Exploitative Gaming Practices

[FriedCFour]

Talk is talk, will they actually do it? I'd guess they will "gratiously compromise"on taxes and regulation. Meaning more money and power for them. Banning gives them neither. Just a bunch of votes from the people who wanted it. Maybye. In few years they will forget about it, and the bureaucrats will be stuck with a big, fat nothing.

They already have done it in a neighbor city. Its 100% banned, you cant even order online legally.

So are ponzi schemes, gambling, club priced alcohol (or alcohol in general if you push it), nicotine, and emails from nigerian princes. See the pattern there?
All either of questionable legality, or regulated and heavily taxed.

Alcohol and nicotine aren't questionable. Ponzi and scams are different because its literally stealing your money. As I have said numerous times, all it is is digital trading cards and those aren't seen as devastatingly bad.

Yup. In a way. And that, in turn, means the MtX pushers have met their match. It's an awesome way to see it. It's a pitched battle of greed, laziness and selfishness of the sides involved.

Yes. So both sides are shitty but I err against government regulation. I'd much rather sanction or take action against Blizzard over their allegiance to a foreign adversarial government stealing from the US by the tune of billions than because they made a model of Hearthstone that gets you to buy cards.

 

[Marduk]

They already have done it in a neighbor city. Its 100% banned, you cant even order online legally.

So, local case, by nature isolated from large scale effects of itself (after all people can buy it in the next city over), in state/federal scale politics, regulation and taxing is far more likely.

Alcohol and nicotine aren't questionable. Ponzi and scams are different because its literally stealing your money.

Yup, so gambling, alcohol and nicotine are most accurate comparisons. All of these? Legal, but regulated, PSA's against and heavily taxed with "official" discouragement purpose - while in reality, that means the government agrees that it's indeed a great way to separate fools from their money, and wants a cut of that pie, fools with money to separate from them aren't free, citizen. Say what you want, governments love getting additional things to tax, doubly so if they have a good excuse and don't damage actually important business in the process.
As such, i would predict that in the end this is how MtX situation will end up if it gets the average government's full attention. Now if the publishers tone down on it, don't push enough of it to raise controversy, and don't grow the cash flow so big that it gets the people in charge of making budgets add up interested, then perhaps they won't find it interesting enough to intervene much.

As I have said numerous times, all it is is digital trading cards and those aren't seen as devastatingly bad.

If all MtX were cosmetic only, that would a good comparison. But we all know it's not, and whether any specific game is has none at all, cosmetic only, or P2W is something that can change overnight with a single patch.

Yes. So both sides are shitty but I err against government regulation. I'd much rather sanction or take action against Blizzard over their allegiance to a foreign adversarial government stealing from the US by the tune of billions than because they made a model of Hearthstone that gets you to buy cards.

That's a separate matter of global market influence and the principle of lowest common denominator as applied to censorship. Very interesting topic, loosely related to MtX - MtX regulation anywhere significant in the world will also affect the practices elsewhere, as due to nature of the internet there are good reasons for everyone to have a standarized global MtX system.

 

[Terthna]

Why are the standards ludicrous? Generally, I just don't see wholly voluntary transactions with complete and absolute luxury vegetative entertainment goods as exploitative.

Which is exactly why they are ludicrous; because you apparently see absolutely no issue with lying to people, and cheating them out of their money.

I think microtransactions are nothing more than a good way to part dumb people from their money.

Then you sir, are a scoundrel.

 

[FriedCFour]

Which is exactly why they are ludicrous; because you apparently see absolutely no issue with lying to people, and cheating them out of their money.

I dont see it as lying or cheating.

Then you sir, are a scoundrel.

I'm a scoundrel because someone has chosen to buy skins in a game and I don't absolve him of all personal responsibility for his own actions?

If all MtX were cosmetic only, that would a good comparison. But we all know it's not, and whether any specific game is has none at all, cosmetic only, or P2W is something that can change overnight with a single patch.

No, because trading cards are pay to win for the good ones. Its a game of literally nothing but physical lootboxes.

 

[Battlegrinder]

It still requires more effort on their part to port it, than it would to not do so. Whereas on the computer, it actually takes effort to make something exclusive to a particular video game digital distribution service platform.

It takes a negligible amount of time and energy to do both, but you say the one that's much harder on consumer is fine but the one that's easier to manage is unacceptable?

Actually both Steam and Epic do have downsides; it's called DRM. This is why I only ever buy games on GOG, because I refuse to ever buy a game that has DRM. There's also the user-friendliness and features of the service to consider, and by those metrics, Steam beats out Epic by a landslide.

