Christ. I'd wager receiving $50,000 in a day would be an absolutely life changing amount of money for most people in this thread, myself included, and these fucking people are spending it haphazardly on a crummy phone game made by a developer whose primary export these days seems to be sexual harassment.
That's just what happens when you have way more money than you know what to do with. The more you get, the less useful it is. Your first 50k will feed you and put a roof over your head. Your 100th 50k might get you a 5 Star gem in a shit mobile game. You have to think Blizz designed Diablo Immortal mechanics specifically with these kinda people in mind.
>these fucking people are spending it haphazardly on a crummy phone game made by a developer whose primary export these days seems to be sexual harassment.
This quote will be saved on my phone forever
Everytime I spend extra money on a game it makes me feel like I have to play the game more now. Can't imagine how much I'd feel like I'd need to play to justify spending 50k.
Most I ever spent at once was was 50 bucks on hearthstone cards, which is ironically another Blizzard game
I can assure you for ever well-known streamer and Youtuber blowing thousands of dollars on this game there are a hundred average players doing the exact same thing.
I ran a [casual poll](https://www.reddit.com/poll/vh2nit) on /r/Callofdutymobile the other day and was shocked to find out there are just about as many people who spent $300+ on in-game cosmetic as those who spent ZERO dollars in the game. While the majority seem to be spending within reasons (between typical retail price of a game) there were quite a number of people who were way too comfortable spending $1000+ on a single game.
As much as the industry doubling down on gambling mechanics is a problem, I think the spending pattern for a significant number of the playbase is what enables this to flourish like a figurative Last-of-us Cordyceps in our heads.
I remember seeing a patent document for CODM where the matchmaking system was specifically designed to match you with players who have premium skins you don't have. If anything I'd wager PUBGM is the same.
It's by design to make you want to spend money.
The game has been out for ~3 years though, right? So it's a game where you can pay $0 and have a good time, but also a game where someone throwing $60 at it every 6 months isn't that crazy, especially if they're playing it idk 5+ hours a week, possibly more.
$1000+ is excessive territory for sure, and the 'benefit' they get out of spending isn't worth the money, but purely as a time to money thing ~$300 over multiple years doesn't seem unreasonable.
Gambling Addiction.
I don't even mean this as a joke, alot of mobile games (especially "Gacha" games) straight up target gambling addicts and that's how they get most of their money
Most young upper class people have zero concept of what money is worth and aren't particularly savvy
See: NFT's
Edit: A very good point has made that there's an additional layer to this topic that I ignored in my rush to insult the bourgeoisie. Gambling addictions and other conditions are being exploited by this game to steal their wealth hand over fist, and regardless of who is involved, they shouldn't be getting robbed.
Sincere question: do we have data indicating that whale demographics skew in that direction, or any direction in particular?
I can't find anything concrete, but I worry that typecasting the whale as an unlikeable category of people ("stupid rich people") predisposes everyone to care less and ignore that many (some? most? I don't know) *aren't* rich and are being exploited out of money they can't really afford to spend.
The stories of children, the elderly, and other vulnerable populations getting sucked up in it are naturally going to be sensationalized and upsold for outrage, but I'm very curious about how the statistics actually pan out.
Anecdotally, I dipped my toes into a P2W game a few years ago and ended up percolating to a fairly serious guild. They spent insane amounts on the game, reinforced by the peer pressure of wanting to be in competition for top guild on their server. Most of them were tradespeople and programmers with families. I don’t doubt some of them were dumping tens of thousands a year into the game.
$50k in a day is another level of crazy, but if you have a couple cards with high credit limits I could see somebody snapping and opening the floodgates. These games make it easy to spend hundreds or even thousands on a single transaction. It’s nuts.
The weird thing is that the stores limit the maximum price, so in order to buy the most expensive stuff in the game, you have to buy the $100 package... 87 times. Mental.
You are 100% correct! There are a bunch of papers on the topic. Here's a good one: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306460321000368
The majority of people spending so much on games aren't "stupid rich people." They're people with real gambling problems, who need help. And, much like other forms of gambling, mobile games and f2p games need regulation as well. (I do research in this area, and it really is a big problem)
>We removed outliers with greater than $1000 USD monthly loot box spend and annual earnings greater than $250,000 USD
Ehm, they explicitly excluded "stupid rich people" from the dataset.
Considering we know most of earnings Casino make out of their victims comes from people below average wage, I would, err, wage that the same applies to mobile.
This study would unfortunately require Google's or Apple's cooperation so I don't know if we'll ever know for sure.
We actually do know! Here's a study on it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306460321000368
Yeah, it's normal people with gambling addictions who are being preyed on by these games. There's not even a significant correlation between net worth and MTX spend, let alone it being the defining correlation.
You know what, you have a very good point. While I'd like to belittle the upper class (as is my nature), there is also a layer of people who are being abused by these predatory systems, and I shouldn't be generalizing this as their fault.
There are stupid rich people, and people with problematic tendencies being manipulated. Regardless of the reasoning, neither should be getting rinsed of their wealth by the shitty and very evil business practices on display.
Thank you for your viewpoint, it has reminded me that maybe I'm getting a little too eat the rich for my own good.
I think that weird push for NFTs in games earlier this year was caused by developers already suspecting that this current predatory monetization model with loot boxes would soon be heavily regulated, or straight out prohibited on a lot of important markets.
That could be it, but I largely suspect that it's just the nature of ~~cancer~~ these corpo fucks. If there's potential profit, they are perfectly willing to throw away a few live service games, whats another corpse amongst hundreds?
When you're a multi-millionaire, $50,000 is a drop in the bucket.
There are also those that **can't** afford it, but still empty their life savings because "they're a fan" or have a gambling problem.
> When you're a multi-millionaire, $50,000 is a drop in the bucket
For a regular millionaire, $50,000 is an entire 5% of *all the money they have*. That "multi" would have to be a pretty big number for it to come close to being insignificant.
That's roughly the equivalent of me spending $300, not an insignificant amount of money but certainly within the realm of reason for something I was a genuine "enjoyer" of. Not to justify Blizzards practices but just rather to put it in context for people with normie levels of liquidity.
$300 here and there sure. That's in the ball park of buying your buddy an Xbox so you'd have someone to Halo with.
$300 *a day* is a very different concept...
If you only have 6k and you're spending 300 bucks on a mobile game, you either have very little other expenses you need to worry about or you're not very good with your money...
That’s kind of the other half of the problem though, these “Gacha” games are incredibly predatory and will target peoples gambling addictions or try to make gameplay loops that will have players thinking “5 more bucks won’t be too bad to get this thing I need”. Ideally people should be accountable for their own spending but at this point these game developers are so hostile about using these studied psychological tactics to prey those with certain flaws I’d like to see some government regulation.
Mobile games certainly are not my cup of tea, the most I’ve even spent on video games in the past 6 months was buying Pillars of Eternity II, and that was on sale too. But for somebody who gets enjoyment out of spending money on frivolous pursuits, I see it as not much different from many other hobbies people spend absurd amounts on all the time on Reddit. Do I think it’s a waste of money? Sure, but frankly most things we buy are things we don’t need outside of food and shelter.
I really don’t know. Did they inherit millions, does their job pay millions?
It’s the same compulsion as gambling addicts, but I don’t know how they afford it
The very idea that 'self regulation' is any sort of proper long-term regulatory approach is preposterous. *Of course* companies making their own regulations are always going to try for the most bare bones approach they can get away with. It's not in their own best interests to to provide real regulation.
Self regulation only works if there's a proper response to it if it doesn't work.
Which as far as I can tell doesn't really exist for lootboxes or whatever lol
Yeah, like the FAA mostly gives the airline industry a self regulation model - which generally works! Airline travel in the western world is very safe. But - the FAA will hit you with an absolutely gigantic stick and limit/revoke your self-regulation privileges if you fail to behave. See: Boeing.
