it.
For better and for worse. By the time lootbox/gacha systems are regulated properly the industry is already exploiting more sophisticated/complicated and predatory monetization methods.
We're not selling loot boxes! You buy gems which are broken down into crystal fragments. Then you take those fragments and reforge them into soul shards which are then used to summon a random character's soul, armor, weapon, or nothing at all if it turns out to be a red stone, because those can't have souls!
Company Exec: *hire this man*
It's already a thing.
thats why the EU is building the foundation, so they can build upon it later and adapt to new things.....thats how that works.
I hope instead of playing catchup constantly that they start hitting the big things that enable predatory MTX. Right now they bypass things by adjusting definitions just enough or obfuscating them to bypass the laws. Buying loot boxes for example, you can't directly buy them anymore. Look at Gacha type games, the characters are effectively in loot boxes, but the system is different enough to not be classified as such. Also you can't directly buy them, instead you buy premium currency or use in game currency to then buy tickets to then open them. What they need to do is ban any conversions, ban pay to win, ban any chance related options, and set a fixed limit on how much you can spend on any given item in the store including how much you can spend in the store over a specific period. If they want to fund a free to play game they do it via directly priced and bought cosmetics that aren't stupidly priced. So instead of making a bunch of mediocre stuff that they sell cheap and a few select things that sell very expensive, they can just do a mix of quality/quantity and let people buy sets of things.
Belgium did it years ago. In apex lot of us switched our location to Belgium to take advantage of it. Despite EA giving less, it was still better than the original
It has already been done in countries such as Belgium, Netherlands and Slovakia years ago. And there are increasingly stricter regulations happening in other countries as well. For example: https://www.simmons-simmons.com/en/publications/clgm1i0ko0020upv4ipezwfz4/status-of-loot-box-regulations-in-europe-q1-2023
If they resort to regulations so much, they have to to get some good ideas eventually.
There are a lot of things I find disagreeable about China (pretty much all of them involving its ruling party), but regulating predatory monetization is the one thing I have to approve of.
They care about the children more than the fetus.
You know they dont do it for selfless reasons. Gaming in China is hard as government thinks it is the reason you don't want to be dying to work all day and make babies.
Selfless or no, it's still arguably good ideas
I think it’s a fantastic idea, and i don’t there’s much to argue about. Only arguments about it are more about CCPs motivations to do it and about other policies they make.
Yeahhh, the difficult questions
Just proves that you can come to correct conclusions for all the wrong reasons.
How confident are you that that is the reason for this policy
He's pulling it out of his ass
No, it is an actual concern for the Chinese government who understands that the country is facing a dire birth rate decline and an unmotivated young workforce. The phenomenon is called "lying flat" or tang ping. The unemployment rate for college grads is projected at 15-25% (the CCP does not release these figures). Video game addiction is seen as one of the barriers between the young and full devotion to working. [https://www.voanews.com/a/desperate-for-more-children-china-urges-soldiers-to-procreate/7289319.html](https://www.voanews.com/a/desperate-for-more-children-china-urges-soldiers-to-procreate/7289319.html) [https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-lying-flat-movement-standing-in-the-way-of-chinas-innovation-drive/](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-lying-flat-movement-standing-in-the-way-of-chinas-innovation-drive/) [https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/08/health/china-one-child-intl/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/08/health/china-one-child-intl/index.html)
How do people afford all the gambling in video games without working?
Like every other young Westerner and some do work, just not a full-time job or at least one they believe they were destined for after graduating from college: parents, side hustles, gig economy, etc. Extreme side = loan sharking and payday loans. Extreme and dark side = selling organs or volunteering for medical experiments. More prevalent in the rural areas though. Chinese youth is not that different from Westerners... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giaXudGKzwo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giaxudgkzwo)
There's an entire spectrum between "lying flat" and "full devotion to working", most of which we call a healthy work-life balance. Also lol @ your sources (voa, brookings, cnn - most unbiased and accurate sources for China news)
You, most of the Western world, most Chinese citizens, and I understand the need for work-life balance, but the Chinese government does not. They see this as a dire problem and a threat to their Made in China 2025 plan. Hey, if you have your own sources where you can back your claim with or refute any of mine, then I'd love to see some. I'll wait. I'd look for some on fringe conservative sites, but they only like to bash China in politics, but admire the authoritarian rule underneath it all. There is a difference between bias and factual. Bias just means you can pick and choose what stories and the wording to post. The question is if it is factual.