Ok, but that's an argument as to why you prefer one service other the other (and if both steam and epic have DRM, then they're still interchangeable from the consumer end), not why having two storefronts in general is bad. I can't speak to user friendliness or other features for epic as I don't use it, but I do use steam and virtually never avial myself of any of these oh so valuable extra features, so I don't really care either.

Brand loyalty is a marketing gimmick; it has nothing to do with the product itself. As for soap not being totally interchangeable, sometimes that's the case, but there is nothing actually stopping some company from making soap that is completely identical to one someone else makes; they just cannot slap the same label on it, and that's what generic brands do ultimately.

It's not quite true that brand loyalty has nothing to do with the product. It can be, but usually otherwise similar brands will try to set themselves apart as part of building that brand identity.

First of all, Steam does have competition; many of its games can also be found on GOG, for example. Secondly, it's anti-competitive because in making those exclusive deals, they are directly attacking Steam's ability to compete. Look at The Outer Worlds for example; if you want to play that game on your computer, you have to buy it from either the Epic Games Store, or the Microsoft Store. This means that the actually quality of those platforms are irrelevant; they don't have to compete with Steam or GOG, they just have to make sure that you can only get the games you want from them.

Ok, so let's say steam retaliates and builds it's own stable of exclusives. So what? They're still easily obtained by the consumer with no downside for choosing one platform over the other (unlike with consoles, where to even get access to those games you have to spend several hundred dollars on a console), and, as you've pointed out even in your example, these "exclusive" games are still available on multiple platforms and their will be incentive to compete.

Look, if you're interested in watching a primer on where I'm coming from with online distribution services, these two videos should help:

I'll take a look.

 

[Terthna]

It takes a negligible amount of time and energy to do both, but you say the one that's much harder on consumer is fine but the one that's easier to manage is unacceptable?

Yes? It's a question of practicality; it takes effort to make a game work on multiple console.

Ok, but that's an argument as to why you prefer one service other the other (and if both steam and epic have DRM, then they're still interchangeable from the consumer end), not why having two storefronts in general is bad. I can't speak to user friendliness or other features for epic as I don't use it, but I do use steam and virtually never avial myself of any of these oh so valuable extra features, so I don't really care either.

I never said having two storefronts is a bad thing; in fact, I believe more competition is always a good thing. The problem is that exclusivity is not a competitive tactic; it's an anti-competitive one.

Ok, so let's say steam retaliates and builds it's own stable of exclusives. So what? They're still easily obtained by the consumer with no downside for choosing one platform over the other (unlike with consoles, where to even get access to those games you have to spend several hundred dollars on a console), and, as you've pointed out even in your example, these "exclusive" games are still available on multiple platforms and their will be incentive to compete.

But at that point, they are no longer competing based on the quality of their service; which means they will have no incentive to improve their service.

I'll take a look.

Thank you; he really does a good job explaining all the issues both he and I have with exclusivity.

I dont see it as lying or cheating.

You've made that abundantly clear. To your mind, it seems that even outright lying isn't lying, as long as you can get away with it; and the same goes for cheating.

I'm a scoundrel because someone has chosen to buy skins in a game and I don't absolve him of all personal responsibility for his own actions?

No, that's not why. And at this point, I doubt you will ever understand; no matter how much effort I put into trying to explain it to you. I feel like I'm trying to appeal to the empathy of a man who has none, and that this has basically been a giant waste of time.

 

[FriedCFour]

You've made that abundantly clear. To your mind, it seems that even outright lying isn't lying, as long as you can get away with it.

Did crash team racing lie? Of course. But I don't think lying should be illegal or that in this case its that big of a deal.

No, that's not why. And at this point, I doubt you will ever understand; no matter how much effort I put into trying to explain it to you. I feel like I'm trying to appeal to the empathy of a man who has none, and that this has basically been a giant waste of time.

I'm a sociopath because I don't care that much about oppressed gamers choosing to spend money on garbage?

 

[Terthna]

Did crash team racing lie? Of course. But I don't think lying should be illegal or that in this case its that big of a deal.



I'm a sociopath because I don't care that much about oppressed gamers choosing to spend money on garbage?

I honestly don't know what you are; nor do I care to speculate at this point. All I know is that I disagree with you, and find your views on this particular issue to be utterly reprehensible, as well as anathema to my own values. You also don't seem to be open to changing those views any time soon, so there does not seem to be any point in my pursuing this conversation any further.