You’re welcome. It would save everyone a lot of trouble if people did not arbitrarily define terms such as “gambling” that are already defined in laws.
You may say that lootboxes do not contain anything “of value”… and others will disagree or agree. I disagree that there is “no value” contained. Otherwise, why are people spending money on them and companies promoting them as a means to make money?
But both your opinion and mine are just armchair quarterbacking. This is something for lawyers and courts to decide on. If you feel that strongly about it, then go write your congressman.
You can disagree, but you are wrong. This isn’t something that you can have an opinion on. It is or it is not. And in this case, it “is not” as in, does not have real world value.
You can argue and have an opinion on whether or not lootboxes are working in the game. Whether or not they should be in the game. Whether or not they are harmful. But you can’t argue whether or not there is real world value contained within. It’s called a fact. Not opinion.
Furthermore, I have nothing to say to any congressman about this issue. Currently, the laws are clear on the issue and the laws say there is no gambling happening (at least in SWL). If congress or my state officials decide to do something incredibly stupid (not to mention set dangerous precedents) regarding this issue like is happening in Hawaii, then I’ll write. Until then, everything is fine. That is an opinion.
If you’re going to say people are wrong, and “the laws are clear on the issue”, then please cite credible sources that support your argument. Otherwise your claim that others are wrong really have no merit.
You already posted the most credible source of all, the US code. Sadly, you refuse to see what’s written before you and are letting your biases lead you down a path of all sorts of untenable mental gymnastics. I’ve already provided a shortlist of inconvenient truths you’d have to reconcile in order to support your ridiculous arguments.
Within the context of the game, your currency has game-world value. You have to gamble that to earn items of random game-world value, so it is gambling. You are losing something of value that you could otherwise spend elsewhere in the game-world.
Moving on…
The problem with green items (and this applies to a lot of funcom’s previous lootboxes) is they’re only useful once. When you win the $2 on a scratch card, it’s useful every time. That’s why the bottom tier rewards feel different. It acts like you should be happy you won something, but the reality is the more agent boosters you buy, the less often you’ll find anything you can use. And hexcoins fail to solve that because they just let you open more rng. If you could buy Nassir for 1000 hexcoins, would it be expensive? Yes. Would it be less expensive than the current system? Also yes.
I dont play on steam as I have multiple accounts. However, the % change in steam users is probably a good metric to see the overall change in population (good, and probably only one we’d get).
“The Game (including all user accounts and all Game characters, objects, settings, themes, storylines, concepts, music, sounds, artwork, animations, dialog, code and other In-Game Features) are the property of Funcom and its licensors and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws and treaties around the world. We and our licensors own and reserve all right, title and interest in and to the Game. You acknowledge and agree that you shall have no ownership or other property interest in your Account, and you acknowledge and agree that all rights in and to the Account are and shall forever be owned by and inure to the benefit of Funcom Oslo AS.”
I am pretty sure this is enough of a clause to get out of the real world value with how loot boxes use a third currency. You spend $200.00 on aurum… FC gives you the agreed upon currency. Which, they do own, but you now have permission to use it. You choose to give FC rights back to 125 if FC’s aurum, and Funcom gives you an agent booster. Which, FC still owns, but you are the only one allowed to open this one. You then receive a random item, which still only has any value to FC.
These systems obviously are addictive to people, much like gambling in a casino. There is a reason that lootboxes exist at the moment… current laws and regulations dont impact them. Some people are trying to change that, but at this point… the money you spend in SWL is only to allow you to run around with those items… they arent yours, you dont own them.
Ok, thanks for that Wodrith. That’s a clear and credible line of reasoning that can be followed regarding the conditions for “gambling” or lack thereof in a virtual world. In this case ownership rights assigned via a contract supercede the legal definition of “gambling”. At least, as far as current laws and regulations stand.
@Darkxide: this is the kind of discourse that is helpful, and what I was looking for. And sorry if I missed your previous response with your arguments based on the logic regarding tax returns and other matters.
Not only is it an emotional topic, but it is also a morality topic. Which is even more reason for me to present fact-based, or in this case law-based arguments. To try to get to the root of the disagreement. It seems some people believe the harm of lootboxes is sufficient to require regulation (much like alcohol and drugs), while others believe that regulation would be overstepping the bounds of personal independence. At least, that is my interpretation of the arguments. I don’t know what the appropriate response is, I just have my opinions.
At the very least, people are arguing about the morality of harm. Whether lootboxes are harmful enough to neccessitate regulatory control.
There seems to me also, shades of the morality of liberty/freedom. Whether people (or corporations) should have the right to do what they see fit without government interference.