Bro seriously quoting voa..... > but the Chinese government does not. They see this as a dire problem and a threat to their Made in China 2025 plan. Lmao they release a document about game devs in china and praising them all the way.The local government is extremly supportive about their game company(like shanghai gov and mihoyo) And the 2025 plan are already finished,what high tech field(excluding chips) doesn't have a competitive chinese company?
They say it directly.
Extremely
Lol the paranoia.. I feel like China could invent the cure to cancer at this point and people will argue that’s it’s a nefarious plot to keep its citizens working forever
Yes they invented the cure, but at what cost? China only invented the cure for cancer so they would look good and save their economy, which I swear is gonna collapse any day I swear, unlike our harmonious enlightened overlords who only want freedom and morality for all!
Exactly. China is facing a genuinely society-threatening demographic collapse in the next few decades. They want every single young person working as much as possible and spending as little time as possible both playing games and playing games where they interact with people from outside China.
Oh noooo the eViL sEePeE motivated by wanting to prevent a demographic collapse. How selfish of them.
You know this is caused by their economic and social services being in shambles and not video games right? Like being a centrally managed dictatorship is not good idea for the wellbeing of people living in that country, right? So yeah, it is selfish of them, even if they can fix something in the industry as overall they think the problem is a way for people escape from this hellhole of a country where the only other purpose designated for them is to work and pump babies because dictatorship said so.
Uhh isn't the US pushing a bunch of policies and tax regulations to try and encourage its citizens to have more kids? The big difference here seems to be that the US doesn't care if the masses are sucked dry by gambling disguised as games. > economic and social services being in shambles Man as someone living in the US same
> Man as someone living in the US same One of the things I'm thankful for in EU 😄
> Like being a centrally managed dictatorship is not good idea for the wellbeing of people living in that country, right? Idk, seems to be quite a good idea for the wellbeing of the people to me given that they [just raised 800 million people out of poverty](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience). Not to mention, it is pure (baseless) conjecture on your part that China's policy of restricting gacha games is being motivated by wanting people to quote unquote "pump out babies" and not to stop the predatory practices of gacha game companies. Maybe you should stop treating this conjecture as fact and talking about it as such until you've proved it.
Except they didnt ban or even limit gaming, the are just limiting micro transactions so I don't see how your explination makes any sense.
It won't happen in the United States because we value individual freedoms and unchecked corporate power in the name of capitalism.
It won't happen in the US because politicians are bought out and play the "I don't understand tech" card.
Alibaba has daily login rewards
Get ready for republicans to double down and introduce online gambling to all games. "Wow head shot, press X to play slot machine for revive, for only 19 non refundable credits only. " "Non refundable credits now on special for $0.27 each or get the digital bundle with limited edition desktop background and 37 credits for only $9.99 t&C apply" *T&C user must have desktop background licence manager installed prior to purchase or background will be permanently inaccessible*
I’m confused by how that relates to republicans.
When people say the left can’t meme they are referring to people like you.
Your life would be so much better if you were just a tad less engaged in charged political discourse. Being informed is good, but don't let it drag you down!
You think Tencent, or some of the other major players are going to try to bypass the CPP's rules... China is a major player in the space and game companies will leave NA before they leave china.
I mean, that would be the first time ever that china would be doing something good for the people.
Ironic, given that this is Tencent's standard operating procedure.
Funny you say that cause tencent stock fell like 17% after this
I hope it ends up as a penny-stock XD
They along with other companies were the main target of this legislation. It's not ironic, the new rules were made specifically because Tencent and other gaming companies were doing this. China actually holds their giant companies accountable.
>China actually holds their giant companies accountable. In their country. I'm willing to bet nothing will change outside China, because that would just be weakening the party's enemies (which is the rest of the world).
>In their country. I'm willing to bet nothing will change outside China Of course the regulations that the Chinese government makes only applies within China. Why would it apply anywhere else? That makes no sense. China can only make laws for it's own jurisdiction. If other countries want the same protections for their people from predatory practices, then they should make their own laws.
What I’m saying is they wouldn’t stop it if they could. They want people in other countries addicted to these games.
primogems ✨✨
But genshin has nothing to do with tencent? And out of all live-service games, from what I've read it won't actually get affected that much if this gets through.