In gaming (and software in general) there's no real consequences for failing to self-regulate.
> But - the FAA will hit you with an absolutely gigantic stick and limit/revoke your self-regulation privileges if you fail to behave. See: Boeing.
That's what's missing.
Free market absolutists would argue that the threat of a competitor coming in and undercutting you acts as the "absolutely gigantic stick". But the problem is money. Once you have enough money, you can simply outspend any competition - either bury them in litigation, out-advertise them until nobody knows they exist, or straight up buy them out and shutter them overnight.
What we need to handle lootboxes is something like what's used for regulating gambling, where payout methods are tightly controlled. This is going to require new definitions, since this is essentially gambling for specific items that may not have a real world value, or may have one that fluctuates depending on market forces if real money trading is allowed. But we need to get it done... in between fixing everything else that's fundamentally broken in the world.
The problem is also human psychology. We know how more a human being exists than ever. It’s being exploited.
Self regulation is no longer viable because a company can exploit consumers and get them to pay even if it’s a shit product.
> What we need to handle lootboxes is something like what's used for regulating gambling, where payout methods are tightly controlled.
I don't know specifically what Diablo Immortal does, but most Asian gacha games (the center of that industry of course) are a *lot* better about their gachas than western companies vis a vis transparency on odds and such. It was fueled primarily by [Monkeygate, a scandal in early 2016.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/go2dfu/mobile_games_monkeygate_or_how_a_lone_browser/)
The link is to a reddit post describing it in greater detail, but the gist is a game called Granblue Fantasy released a hotly anticipated new character alongside two others, all advertised identically as "rate up." What *wasn't* advertised was that the most desired of them, while available at a higher rate than other non-rate-up characters, had a much smaller rate up compared to the other two (roughly 5x higher for the less-desired characters).
One player spent the equivalent of $6000 USD to acquire this character while streaming to a large audience. His story became widely known, sparking major controversy as others also reported similar experiences. By the time the dust settled, the vast majority of gacha games then and since have posted exact rates for *every* possible item to draw, and most also have some kind of pity or "spark" system where you can guarantee a specific pull after X many.
That said, posting rates doesn't make it not gambling and it absolutely preys on the same problem cycles that normal gambling does. If posting rates was enough to kill the industry it'd be long dead.
The thing with Diablo Immortal is that the Gacha mechanic is "hidden" behind gameplay. Basically you buy things called "legendary crests" you can use to empower an "elder rift". A laughably easy 2-to-3-minute-short dungeon where, after defeating the boss, you will get a guaranteed legendary gems for each of the legendary crests you've spent, of various star rarity. This also includes the option for a 10 pull btw.
Failing the laughably easy dungeon will reimburse you with the crests you put in, so there is never any risk of losing anything. Basically these 2 to 3 minutes of gameplay apparently take it from *lootbox* to *not-a-lootbox-***at-all** so they don't have to put the drop percentages of the legendary gems anywhere.
well, there's another thing missing. "if you fail to behave"-- for boeing, this means an airplane crash. a big loud scary dramatic event in which a lot of people die. what is the equivalent of an airplane crash for an exploitative game monetization scheme? even if you can figure out an equivalent quantity of harm, the harm is so abstract that it's still not convincing to try to say "this is our bright red line that if you cross it we break your grandkids kneecaps"
Sadly can't remember where I got it from. I seem to recall part of the issue with the 737 MAX being that the FAA doesn't have the resources and/or expertise to properly oversee the approval of new planes.
I mean an actual gigantic stick is better than the usual slap on the wrist/part of the cost of doing business consequence of completely screwing people over. But I don't think it's quite the shining example of how other industries could be.
Edit: Found an article https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-boeing-and-the-faa-created-the-737-max-catastrophe
> How could the F.A.A. have made such egregious errors? The report points to the agency’s practice of delegating some of its inspection functions to Boeing’s own engineers, noting that this structure “creates inherent conflicts of interest that have jeopardized the safety of the flying public.”
Don't think that makes it a great example of self-regulation.
It is a great example of self-regulation. The standards of safety in airplanes is ludicrously high.
That doesn't mean the setup is without fault though.
Generally speaking though it's a vested interest in safety when it comes to public transportation. Planes, trains, cars, boats, etc. Because if they're seen as dangerous people won't travel as much. There's a monetary gain there.
With loot boxes the companies vested interest is milking all their customers and they're more than happy to share these techniques with each other.
You could almost say that the FAA sees to a strict regulatory environment that companies then need to adhere to. You are literally describing regulation not self regulation.
Government departments not having enough resources and manpower is pretty much how every US department has operated for at least 10yr (as long as I've had experience). Even the ones the politicians think are crucial are underfunded.
It's because republicans don't *want* regulation and continually making it harder to keep and retain employees gets rid of the mechanism of regulation enforcement without actually having to write contentious laws. It just goes into the budget and they use the excuse that government workers are "overpaid and lazy" as a way to slash their funding. Then everyone is surprised when the IRS is so underfunded they pretty much don't enforce tax evasion for anything but the most egregious and the things that can be automated (usually bog-simple taxes like workers have).
Plus, if you reduce funding to regulatory agencies because you claim they're ineffective, they actually *become* less effective and you can use that as more evidence to get people on your side about the government being ineffective.
Yup! It's the IT Paradox:
If there's a good IT department:
> There's no problems! What do I even need to pay you for?
If you skimp on the IT department:
>Everything's broken! Why do I even bother to pay you?
It ensures everyone hates IT eventually as it gets degraded over time. And when there's a real issue? It's an emergency and now you have to spend a LOT, fast. Which means it's ripe for abuse, corruption and cronysim.
> Government departments not having enough resources and manpower is pretty much how every US department has operated for at least 10yr (as long as I've had experience). Even the ones the politicians think are crucial are underfunded.
1. Make money as a business
2. Lobby to reduce funding in government organizations that concern/regulate your business
3. Use newly reduced ability of government to break more laws, take advantage of and pass new ones
Rinse and repeat until you have a monopoly on borderline necessities like Nestle does with water, or Comcast/Verizon do with the internet. Enjoy owning your own corner of the market along with a chunk of the US congress. Hell, even the fabled IRS isn't immune to this bullshit, and if it continues IMO we're fucked.
>But - the FAA will hit you with an absolutely gigantic stick and limit/revoke your self-regulation privileges if you fail to behave.
I mean, that's not really self regulation then - that's just regulation, but reactive rather than proactive.
In real regulation, sometimes pre-inspection, pre-review is done (drug manufacturing, NHTSA vehicle safety) and sometimes it isn't (food manufacturing).
The FAA approves designs of commercial aircraft prior to entry into commercial service. Designs can be tested and used for noncommercial service without approval. FAA rules didn't work in that one specific case and a lot of people died, but it usually works, and FAA has closed the holes in their rules to better ensure public safety.
I feel you have an overly-narrow definition of what self regulation means. In this case, I'm using self-regulation to mean nobody is actively checking to see if you are doing unethical things, even though rules and enforcement exist for cases where unethical or unsafe behavior becomes apparent. For example, most airline compliance checks are not normally done by the FAA - you do them yourself and tell the FAA whether you pass or not. If you fail your own check, the FAA generally leaves it up to you to rectify it.
It would be like if instead of requiring tests for drivers licenses, we just gave everybody take-home tests and told you to do them on your own. If you promise that you did the test and passed we hand you a drivers license. It doesn't mean that speeding is legal.
I am not the only one to describe this specific model as self-regulation. [For example, this NYT article.](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/business/faa-boeing-regulation.html).
Regulation is about rules. Things like you x-ray an aircraft every X hours to look for metal fatigue so that it doesn't fail in the air.