Uh… if the virtual coinage can then be paid out in real money, according to most legal systems, it damn well is. That’s why dubious online casinos are generally based in a very small set of real-world countries.
it really has nothing to do with money. Playing a game for candies is still gambling, even when by darxite definition it’s not because you don’t tax them (but tax law is still in effect actually, at least here)
doesn’t every casino use “virtual coinage”? I’ve never seen any bet done with “real money”.
Just tossing in a thought, but if it fit the real-world legal definitions of gambling, then it would already be regulated and taxed and treated as gambling in the real world. Because, y’know, that’s what real-world governments and lawyers do…
If people are concerned about the similarity to ‘potentially addictive behaviour patterns’, keep in mind that all games that use RNGs for reward drops and combat fit the same pattern - success yields a high, failure yields a ‘must have/do more!’ result. Thus you might as well say playing a game is gambling.
You can’t regulate/limit everything that you feel someone somewhere might need to be protected from. People need to be able to make their own bad choices even if you disagree with them.
Yet regulation should be logically self-consistent. If the law regulates real-world gambling for fears of business models targeting people and minors with tactics that exploit addictive tendencies, it should also regulate online business models doing the exact same thing - such as lootboxes.
Note this doesn’t mean lootboxes should necessarily be banned, just like gambling should not necessarily be banned outright. More measured legislation would be preferable, though given the current political climate in the US and vast swaths of Europe, I see little hope for the public discussion to move significantly beyond “ban them” vs. “don’t regulate at all” any time soon.
You’re very obviously grasping at straws in an ill-advised, desperate attempt to prove something that clearly shares traits of gambling cannot possibly be exactly gambling.
If your giving gifts on special occasions involves your friends having to pay something to receive a ticket/random code/whatever to receive a prize gift that may or may not contain more than a lump of rock, count me extremely happy I don’t have to consider you a friend and can just give my friends non-random gifts they don’t have to pay for which, unlike lootboxes, does not share any traits with gambling.
As for that first, common, no value argument, somebody selling physical boxes with the promise they might contain something the buyer would consider desirable but all of them contain absolutely nothing of value, they’d quickly find themselves prosecuted for fraud. So is that what we should be doing with games publishers?
No thanks. We need legislation to address the fact lootboxes share traits of gambling to limit the worst excesses of the business model, finding an acceptable balance between the need to extend consumer protection to virtual space and the need of publishers to monetize games.
Well, for one thing that is US law, so not applicable otherwise. Secondly, its implementation and then interpretation remain at state discretion. So unless the definition of gambling has been tested in courts in each and every States, the only thing that is a fact is that the interpretation has already been done in states that court cased the issue.
In UK for example there is a discussion on the extent to which “loot boxes system” fare falling unde licensable gambling or not.
Whether something has or not real world value is not entirely relevant for your own argument. In your example, US law one, it depends what the court decides the intention of the law maker was in regards of the word “something of value”.
Well that is not that clear cut, otherwise it wouldn’t have needed to be tested in court.
True, but that doesnt change the fact that they could be illegally tradable for real money.
That depends on the law which you abide by. A majority of people on Earth do not live in the US.
Secondly, again that does maybe on purpose forget that the interpretation of the law is intself the application of the law.
Actually you “can”, but you may not want to do that.
Your interpretation of the “value” seems to be “real world value”, it is an interpretation.
I think there was a reference to the tax code somewhere else. Well, big news, definitions of concept for tax purposes, contractual law, accountancy, financial regulation are not necessarily the same.
For example, some activities whilst illegal in the criminal perspective in some countries remain taxable for the purpose of fiscality.
The development team behind SWL is based in the US. US laws will apply. The servers are all based in the US, by playing the game US laws apply to you as well, indirectly, even though in all reality nobody is coming after you even if this was an issue. Which it isn’t. That’s because the laws would apply to FC and not you personally. The fact still stands that US law is applicable.
And the position of legislation as well, since that’s what’s in the books. All the naysayers with the raging hate-boners against lootboxes can bang their heads against the wall all they want. Their position is not one of reality. If their opinion is that reality should be changed then it’s they who need to seek to change the laws. However, at the end of it all I’m fairly certain their wants will never be realized, at least in the majority of instances. The ramifications of labeling lootboxes as gambling are too big for most lawmakers to want to take on. This is why if you look at what Hawaii has proposed, it has nothing to do with labeling lootboxes as gambling even though it was originally pursued as such. Instead, the lawmakers had to settle for proposing legislation that would restrict any software (and the bill is as non-specific as this) that includes in-app purchases from sale to anyone under the age of 21. This in and of itself is pretty disastrous if it ends up passing.
Funny you should accuse me of this when it’s you who are either misrepresenting or misunderstanding. The point of the article is to talk about the selling and exchange of virtual goods which is done often in games like Second Life. However, this problem is completely avoided in SWL since you aren’t allowed to sell or trade your virtual goods for any real world currencies or objects.