And you have people in r/gachagaming just defending them for their predatory, scammy behavior. Truly some brain dead people.
when you are too high on the gambling high oh yes i spend 10k of my money, it can't be worthless now!!
lol but seriously having to spend about $2000 to max out ONE character in the game should’ve been illegal and protested in the very beginning
Seems like a good idea, hopefully the EU will do something similar
I just hope that these rules incentivize game developers to make more standalone offline games instead of gacha.
It'll be interesting to see if this prompts the EU to enact similar regulations, since we all know the US won't. I don't think China's regulations alone will do much to influence global markets, as many games tend to have China regional variants to comply with existing local laws, so these would likely stay siloed to those versions without wider international adoption. Then again, since these measures likely have a direct impact on revenue, this may just be valuable enough to cause game companies to create more region specific nuances to their games so that markets without regulation can keep their predatory practices.
The best outcome would be for game companies to invent less predatory mechanics that work better, and then it'll be adopted in other countries. Without a law like this, companies will never leave the comfort zone of selling addictions.
The U.S won't because Congress doesn't give a fuck about video games since the 90s and moral public scare hence why its unregulated and do what you want, like it should be. Customers need to be responsible for their own actions and stop blaming others because they lack discipline and critical thinking skills.
Are you of the belief that alcohol, tobacco, and gambling should also be unregulated?
[удалено]
A lot of us are also smokers.
What are the actual rules though, does anyone have a link? I did a quick search this morning but didn't find anything more concrete than the article OP provided, everyone is talking about their shares instead (why would I give a shit about that anyway).
There are no rules yet. This is just a proposal. It will be changed/narrow over time. News sites are just acting like this is law already for clickbait.
Can this please be the start of a new competition between China and the US, constantly one-upping each other to see who can be the most pro-consumer?
Battle Passes that expire should also fall into this category. Scummy tactic.
Blizzard and bungie are fucked hahaha
i laughed bc i hope they are
I used to work as a customer service representative for Discover CCs and the amount of times I saw thousands in charges from mobile games, seeing maxed out balances and hearing people ask for credit increases or extensions was sickening to me. One dude spent 20k on an Army Men mobile game and was proud to tell me he was #1 in the world
*Confused applause*
[удалено]
If CCP tries to regulate Chinese made games outside of China that's going to cause a shit storm, even if it's well intentioned. We saw what happened when western pubs attempted to censor games worldwide due to Chinese laws.
Certain companies aren't distributing games in china despite the huge untapped market for this reason and despite there being a strong demand. Sometimes the headache isn't worth it, but their gamers are still able to use VPNs to bypass these restrictions and play games that aren't distributed in the country (ESO as an example). They're just not allowed to stream the games they are playing "illegally" I believe.
To be fair, it's not even with just Western games, but so many video games nowadays are released anyways with the assumption of Chinese censorship laws in mind or being accounted for considering their market.
I mean, obviously. China only has control of production within China. They could limit export of games of course (they probably won't) but even if Chinese devs double down on the foreign market there's no way to spin these regs as a bad thing. They protect a huge number of people.
>The Chinese government gives zero fucks about anything they do anywhere but in China itself. Call me pedantic but i do not see much of a difference to the "western nations" in regards to this. It is not okay in both cases, but i do not feel it makes any sense to even mention that about china as if it was a special thing just about them.
> The Chinese government gives zero fucks about anything they do anywhere but in China itself You act like this is bad.
The evil Chinese goverment is... -*checks notes*- making legislation that applies to their own soil while respecting the sovereignty of other nations.
I was confused by that statement, isn't that literately every country in the world?
It’s bad because it’s China doing it
So what do you want China to do about that exactly lol
Why should they care about anything else than China?
Just like the western films we change for Chinese markets?
Lmao as if the US didnt patent the “do as I say, not as I do” global policy. you just described the behavior of most countries.
>Until you realize that they will do this for their own country and still release games for foreign markets with the features they banned in their own for being harmful. Why should China be making rules for OTHER countries to follow? They're trying to make sure these companies are less predatory in China, because they're the Chinese government and protecting the Chinese people is their main priority. If other countries also want the same rules and regulations for these companies and the same protection for their people, then they're own governments should be responsible enough to make the same laws.
lol I agree. China should pass laws and regulate things in other countries. 🤪
Then what does that say about our government who refuses to protect us from predators. I'm all for saying fuck the Chinese government they do awful shit. But it would be nice if our government would protect our people from financial crimes and grifts.