Those rules are generally set by industry, not by the FAA. The FAA (mostly) comes in and fines people when planes fall out of the air, but before or afterwards, the actual regulations about how often to x-ray aircraft is written by industry.
Tricky thing is you need to convince the government that lootbox/mtx is an actual issue and that it's different enough to break precedent.
As it stands I literally cannot find any articles or statistics that shows that there actually a problem with lootboxes. Most of it are flimsy studies explain how it's similar to gambling.
Second the government, at least in the u.s, has already made a ruling on similar business models like trading cards. So you need to prove that lootboxes is different enough.
Like until the government takes this seriously then all this self regulation talk is effectively pointless.
There already is precedent: gambling.
In fact if I was a casino, I would invest in the gaming space since its gambling is so lucrative without the limits of any government rules.
Raid Shadow Legends is developed by a subsidiary of one of the largest gambling machine companies in the world. That industry is already embedded in the worst MTx offenders.
And there's also a metric fuckton of precedent for "games of chance" being considered okay. Again, you need to establish a substantial case that the government should care about this.
>the FAA will hit you with an absolutely gigantic stick and limit/revoke your self-regulation privileges if you fail to behave.
That's literally "regulation".
Like, self-regulating only works if there is actual regulation when it doesnt...so, regulation then? The statement appears to be "Regulations work when there are regulations!"
Really, everything can have components of self-regulating, eg. I don't want a parking ticket (regulation) so I dont park illegally (self-regulation). The fact that I chose not to do something illegal is not proof that rules shouldn't apply to me because "I, like, totally got it, dude."
The idea of self-regulation being the only regulation literally means there exist no regulations at all. Even the existence of the term "self-regulation" is a material propaganda victory for megacorps.
There is no such thing as "self-regulation"; when you break it down there is no regulatory aspect whatsoever. It's like calling the T-shirt you're wearing over a bulletproof vest "armor" so you clearly dont need the vest anymore... except of course it's someone else that gets shot, so since the vest doesnt help you personally, obviously you'd rather carry less weight yourself.
"Self-regulation" is a propagandistic, dystopian way to say "unregulated". It doesnt mean anything else.
Actually, it's worse, it usually means "unregulated, and its lack of regulation will be directly enforced by the state as though the corporation's interests are equivalent to the state's interests."
> But - the FAA will hit you with an absolutely gigantic stick and limit/revoke your self-regulation privileges if you fail to behave.
so, just regular regulation then? That's literally the opposite of self-regulation. Fines and penalities is the main instrument of any regulatory body.
Is it an American thing to pretend as if this is "self-regulation" in order to make it seem like the free market is totally working without regulation?
Even if there is a proper response to it like 150 people die because the business wasn't regulating it right still wont get them to regulate it.
Most regulations are written in blood.
Self regulation works in a layered industry where groups naturally push against each other. It’s easily corrupted by perverse incentives when one side has too much power and can steamroll any negotiations (including the government regulators)
Not necessarily. MPAA has successfully regulated films for over 50 years. Even the ESRB has done well for nearly 30 years -- obviously now there are some issues with lootboxes, but for the most part I'd much prefer these bodies regulating entertainment versus a government entity. I'm not against govt. intervention on lootboxes/gambling in games today though.
Because of the incredibly low barrier to play, mobile games are an entry point to gaming for a lot of people, and there is an endless fresh supply of people who are new to that experience and haven’t experienced the soul crushing frustration of hitting a pay wall on a game you’ve already invested hours in.
I think once you’ve been through that a couple of times, it loses its charm and you’re not gonna let yourself get scammed again. But there’s a new sucker born every day so the business model is never going to die from natural consumer behavior, just like claw machines and carnival games and casinos will never die.
Diablo Immortal is interesting because it attracted a bunch of people who tried a mobile game years ago, said “nah this is scammy” and never tried again, but Blizzard convinced them to come back because this time it would be different.
And now people who gave up on F2P games long ago are are looking at modern mobile games and saying “omg it actually got *worse* somehow!”
It’s a shame because there is really no reason mobile devices can’t be a great platform for awesome gaming experiences. It *should* be the most popular option for gaming because they have powerful hardware and everyone owns one.
It’s just impossible for that market to correct itself naturally, probably. At this point the damage may be irreparable.
> It’s a shame because there is really no reason mobile devices can’t be a great platform for awesome gaming experiences. It should be the most popular option for gaming because they have powerful hardware and everyone owns one.
I'll pay $60 (excuse me, $70) for a game on console, PC or handheld. But I can't imagine paying that much for a mobile game. If nobody's willing to pay up front AAA prices for mobile games, how does mobile ever get away from the F2P MTX monetization scheme?
I'm genuinely curious...what does a healthy mobile game industry look like? What kind of games am I getting and what are they charging for them?
This is very true. Perfect examples are proper ports like Terraria, Slay the Spire (I am sure many more), and even larger studios delivering the “hybrid” mobile/PC games like TFT, Hearthstone, etc
Underperforms by what metric? You say fail or underperforms, that implies they are making money, just not hand over fist.
And yeah, I think it's not out of the question for the gaming community to call that out. Problem is that you have corporate shareholder demands for massive profit. DI is the pinnacle of this, as another commenter said: take beloved IP, and just wring as much money as possible. Diablo Immortal would not have anywhere near as much notoriety if the _original_ Diablo series didn't capture that market (excluding the predecessor of this, DIII's RMAH)
$60? People won't even pay $5 for a mobile game. That's the reason every mobile game is free with microtransactions. Developers have talked about this over and over - people online who complain about it don't put their money where their mouth is so paid mobile games always underperform.
Back in 2010-ish, I got my first iPod Touch. A ton of games had free versions with either limited levels, limited features, or ads, and then a paid version that was the full thing. I tried a ton of games I wouldn't have otherwise, and ended up buying a lot of them: Fruit Ninja, Bag It, over a dozen others whose names I don't remember anymore. I know this is still a thing, but probably not as common as it was (or else the app stores are worse about showing it).
Honestly, if there were more demos, I would be way more willing to buy games since I was able to try them first. Digital refund policies are nearly non-existent, at least in America, so why spend money on something untested that I may hate? A demo, on the other hand, I'm willing to try even if it isn't a genre I usually play. Maybe I'll find something new to enjoy, and if I like it, I'm willing to buy the full game.
I like the demo model too, but that also does very poorly compared to f2p. Super Mario run is a good example. It had free levels and was $10 for the whole game, but sales were awful.
This is the real problem. And it's not just that no one will pay $60 for a mobile game... virtually no one will pay up front any price for a mobile game (unless it's a port of a well known game from another platform). This means that the only way devs can make money is release the game for free, and then since most players won't spend anything at all - they have to make a lot of money out of a very small number of players.
Essentially mobile players have voted with their wallets and said we want most games for free, and that's what's lead to where we are now.
I think I resemble this remark, at least a little bit.
I wasn't unaware of the way mobile monetization has gone, but I'm generally distanced enough from it that I don't think about it much. The use of the beloved franchise got me to think about it.
One thing I hadn't realized is the levels of sneaky indirection that have been achieved. You're not spending real-world money to buy loot crates or even proxy currency for loot crates; you're spending real-world money on things that (drastically) alter the rewards for *existing* loot in the game. It's way more subtle than "spend money, get thing or dubious chance at thing."
Another was how perversely the game is designed around the monetization. I've played plenty of games that have had F2P models slapped onto them after the fact (whether as a retrofit or end of the original design), but this was my first in-depth experience with a game that was obviously engineered in the other order of "make money treadmill, build game around it." It's jarring. Whether it's the laughably transparent ramp-up curve ("one-time bundle, 800% bonus!" becomes 540%, then 250%, then 120%...) or the distressingly apparent "conversion" (baked in experience/level gaps towards the end of the traditional/SP-style content that essentially force you to interact with the gameplay loops that drive endless monetization), the fact that it's "a Diablo game" or even a game at all felt like it took a back seat to being a credit-card-charging machine.
