EA killed for "Surprise Mechanics", TencentGGG slides on "Mystery Box". How?

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subjective_reality wrote:

It's still p2w. Paying for advantage is p2w.

That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. You know, your "subjective reality".

That said, even IF you look at it that way, it's directly stupid to "stereotype" PoE into the same category as REAL P2W games. Not even on the same planet.

Anyhow, this is off topic.

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Phrazz wrote:

That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. You know, your "subjective reality".

It's not only my opinion, it's the definition of paytowin. Likewise, the president of the united states is Donald Trump and that doesn't change if my opinion says otherwise.

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subjective_reality wrote:

It's not only my opinion, it's the definition of paytowin. Likewise, the president of the united states is Donald Trump and that doesn't change if my opinion says otherwise.

Dude, there are millions of "definitions" of pay to win. This is the first one that comes up when googling "pay to win":

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Games that let you buy better gear or allow you to make better items then everyone else at a faster rate and then makes the game largely unbalanced even for people who have skill in the game without paying.

Buy better gear? No. Make better items? No. Buy better gear or make better items at a faster rate? Not necessarily.

If you can't see that the "definition" is up for interpretation, I don't know what to tell you.

Oh my god...

"If I get cornered in an argument, I can just reset the argument by saying it's all subjective"
"If I get cornered in an argument, I can just call it stupid"

It's the same people arguing the same things across multiple threads. Give it a rest.

Anyway, I don't know if OP ever got an answer to his question so I'll try to answer this as best as I can. To start off, the US doesn't have lootbox laws. So right off the bat we're going straight to the EU. The EU currently does not have a fully unified set of laws that prohibit lootboxes, but rather they are trying to use their existing gambling laws to legally align lootboxes into that category. And for each country comes a different set of laws.

For example: Belgium. GGG is not being fined in Belgium probably because they disabled lootboxes entirely for this country, as did Blizzard, Valve, Nintendo, etc. This country has laws that make it very clear that anyone trying to sell lootboxes will be fucked. You're hearing EA getting flack because they chose not to listen.

Another example: The Netherlands. This country had a legal opinion that lootboxes that contained tradable content was qualified as gambling. So for GGG, this is not the case, so they are fine. But EA is not as they have multiple games that let you trade lootbox content.

The list goes on, but the important thing is that a good lawyer and a good spokesperson can turn around decisions. In the case of EA, the whole "surprise mechanic" meme was born because it actually worked.

The other thing is that the fact that Tencent being GGG's parent company doesn't really mean much, at least not at the moment. If GGG is ever sued or fined, it would be addressed to GGG and not Tencent.

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Phrazz wrote:

Dude, there are millions of "definitions" of pay to win.

There are millions of definitions on president too. I define a president as a meat popsicle but that doesn't mean it's accurate. Googling for something to help your stance doesn't make it any more correct either? What's your source anyway? A cheery picked line from urban dictionary? A quote from a forum like this?

Watch some youtube, read some news. Definitions change as greedy developers try new types of money making schemes. The definition is that paid advantage is paytowin and it is what it is.

Here is a good channel with a million subs which often brings up paytowin.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT6iAerLNE-0J1S_E97UAuQ

Here is another one with 800k.
https://www.youtube.com/user/JimSterling

Anotherone, 300k
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChI0q9a-ZcbZh7dAu_-J-hg


Subscribe and learn something or live in denial.

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subjective_reality wrote:

Subscribe and learn something or live in denial.

Haha!

It was an example to show you it's subjective, just as the persons behind your "blue print" Youtube channels.

"Subscribe to a list of my hand picked Youtubers to learn something".

I'm done here.

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Phrazz wrote:

Haha!

It was an example to show you it's subjective, just as the persons behind your "blue print" Youtube channels.

"Subscribe to a list of my hand picked Youtubers to learn something".

I'm done here.

You don't accept those channels? What do you accept Mr Phrazz? I've listed you the biggest channels that goes in depth of anti consumer practices but you dismiss them as "hand picked" channels? If you refuse to accept the spokesmen in the war against lootboxes and microtransactions as source, then you are free to live in complete denial aka subjective reality.

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subjective_reality wrote:

the spokesmen in the war against lootboxes and microtransactions

And this doesn't sound loaded to you? If he's at war with something... It's like linking to a far right extremist group when having a debate about immigration. Of course he's going to back YOUR view. And I can probably link you to several channels not giving a damn, because they're OK with PoE's monetization model. Does that make me right?

I have no beef with F2P games making their living on microtransactions.

i saw an article or something saying that the companies are being forced to disclose the actual chances at getting stuff in their lootboxes. this makes sense.
its also what GGG has done almost all along, if not all along. so with GGG it isn't a surprise.

of course its gambling, but gambling isn't illegal. this is also an 18+ rated game where as EA etc im pretty sure their games weren't, that featured some lootboxes, aka gambling, to aka minors.

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Phrazz wrote:

And I can probably link you to several channels not giving a damn, because they're OK with PoE's monetization model.

How is that relevant? Paytowin is generally accepted if the grinds needed to access the paid advantages are reasonable. It's not like paytowin automatically deems a game as garbage. Paytowin is common and we gladly fund these mechanics until it reaches a threshold. That threshold has over time gotten lower and lower due to new types of methods to nickel and dime players.

While POE decides to paywall the stash tabs, the diminishing return, price and updates makes them a more acceptable type of paytowin. People tend to treat stash tabs as the initial cost of the game but that doesn't make them any less of a paytowin mechanics.

You choosing to not accept this is nothing but denial.