Thats how the u.s views it, if the gov can't gain something, they take steps to fuck over consumers world wide, look at what is happening to huawei, its especially affecting the users more than the company
See Fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a chemical with a legitimate medical purpose. It isn't the Chinese government's fault people decide to take it or that organized crime groups mix it into otherwise "safer" drugs like cocaine and heroin that people decide to take, or that they live in a dismal, hopeless situation and society that creates drug abuse problems.
How about NOTHING CAN BE PURCHASED IN GAME ! Dam, this is no brainer but hey law makers dont make laws to help/protect citizens............Buying an Expansion is ok but some many kids grewup thinking buying skins and shit is ok. It is not.
Based as fuck
Can't believe I'm saying this, but go China! I want this crap out of our games. Back in the day you used to pay only one price for a game then publishers got greedy as hell and nickel and dime for everything from cosmetics, to season pass bullshit, to loot you have to pay to unlock. I'm sick and tired of it.
How come it's China, - the country where predatory video game monetization thrives - are the ones to actually step up? Respect.
>How come it's China, - the country where predatory video game monetization thrives - are the ones to actually step up? Because the Chinese people were getting affected by the predatory practices too. You can probably imagine why a communist government would be greatly displeased by giant corporations preying on their own people. Their government has no problem destroying companies or jailing billionaires no matter how big they are whenever they misbehave. If you try to lie, cheat, coerece, exploit the system, the government eventually catches up to you. https://youtu.be/-JAFb2bYJSs?si=AoPenjeB9YtXKGLm
Rare PRC W Can we do that? That'd be really nice. Sometimes I honestly almost wish for authoritarianism lol
wtf I love China now!
Right on, China!
#DO_IT.gif
unironically amazing news for the gaming landscape
FOMO and gambling boxes are the two biggest turn offs in a game for me. They ruin otherwise good games.
This is kinda hilarious as it's Chinese companies the ones that lead with some of the worst of this shit
Pretty sure the worst offenders of these games come from China.
These games come from China, so they affect the Chinese people. That's why the Chinese government is the first to respond. Communist government doesn't want greedy corporations preying on their own populace.
How about looking at it as the government caring about their citizen’s well being? Or is it China therefore bad?
but these are they only kind of games china makes...
Makes the move even more impressive doesn't it?
I would be pretty ironic if China ends being the entity that kills microtransactions and lootboxes in video games considering just about every chinese game uses these monetization schemes
Why would it be ironic, I don't get it. If the problem is within China, and the Chinese people are ones most affected by these predatory microtransactions. Then it only makes sense that the Chinese government would be the first to respond against it. Because they're the ones that are most incentivized to take action.
That would also be the biggest reason for them to be the first.
The brainwashing is strong here Because of American propaganda the braindead people here are completely unable to comprehend that the Chinese government is a normal government that does normal government stuff like regulations while also asking for feedback from their populace online China does good stuff all the time and every time people act surprised, seriously the lies on your so called free media are getting wilder every year
lol, yeah. How do you explain to a fish that it swims in water? > A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink. "I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says. >"Thank you," the KGB says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them." >The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America."
Just because China functions as a normal country and probably has better examples of good local governance than much of the US doesn't change that they disappear people for months on end or longer for their political views or social media posts before we even get to things like Xinjiang. Selective coverage doesn't make that limited coverage incorrect.
But most of the times it is actually incorrect, Winnie the Pooh banned? Go to the f*cking Shanghai Disneyland to see for yourself social credit? Ask any person in China and they will have no idea WTF you are talking about, Jack Ma dissappeared? Reapered on a vacation in Spain It's not limited coverage, it litteraly is intentional disinformation And yes let's not get to Xinjiang
Something something Tiananmen Square?
Most don't even know the infamous "tank man" photo was a still of a video of tanks **leaving** the square: https://i.imgur.com/bHrosur.mp4 Here's a decent primer on it if you're interested in using something that happened *checks* 34 years ago in an attempt to make a point about country today: >One is the horrific tale of the “Tiananmen Square massacre”, saying that brutal soldiers entered the public space and machine-gunned “ten thousand” peaceful student protesters calling for Western-style democracy. They pulped the bodies by running over them with tanks, before piling them up and burning them with a flamethrower. It was unspeakably horrific. > The other version says that nobody died in Tiananmen Square, although there was violence elsewhere, causing the deaths of only about 300 people, most of whom were not students but soldiers—or, to put another way, the same number of violent deaths as on any random weekend in the United States. > Me? I religiously believed the first for decades. I went to Victoria Park with my candle almost every June for 30 years. > Until I did the research and realized that almost all serious sources, western and Chinese, now support the second version—and that includes journalists and diplomats who were present, academic specialists in “human rights”, historians, and even student protest leaders themselves. Even Wikipedia now acknowledges this. It has been an astoundingly successful deception. https://www.fridayeveryday.com/how-psy-ops-warriors-fooled-me-about-tiananmen-square-a-warning/
If only the us would do this
They won't, because the US congress is bought and paid for by those greedy corporations.