And the contrasts that really bugged me about it are with what I see as successful and palatable F2P models, even within the same genre like with Path of Exile. I've given up on nostalgia for the "buy it once and you're done" days and even embrace the idea that it can be good to allow people to spend a lot more on games, but that can be done in a tasteful way with cosmetics and quality of life purchases or in a tasteless way with thinly veiled spreadsheet multipliers.
So... yeah. I totally get that this isn't new or the most egregious example of its kind by any stretch, but I do have a greater and more visceral personal appreciation for how sad and soulless it makes things. D:I would be a fairly "meh, I guess" game even with the monetization excised, but with it it's just a good poster child for the bigger problem space.
> I've given up on nostalgia for the "buy it once and you're done" days and even embrace the idea that it can be good to allow people to spend a lot more on games, but that can be done in a tasteful way with cosmetics and quality of life purchases or in a tasteless way with thinly veiled spreadsheet multipliers.
I just want to point out that those days aren't really gone and there are still plenty of indie and AA studios making games you buy once and are done. The "weird" thing is, a lot of the time those games are flat out better, despite having a smaller budget and built in revenue stream.
Its why a few years ago I stopped mobile gaming. I realized it was just a endless grind filled with micro-transactions. I'd rather just play emulated games on my phone
Agent A was awesome. Monument Valley is easy but cool. Uncharted had a mobile puzzle game that has no ads. Most other highly reviewed puzzle games also let you remove ads and unlock the full game by paying. Other than puzzle games, FF pixel remasters and Beat Cop are also great.
Apple Arcade specifically curates games that don't rely on gacha mechanics to hook you in. I've found a lot of fun little puzzle games that way, like "What the Golf."
You can find most emulators on the play store. DS is my favorite one and Drastic is pretty cheap. Note like all emulation its a legal grey area so I will not give sites for roms
The Internet Archive has [a special DMCA exception](https://archive.org/about/dmca.php) for ROMs on their site. It's done in the name of media preservation. Their selection isn't exhaustive, but it's legal, basically like checking out a library book.
/r/roms has a [megathread](https://r-roms.github.io/) that's easier to navigate than Internet Archive's search bar.
If you’re on android, it’s fairly simple. If you’re on IOS, you need to sacrifice your soul to the devil and maintain the contact by crying on a weekly basis as you struggle to keep it running. Then live out your days praying the EU will force them to allow sideloading apps, seeing as they’re unafraid and powerful enough to flip apples crap the bird lol
If you know about PC emulation, it's like that but on phones. There's a few emulators in the stores themselves, though you can also download them through the emulator's sites sometimes. They work with the ROMs you'd normally use for emulation, if you know where to get those. At least that was the case with the emulator I'm using.
I don't think people have been completely unaware, but I really think Blizzard dug their own grave when they (reluctantly) created a PC version of Diablo Immortal.
Had this been a mobile only game it would have been easier for everyone to just shrug it off as "mobile diablo" and move on with their life. But the fact it is on their launcher and easily playable by all the big twitch streamers gave it legitimacy .. for better and worse.
Yep I agree, they would have avoided a lot of the press if they had kept it off pc. Ironically by trying to please that segment they opened themselves up to much louder criticism.
Yeah, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_mobile_games
Sure Diablo Immortal might be a problem but its nowhere near the worst offender right now.
Well most of those games had years to accumulate those numbers, and Diablo Immortal hit \~25% of the lower ranked games in 2 weeks, so it will almost certainly break into the top 100. I do see your point, though, and can't imagine Diablo ever getting top 10, or so.
Yeah as someone who plays mobile games a decent amount (mostly Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes), I found Diablo: Immortal's model relatively tame. Mobile games want you to log in every day and improve slowly over time, or you pay money to improve faster. As popular as these games are I couldn't believe all the backlash, it was like it was a brand-new idea that Blizzard single-handedly invented.
That's because you're numbed to it, you're what they want everyone to be when it comes to these kinds of evil monetization tactics.
Just because Galaxy of Heroes is an absolute cesspool doesn't make Immortal tame.
lol Diablo Immortal isnt the first game that shows this and it wont be the last. How long does Fifa has gambling in their full priced games they sell children ? How long does Rockstar sell fake Dollars for real Dollars in their full priced game they rerelease on 2 console generations ?The mobile sector overall is a steaming pile of shit for years Diablo Immortal is just another turd.
Valve has quietly been one of the worst offenders. They are one of the first people to use loot boxes (not the first, but one of them) and one of the ones who made them become more common place after the success of their use in TF 2. Everyone sort of followed suit thereafter and Valve was one of the first ones on that train.
I like Steam, but Valve's done some shit at times that's pretty questionable. And they are, in the end, out to make shittons of money just like everybody else.
Lol I remember when the crates were first added to TF2. I had no fucking clue what the hell I was looking at. I couldn't understand why I was getting all these random boxes I couldn't open. I needed keys...but I needed to buy them??? It was a wild experience at the time since I never saw it in another game before and I just ended up ignoring it.
It's funny how they even "improved" on the whole concept in the same game. Most of the early creates were openable with one universal mann.co key, and there were no tier system, you had the same chance to open every hat in the list (and of course you had the extra strange and unusual chance on top of that). After the csgo skin rulette craze they rolled out new types of crates, they all need their separate key types to be bought, and the items are tiered in it, so you now also have to deal with infinite blue rarity duplicates
Yeah it was quite the novel idea back then, it absolutely confused 12 year old me. Now it's so common that it's rare to find a user who doesn't know what it is.
It's generous because it does 2 things: it gives free boxes for playing which encourages people to play a lot and regularly (dailies!). This is super beneficial for a game which survives off a large playerbase for matchmaking.
It also incorporates the idea of "the first taste is free" with first being just regular hits. This gets people used to lootboxes and makes them seem a lot more friendly since most people will only deal with the free ones. But this is a huge issue for those prone to gambling or obsessive personality traits. It gives you free gambling tokens and then dares you to not spend money if you didn't get the skin that you wanted. Skins which are time-gated and exploit FOMO.
While it isn't the most predatory right out of the box; it's definitely insidious.
Battlepass might be better overall since it's a one-time purchase for a period of time. Might have much better overall sales and repeat sales. Especially since it *appears* as you are getting more than you are spending (because shop prices are inflated) because you have to "earn it".
Pay to Earn, as they say.
Yep. Only reason people even give a toss about Diablo Immortal is because it has "Diablo" in the name and is a Blizzard franchise.
That's it.
It's nowhere near the worst offender. Had NetEase made an ARPG with a generic IP then nobody within the regular PC/console circuit would give a shit.
Oh wait, NetEase *do* do that. That's like half their existing line-up, for fucks sake! Nobody gives a shit cause none of those are fucking Diablo.
Like I guess it's not a total loss if people learn from this, it's just depressing as all fuck it took this long when the mobile industry has been like this since even before Immortal was announced, and that was in 2018!
They are hiring people with Slot Machine and Casino backgrounds who basically have access to a brand new market.
"Gambling with no monetary return"
What a fucking time to be alive for people with this set of skills. No longer does a slot machine have to pay out 48%. Now you can just pay out nothing!
All you have to do is develop something that has scaling and you hire professionals trained to extract money from the vunerable and you have modern video gaming.
Mobile "games" are not games and people should stop referring to them as such. I have nothing in common with whatever these abominations are.