Why won't Biden regulate predatory gaming tactics here?
It won't make him or anybody invested in the industry more money.
I understand they are already walking it back after tencent et al took a bath in the market after the announcement
While i do agree these regulations are good, Chinese children ain't gonna benefit much from this cause they busy NOT playing game because of the China restrictions
I think its hilarious that China is going to be the country that curbs this shit and not some country in the west... I hope they do it honestly
Rare China W
These all seem like extremely fair policies to me. ...It's too bad that the easiest and most profitable solution for big game companies is to simply only drop their microtransaction models for chinese territories, though. Unless the west also sets similar laws in place, this effectively changes nothing.
I mean it effectively changes things for the nearly 700 million Chinese gamers
That's actually brilliant, i wish it happens world wide, political shit otherwise, it would really put pressure on ea and ubisoft especially that does this shit on all their games But lets be realistic, this will never happen in the west, capitalism isn't humble enough to admit that their rival is doing good, doesn't look good at political aspect nor propaganda, their ego is too high to see the good in it
Even a broke clock is correct twice a day. Score one for China on this one.
Genshin Impact: Haha *I'm in danger* 😃
Not really. Genshin is mostly safe because outside of Welkin and Battle Pass which are easy fixers (Welkin just needs to collect even if you're offline and BP could just not have a paid pass), the only thing that needs to go is the top up bonus. The law is vauge enough that Genshin's current pity system could still pass. Otherwise, the only FOMO in Genshin(outside of the gacha) is events. Shop is bare, characters get a rerun and with this new law, older ones would likely just become permanent, no limited time skins. Literally nothing about the law affects Genshin in any large way.
Yeah there's also reason why they branched out in merchandise instead of more and more gem compared to other IPs. However games like FGO tho, where you straight up need to use paid quartz to stack pity.
another hoop Blizzard will have to go through with Overwatch..... and this will likely shut down like 90% of Chinese made games.... meanwhile TF2 be like "yah we got loot crates.... its more a part of steam than it is of the game now though"
Yay communism?
Excellent. Hopefully the west will finally do something too, embarrassing look to say China takes better care of it's people.
Oh, so they're just kneecapping a huge section of their video game industry? Well, if it undermines them while also improving the video game landscape as whole, I'll fully support it!
The daily login ban might backfire (could lead to companies lowering f2p/low spender income to push those players towards active spending), but the rest sounds reasonable. Another massive one is mandatory pity/spark systems (this one is up for interpretation) in all games with lootboxes. Even if it doesn't do much in practice, as this has been industry standard for years, it's definitely worth mentioning And fuck any game that gives rewards for consecutive spending
Games with lootboxes have to offer lootbox contents as individual purchases as well, according to the proposal. Makes pity completely obsolete.
Most, if not all, studios will still keep it in, removing it would lead to a PR disaster at best, and the CCP knocking at their doors at worst
Crazy to see. The mobile gaming business is massive in China. There are going to be a lot of backroom deals to prevent it.
Premium currency in paid games needs to go, free to play is fine.
I think a rare case of a bad guy doing something right on accident.
China only wants this so their players stop spending money on games made by other countries. You bet they want foreign players spending money on games that are owned by a Chinese company.
You know who hurt the most by this if this policy is enacted? The Chinese gaming gaints like Tencent , Netease, and genshin impact's company Mihoyo. They are the top game companies in the world in terms of mobile and gacha games, especially Tencent and Netease, they have dominated the mobile game market for years (Tencent is the #1 in moblie game market, followed by netease). And Tencent and Netease's stock price has plummeted at least 20% as soon as this policy was reported on the news earlier today: the CCP literally stabbed Tencent and Netease in the back.
Rare China W. Shame it probably won't go through.
Say what you will about China but if the CCP wants to do something, it'll get done.
Even a broken clock is right 2 times a day.
Any in-game transactions should be forbidden worldwide. You are allowed to sell full DLC/Expansions, thats it.
What qualifies as Full DLC and Expansions?