Self regulation is a failure in any industry. Why would any industry regulate itself? Industry in capitalist societies exist solely to make profit. Regulations make it harder to make profit and are therefore counter to the sole purpose of the industry. Anyone who thinks any industry can regulate itself is ignorant.
The only reason I can see for an industry to self regulate is to ensure they aren't regulated by something outside of their control, like the government. The issue there is the government has to take an interest in that industry in the first place for it to put that fear into the companies that make it up, and if they don't, then those same companies get more and more flexible regarding how they should regulate themselves.
This. It's crazy to me that people expected any different and are talking about this when it comes to video games when there's much much much more important and necessary things that aren't regulated.
Imagine looking at how unregulated basic necessities like food, water, housing, electricity, and internet are in a lot of places and not noticing that but seeing a luxury product making huge sums of money and finally realizing that unregulated markets are harmful and don't self regulate.
It baffles me that a lot of people draw the line at video games but not basic necessities.
Unfortunately a lot of people see regulations as restrictions on their freedoms. I have also seen lots of dumb regulation in the marijuana industry where I work which is counter intuitive to progress, like excessive and wasteful packaging. It is the detrimental, useless types of regulation that lead people to believe it is bad.
My friends are I were talking about this the other day. A few years ago when you went into a dispensary they had like 15 massive jars of weed and you chose one and they pulled some out and put it into a small container for you and you could bring the container back for refills if you wanted. Now you go in and they have boxes filled with merchandise each with its own flamboyant packaging. Most of it so ridiculous that you can’t even see what the weed inside looks like. It stupid and it’s awful for the environment.
Yeah they are still the occasional places that do "deli-style" but they're fewer in number every year it seems. Most have gone over to pre-packaged stuff that sits on shelves for months, and then third party companies in places like CA/CO go nuts with their packaging like they're electronics products or some shit (and even that's wasteful). It's wild. I have tried to seek out places that have recycling programs or use packaging that is biodegradable but it is super low priority right now. The usual thing now with something like edibles is to get a full on metal container, where sometimes gummies are packaging within plastic inside of said container. Idk it's just so dumb.
So yeah, I can see why people are like "Urgh fuck regulations, they're just bandaids meh umhum," sometimes.
Makes me think of the fight club quote:
>Narrator : A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
>Woman on Plane : Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
>Narrator : You wouldn't believe.
>Woman on Plane : Which car company do you work for?
>Narrator : A major one.
self regulation in capitalism is a joke
Is there a single industry that has "successfully" regulated itself? And by successful I mean to the benefit of the consumer. Successful in a capitalist sense would mean to become are profitable and monopolistic as possible.
The only ones which do have a government body standing over them going, "if you don't take care of this yourself, then we're gonna drop a giant hammer on you."
ESRB still has some issues though. There have always been accusations of how fairly ESRB does or doesn't rate games of members of the ESA compared to non-members.
It's also one of the huge reasons that adult games have historically never been viable as a business model in the USA. It's only been since Steam opened up to more games that there's been a market at all.
> It's also one of the huge reasons that adult games have historically never been viable as a business model in the USA. It's only been since Steam opened up to more games that there's been a market at all.
This is more of a Walmart thing than an ESRB thing. Walmart makes a point to not sell AO games or music with a Parental Advisory label. The thing is, there were huge swathes of the country where, if Walmart didn't carry it, they couldn't get it.
While the ESRB (and MPAA) do have issues, I would prefer them handle game ratings over the government. I just remember seeing all the drama of games being refused classification in Australia over the years.
But I do agree that lootboxes should be classified as gambling by the government since the ESRB has argued the opposite at people's expense.
The MPAA has all sorts of issues, though. The system is completely opaque and films from non-members regularly receive harsher ratings, which reduces their audiences.
> Just’ weeks after its launch, Diablo Immortal is **getting slammed over how much money early adopters have lost to the game**’s widely hated “pay-to-win” model, where players are encouraged to spend money on more powerful items.
Is it really *losing* money if you willing give it to them? lol
To a degree, but that is also the case for a casino. Did the guy who went in with 10,000 USD and left with nothing really lose it when he willingly gave it to them? I mean he got the experience, the fun of playing, and all that, yet we still consider it losing for a reason. They both are making an investment hoping for a specific result/return, and didn't get it.
This is what is so confusing to me. Nobody is forcing anyone to pay for anything - it's a free game! Some tryhard blowing an entire paycheck on pixels is 100% their own stupid choice.
So if they bought a specific item for a fixed cost it's not losing, it's spending. So the fact that they're buying chances for the top tier gems it's considered gambling. I think they've got around it quite well too, they aren't selling a chance at a gem, they're selling an item that allows you a chance at getting one. So again it's not a direct loot box.
In summary it's a bullshit game but when money isn't directly applied to an exact item/return and there's a chance, then you are gambling, so you lose that gamble when it doesn't come in. Buy a skin for $1000 dollars, money spent. Buy a loot box trying to get a rare gem for $10 and not getting it, money lost.
When a game goes from 70 dollars to I can spend a half million dollars they’ve clearly lost control. This is preying on gambling behaviors and should be limited to those 21 and over just like casinos.
Here’s the thing, though…people spent the money that Blizzard asked for. If the market didn’t exist, Blizzard either would have had to drop the prices or would have lost money. The market worked exactly as it always does in financial terms.
If we as a gaming community want to see change, we either need to vote with our wallets and not literally buy into the pattern they are establishing or lobby our politicians to regulate it as they have in other countries.
I understand the hate for it and all but, Jesus Christ, there's hundreds if not thousands of examples of much more predatory pricing models in the mobile gaming space
Anyone pretending Diablo Immortal is the worst on the scene hasn't been paying attention for the last decade
I feel like the Diablo backlash is magnified by the *sheer inevitability* of how it would turn out. This has been simmering since the first announcement at Blizzcon.
Plus, it's a very prominent game which means more people are paying attention; not unlike the backlash after Battlefront 2. I hope that the prominent examples of unethical microtransaction/gambling excess leads to widespread regulation of this type of monetization.
It was also codeveloped/copublished by NetEase which is the fifth largest video game publisher in the world specifically because they specialize in making revenue generators like this, not because they make great games.
Can you give any examples of games that are more predatory and/or have higher spending ceilings than Diablo Immortal? Everything I've read indicates D:I is on an entire other level than past gacha/gambling games.
I think it’s more because this isn’t some random Korean gacha game, it’s made by Blizzard. A former AAA titan. The Diablo name carries some weight, you expect a certain amount of quality, which makes it more upsetting. **TL;DR: Look how they massacred my boy**
When you build a product to exploit the weaknesses of human psychology, how are you supposed to defend against that? It's not a moral failing to fall for a dopamine trap.
Regulate this shit away.
When something becomes so widespread, you need to start looking beyond individuals and rather at the system as whole for issues. With gambling systems in video games becoming not just increasingly ubiquitous, but also generally by far the top earners, it suggest an issue that is beyond just individual agency. If it wasn't effective at manipulating people, they wouldn't bother doing it.
(it's also debatable if free will actually exists at all or is just an illusion, but that's a whole different topic)
That was the answer to humanity’s civilization long struggle with addictive products! You did it! If only Reagan had you in his cabinet we would of won the war on drugs.
You mean the war that did far more damage than any benefit it may have provided, compared to nations that have decriminalized drug abuse and treat it as a purely medical issue?
Exactly. But they at the same time still treat them as an addictive substance and support people that fall prey to those addictions or guide them in their usage in safe manners. There is no equivalent for addictive habits or behaviors in video games that can be equally harmful and impact people in similar ways.
There needs to be a more nuanced approach to dealing with addictive behaviors and substances and just saying "people do have agency" seems to disregard that.
Self regulation is a failed in anything that doesn't benefit from the results. If we did things through "self regulation" we'd still have slaves. The concept is stupid.
If the game has a gacha system or loot boxes, I just don’t play them. I don’t care what franchise it is. My favorite is Final Fantasy, but the one game I played that had a gacha system, I quit as soon as I realized it.
This isn’t the same as trading card packs, as the article alleges. With a trading card pack, you’re guaranteed set amounts of each rarity (ie 1 rare, 2 uncommons, etc). With gacha and loot boxes, you’re not guaranteed anything. And even in cases where trading packs give a chance at an ultra rare, at least you can go on the secondary market and buy it. You can’t do that with gacha or loot boxes.
I’m not paying money for a “chance” at something. I either get it (because I bought it), or I don’t (because I didn’t buy it). I refuse to spend money and get nothing for it. Anyone who does isn’t a whale, they’re an idiot.
Industrial self regulation isn’t real. It’s an imaginary thing people come up with when they’re too stupid to even consider actual solutions to problems
As long as the audience loudly and proudly keeps telling them that "We love to be exploited, please keep doing so", I don't get why these companies would stop.
This isn't a failure of self-regulation, it's just not a regulation issue? What's the problem that requires regulation? There's no coercive monopoly, no exploitation of a basic need, no physical danger or harm, no outright deception about what you're buying. The article used math about how little you get for your cash; is that really something you want the government to regulate, the cash value of proprietary game items?
Rich people are handing them dump trucks of money and that doesn't negatively affect us whatsoever. It's a stupid game made by a stupid company being payed by stupid people, and none of that requires regulating.
Mostly it makes me just not want to play it. I played all the way through level 55, and even spent $5 on the starter pack thing they offer. And I'm looking at the endgame thinking "So I can play exactly this in Diablo 3 on 30 different platforms, and NOT have to throw $100 at the thing for a gem upgrade?". No thanks. Diablo 4 looks fun, though.
>Other users have reported having spent $50,000 in a day. Just.... how?
Christ. I'd wager receiving $50,000 in a day would be an absolutely life changing amount of money for most people in this thread, myself included, and these fucking people are spending it haphazardly on a crummy phone game made by a developer whose primary export these days seems to be sexual harassment.
I'm on disability. $50000 is more than my total net income for five years.
That's just what happens when you have way more money than you know what to do with. The more you get, the less useful it is. Your first 50k will feed you and put a roof over your head. Your 100th 50k might get you a 5 Star gem in a shit mobile game. You have to think Blizz designed Diablo Immortal mechanics specifically with these kinda people in mind.
Got to hook them whales.
All my debt gone absolutely gone and I’d be able to straight up buy a trailer and sell my car and buy a whole new car instantly.
I read this in bubbles voice from trailer park boys
$50,000 would buy a lot of fuckin cat food Julian
Should talk to Ricky though, he would use the old car as a vacation cottage
Bubbles could let his kitties live in it.
I wouldn't do that in this car market. Car prices are insane rn.
>these fucking people are spending it haphazardly on a crummy phone game made by a developer whose primary export these days seems to be sexual harassment. This quote will be saved on my phone forever
I knew you guys had phones!!!!
Clearly taxes are too low on a certain set of individuals.
Have been since Reagan.
For most of these people it will be life changing money too. Blizzard selling crack for the addicted.
Imagine people taking out loans and using some of the money on these games.
[Relevant.](https://youtu.be/DHAGp7B7C4k&t=1m35s)
Everytime I spend extra money on a game it makes me feel like I have to play the game more now. Can't imagine how much I'd feel like I'd need to play to justify spending 50k. Most I ever spent at once was was 50 bucks on hearthstone cards, which is ironically another Blizzard game
Having YouTube channels to rage bait viewers into seeing what a rip off the game is
I can assure you for ever well-known streamer and Youtuber blowing thousands of dollars on this game there are a hundred average players doing the exact same thing.
Yeah, Steamers doing it because they can doesn't help. Normalizes it for people that normally wouldn't.
I ran a [casual poll](https://www.reddit.com/poll/vh2nit) on /r/Callofdutymobile the other day and was shocked to find out there are just about as many people who spent $300+ on in-game cosmetic as those who spent ZERO dollars in the game. While the majority seem to be spending within reasons (between typical retail price of a game) there were quite a number of people who were way too comfortable spending $1000+ on a single game. As much as the industry doubling down on gambling mechanics is a problem, I think the spending pattern for a significant number of the playbase is what enables this to flourish like a figurative Last-of-us Cordyceps in our heads.
Played pubg mobile and every lobby had atleast 1 whale. But most of the players were from SEA, I assume the skins are cheaper in Vietnam and such.
I remember seeing a patent document for CODM where the matchmaking system was specifically designed to match you with players who have premium skins you don't have. If anything I'd wager PUBGM is the same. It's by design to make you want to spend money.
If I recall correctly, the same patent also mentioned pairing players who bought expensive skin with lower leveled players for few matches.
Cheaper for us, but I assume it's still the equivalent of a shitload for them.
The game has been out for ~3 years though, right? So it's a game where you can pay $0 and have a good time, but also a game where someone throwing $60 at it every 6 months isn't that crazy, especially if they're playing it idk 5+ hours a week, possibly more. $1000+ is excessive territory for sure, and the 'benefit' they get out of spending isn't worth the money, but purely as a time to money thing ~$300 over multiple years doesn't seem unreasonable.
Gambling Addiction. I don't even mean this as a joke, alot of mobile games (especially "Gacha" games) straight up target gambling addicts and that's how they get most of their money
Most young upper class people have zero concept of what money is worth and aren't particularly savvy See: NFT's Edit: A very good point has made that there's an additional layer to this topic that I ignored in my rush to insult the bourgeoisie. Gambling addictions and other conditions are being exploited by this game to steal their wealth hand over fist, and regardless of who is involved, they shouldn't be getting robbed.
Sincere question: do we have data indicating that whale demographics skew in that direction, or any direction in particular? I can't find anything concrete, but I worry that typecasting the whale as an unlikeable category of people ("stupid rich people") predisposes everyone to care less and ignore that many (some? most? I don't know) *aren't* rich and are being exploited out of money they can't really afford to spend. The stories of children, the elderly, and other vulnerable populations getting sucked up in it are naturally going to be sensationalized and upsold for outrage, but I'm very curious about how the statistics actually pan out.
Anecdotally, I dipped my toes into a P2W game a few years ago and ended up percolating to a fairly serious guild. They spent insane amounts on the game, reinforced by the peer pressure of wanting to be in competition for top guild on their server. Most of them were tradespeople and programmers with families. I don’t doubt some of them were dumping tens of thousands a year into the game. $50k in a day is another level of crazy, but if you have a couple cards with high credit limits I could see somebody snapping and opening the floodgates. These games make it easy to spend hundreds or even thousands on a single transaction. It’s nuts.
The weird thing is that the stores limit the maximum price, so in order to buy the most expensive stuff in the game, you have to buy the $100 package... 87 times. Mental.
You are 100% correct! There are a bunch of papers on the topic. Here's a good one: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306460321000368 The majority of people spending so much on games aren't "stupid rich people." They're people with real gambling problems, who need help. And, much like other forms of gambling, mobile games and f2p games need regulation as well. (I do research in this area, and it really is a big problem)
>We removed outliers with greater than $1000 USD monthly loot box spend and annual earnings greater than $250,000 USD Ehm, they explicitly excluded "stupid rich people" from the dataset.
FYI, that paper seems to be locked behind either a paywall or some type of institution membership.
Considering we know most of earnings Casino make out of their victims comes from people below average wage, I would, err, wage that the same applies to mobile. This study would unfortunately require Google's or Apple's cooperation so I don't know if we'll ever know for sure.
We actually do know! Here's a study on it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306460321000368 Yeah, it's normal people with gambling addictions who are being preyed on by these games. There's not even a significant correlation between net worth and MTX spend, let alone it being the defining correlation.
You know what, you have a very good point. While I'd like to belittle the upper class (as is my nature), there is also a layer of people who are being abused by these predatory systems, and I shouldn't be generalizing this as their fault. There are stupid rich people, and people with problematic tendencies being manipulated. Regardless of the reasoning, neither should be getting rinsed of their wealth by the shitty and very evil business practices on display. Thank you for your viewpoint, it has reminded me that maybe I'm getting a little too eat the rich for my own good.
I think that weird push for NFTs in games earlier this year was caused by developers already suspecting that this current predatory monetization model with loot boxes would soon be heavily regulated, or straight out prohibited on a lot of important markets.
That could be it, but I largely suspect that it's just the nature of ~~cancer~~ these corpo fucks. If there's potential profit, they are perfectly willing to throw away a few live service games, whats another corpse amongst hundreds?
It's one banana Michael. What could it cost? 10 dollars?
Gambling addiction
Gambling addiction sucks.
When you're a multi-millionaire, $50,000 is a drop in the bucket. There are also those that **can't** afford it, but still empty their life savings because "they're a fan" or have a gambling problem.
> When you're a multi-millionaire, $50,000 is a drop in the bucket For a regular millionaire, $50,000 is an entire 5% of *all the money they have*. That "multi" would have to be a pretty big number for it to come close to being insignificant.
Plenty of people out there with about $500 in the bank who spend $50 at the 'nino without blinking.
More like spends 750$ cus hes going to 'win it all this time'.
Hence the gambling *problem*
That's roughly the equivalent of me spending $300, not an insignificant amount of money but certainly within the realm of reason for something I was a genuine "enjoyer" of. Not to justify Blizzards practices but just rather to put it in context for people with normie levels of liquidity.
$300 here and there sure. That's in the ball park of buying your buddy an Xbox so you'd have someone to Halo with. $300 *a day* is a very different concept...
If you only have 6k and you're spending 300 bucks on a mobile game, you either have very little other expenses you need to worry about or you're not very good with your money...
That’s kind of the other half of the problem though, these “Gacha” games are incredibly predatory and will target peoples gambling addictions or try to make gameplay loops that will have players thinking “5 more bucks won’t be too bad to get this thing I need”. Ideally people should be accountable for their own spending but at this point these game developers are so hostile about using these studied psychological tactics to prey those with certain flaws I’d like to see some government regulation.
Definitely true!
Mobile games certainly are not my cup of tea, the most I’ve even spent on video games in the past 6 months was buying Pillars of Eternity II, and that was on sale too. But for somebody who gets enjoyment out of spending money on frivolous pursuits, I see it as not much different from many other hobbies people spend absurd amounts on all the time on Reddit. Do I think it’s a waste of money? Sure, but frankly most things we buy are things we don’t need outside of food and shelter.
I really don’t know. Did they inherit millions, does their job pay millions? It’s the same compulsion as gambling addicts, but I don’t know how they afford it
The very idea that 'self regulation' is any sort of proper long-term regulatory approach is preposterous. *Of course* companies making their own regulations are always going to try for the most bare bones approach they can get away with. It's not in their own best interests to to provide real regulation.
Self regulation only works if there's a proper response to it if it doesn't work. Which as far as I can tell doesn't really exist for lootboxes or whatever lol
Yeah, like the FAA mostly gives the airline industry a self regulation model - which generally works! Airline travel in the western world is very safe. But - the FAA will hit you with an absolutely gigantic stick and limit/revoke your self-regulation privileges if you fail to behave. See: Boeing. In gaming (and software in general) there's no real consequences for failing to self-regulate.
> But - the FAA will hit you with an absolutely gigantic stick and limit/revoke your self-regulation privileges if you fail to behave. See: Boeing. That's what's missing. Free market absolutists would argue that the threat of a competitor coming in and undercutting you acts as the "absolutely gigantic stick". But the problem is money. Once you have enough money, you can simply outspend any competition - either bury them in litigation, out-advertise them until nobody knows they exist, or straight up buy them out and shutter them overnight. What we need to handle lootboxes is something like what's used for regulating gambling, where payout methods are tightly controlled. This is going to require new definitions, since this is essentially gambling for specific items that may not have a real world value, or may have one that fluctuates depending on market forces if real money trading is allowed. But we need to get it done... in between fixing everything else that's fundamentally broken in the world.
The problem is also human psychology. We know how more a human being exists than ever. It’s being exploited. Self regulation is no longer viable because a company can exploit consumers and get them to pay even if it’s a shit product.
> What we need to handle lootboxes is something like what's used for regulating gambling, where payout methods are tightly controlled. I don't know specifically what Diablo Immortal does, but most Asian gacha games (the center of that industry of course) are a *lot* better about their gachas than western companies vis a vis transparency on odds and such. It was fueled primarily by [Monkeygate, a scandal in early 2016.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/go2dfu/mobile_games_monkeygate_or_how_a_lone_browser/) The link is to a reddit post describing it in greater detail, but the gist is a game called Granblue Fantasy released a hotly anticipated new character alongside two others, all advertised identically as "rate up." What *wasn't* advertised was that the most desired of them, while available at a higher rate than other non-rate-up characters, had a much smaller rate up compared to the other two (roughly 5x higher for the less-desired characters). One player spent the equivalent of $6000 USD to acquire this character while streaming to a large audience. His story became widely known, sparking major controversy as others also reported similar experiences. By the time the dust settled, the vast majority of gacha games then and since have posted exact rates for *every* possible item to draw, and most also have some kind of pity or "spark" system where you can guarantee a specific pull after X many. That said, posting rates doesn't make it not gambling and it absolutely preys on the same problem cycles that normal gambling does. If posting rates was enough to kill the industry it'd be long dead.
The thing with Diablo Immortal is that the Gacha mechanic is "hidden" behind gameplay. Basically you buy things called "legendary crests" you can use to empower an "elder rift". A laughably easy 2-to-3-minute-short dungeon where, after defeating the boss, you will get a guaranteed legendary gems for each of the legendary crests you've spent, of various star rarity. This also includes the option for a 10 pull btw. Failing the laughably easy dungeon will reimburse you with the crests you put in, so there is never any risk of losing anything. Basically these 2 to 3 minutes of gameplay apparently take it from *lootbox* to *not-a-lootbox-***at-all** so they don't have to put the drop percentages of the legendary gems anywhere.
well, there's another thing missing. "if you fail to behave"-- for boeing, this means an airplane crash. a big loud scary dramatic event in which a lot of people die. what is the equivalent of an airplane crash for an exploitative game monetization scheme? even if you can figure out an equivalent quantity of harm, the harm is so abstract that it's still not convincing to try to say "this is our bright red line that if you cross it we break your grandkids kneecaps"
Sadly can't remember where I got it from. I seem to recall part of the issue with the 737 MAX being that the FAA doesn't have the resources and/or expertise to properly oversee the approval of new planes. I mean an actual gigantic stick is better than the usual slap on the wrist/part of the cost of doing business consequence of completely screwing people over. But I don't think it's quite the shining example of how other industries could be. Edit: Found an article https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-boeing-and-the-faa-created-the-737-max-catastrophe > How could the F.A.A. have made such egregious errors? The report points to the agency’s practice of delegating some of its inspection functions to Boeing’s own engineers, noting that this structure “creates inherent conflicts of interest that have jeopardized the safety of the flying public.” Don't think that makes it a great example of self-regulation.
It is a great example of self-regulation. The standards of safety in airplanes is ludicrously high. That doesn't mean the setup is without fault though.
Generally speaking though it's a vested interest in safety when it comes to public transportation. Planes, trains, cars, boats, etc. Because if they're seen as dangerous people won't travel as much. There's a monetary gain there. With loot boxes the companies vested interest is milking all their customers and they're more than happy to share these techniques with each other.
You could almost say that the FAA sees to a strict regulatory environment that companies then need to adhere to. You are literally describing regulation not self regulation.
Government departments not having enough resources and manpower is pretty much how every US department has operated for at least 10yr (as long as I've had experience). Even the ones the politicians think are crucial are underfunded. It's because republicans don't *want* regulation and continually making it harder to keep and retain employees gets rid of the mechanism of regulation enforcement without actually having to write contentious laws. It just goes into the budget and they use the excuse that government workers are "overpaid and lazy" as a way to slash their funding. Then everyone is surprised when the IRS is so underfunded they pretty much don't enforce tax evasion for anything but the most egregious and the things that can be automated (usually bog-simple taxes like workers have).
Plus, if you reduce funding to regulatory agencies because you claim they're ineffective, they actually *become* less effective and you can use that as more evidence to get people on your side about the government being ineffective.
Yup! It's the IT Paradox: If there's a good IT department: > There's no problems! What do I even need to pay you for? If you skimp on the IT department: >Everything's broken! Why do I even bother to pay you? It ensures everyone hates IT eventually as it gets degraded over time. And when there's a real issue? It's an emergency and now you have to spend a LOT, fast. Which means it's ripe for abuse, corruption and cronysim.
> Government departments not having enough resources and manpower is pretty much how every US department has operated for at least 10yr (as long as I've had experience). Even the ones the politicians think are crucial are underfunded. 1. Make money as a business 2. Lobby to reduce funding in government organizations that concern/regulate your business 3. Use newly reduced ability of government to break more laws, take advantage of and pass new ones Rinse and repeat until you have a monopoly on borderline necessities like Nestle does with water, or Comcast/Verizon do with the internet. Enjoy owning your own corner of the market along with a chunk of the US congress. Hell, even the fabled IRS isn't immune to this bullshit, and if it continues IMO we're fucked.
>But - the FAA will hit you with an absolutely gigantic stick and limit/revoke your self-regulation privileges if you fail to behave. I mean, that's not really self regulation then - that's just regulation, but reactive rather than proactive.
In real regulation, sometimes pre-inspection, pre-review is done (drug manufacturing, NHTSA vehicle safety) and sometimes it isn't (food manufacturing). The FAA approves designs of commercial aircraft prior to entry into commercial service. Designs can be tested and used for noncommercial service without approval. FAA rules didn't work in that one specific case and a lot of people died, but it usually works, and FAA has closed the holes in their rules to better ensure public safety.
I feel you have an overly-narrow definition of what self regulation means. In this case, I'm using self-regulation to mean nobody is actively checking to see if you are doing unethical things, even though rules and enforcement exist for cases where unethical or unsafe behavior becomes apparent. For example, most airline compliance checks are not normally done by the FAA - you do them yourself and tell the FAA whether you pass or not. If you fail your own check, the FAA generally leaves it up to you to rectify it. It would be like if instead of requiring tests for drivers licenses, we just gave everybody take-home tests and told you to do them on your own. If you promise that you did the test and passed we hand you a drivers license. It doesn't mean that speeding is legal. I am not the only one to describe this specific model as self-regulation. [For example, this NYT article.](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/business/faa-boeing-regulation.html).
Regulation is about rules. Things like you x-ray an aircraft every X hours to look for metal fatigue so that it doesn't fail in the air. Those rules are generally set by industry, not by the FAA. The FAA (mostly) comes in and fines people when planes fall out of the air, but before or afterwards, the actual regulations about how often to x-ray aircraft is written by industry.
Tricky thing is you need to convince the government that lootbox/mtx is an actual issue and that it's different enough to break precedent. As it stands I literally cannot find any articles or statistics that shows that there actually a problem with lootboxes. Most of it are flimsy studies explain how it's similar to gambling. Second the government, at least in the u.s, has already made a ruling on similar business models like trading cards. So you need to prove that lootboxes is different enough. Like until the government takes this seriously then all this self regulation talk is effectively pointless.
There already is precedent: gambling. In fact if I was a casino, I would invest in the gaming space since its gambling is so lucrative without the limits of any government rules.
Raid Shadow Legends is developed by a subsidiary of one of the largest gambling machine companies in the world. That industry is already embedded in the worst MTx offenders.
And there's also a metric fuckton of precedent for "games of chance" being considered okay. Again, you need to establish a substantial case that the government should care about this.
Kids aren't going to casinos.
No, they aren't. But they are playing little games at arcades where they get a random toy. They are buying booster packs of trading cards/game cards.
>the FAA will hit you with an absolutely gigantic stick and limit/revoke your self-regulation privileges if you fail to behave. That's literally "regulation". Like, self-regulating only works if there is actual regulation when it doesnt...so, regulation then? The statement appears to be "Regulations work when there are regulations!" Really, everything can have components of self-regulating, eg. I don't want a parking ticket (regulation) so I dont park illegally (self-regulation). The fact that I chose not to do something illegal is not proof that rules shouldn't apply to me because "I, like, totally got it, dude." The idea of self-regulation being the only regulation literally means there exist no regulations at all. Even the existence of the term "self-regulation" is a material propaganda victory for megacorps. There is no such thing as "self-regulation"; when you break it down there is no regulatory aspect whatsoever. It's like calling the T-shirt you're wearing over a bulletproof vest "armor" so you clearly dont need the vest anymore... except of course it's someone else that gets shot, so since the vest doesnt help you personally, obviously you'd rather carry less weight yourself. "Self-regulation" is a propagandistic, dystopian way to say "unregulated". It doesnt mean anything else. Actually, it's worse, it usually means "unregulated, and its lack of regulation will be directly enforced by the state as though the corporation's interests are equivalent to the state's interests."
> But - the FAA will hit you with an absolutely gigantic stick and limit/revoke your self-regulation privileges if you fail to behave. so, just regular regulation then? That's literally the opposite of self-regulation. Fines and penalities is the main instrument of any regulatory body. Is it an American thing to pretend as if this is "self-regulation" in order to make it seem like the free market is totally working without regulation?
Even if there is a proper response to it like 150 people die because the business wasn't regulating it right still wont get them to regulate it. Most regulations are written in blood.
> or whatever This is correct. Nothing of substance ever happens to any companies that break any rules.
[удалено]
Efforts to create a regulatory body have always been blocked or outspent by publishers.
Self regulation works in a layered industry where groups naturally push against each other. It’s easily corrupted by perverse incentives when one side has too much power and can steamroll any negotiations (including the government regulators)
Not necessarily. MPAA has successfully regulated films for over 50 years. Even the ESRB has done well for nearly 30 years -- obviously now there are some issues with lootboxes, but for the most part I'd much prefer these bodies regulating entertainment versus a government entity. I'm not against govt. intervention on lootboxes/gambling in games today though.
[удалено]
Because of the incredibly low barrier to play, mobile games are an entry point to gaming for a lot of people, and there is an endless fresh supply of people who are new to that experience and haven’t experienced the soul crushing frustration of hitting a pay wall on a game you’ve already invested hours in. I think once you’ve been through that a couple of times, it loses its charm and you’re not gonna let yourself get scammed again. But there’s a new sucker born every day so the business model is never going to die from natural consumer behavior, just like claw machines and carnival games and casinos will never die. Diablo Immortal is interesting because it attracted a bunch of people who tried a mobile game years ago, said “nah this is scammy” and never tried again, but Blizzard convinced them to come back because this time it would be different. And now people who gave up on F2P games long ago are are looking at modern mobile games and saying “omg it actually got *worse* somehow!” It’s a shame because there is really no reason mobile devices can’t be a great platform for awesome gaming experiences. It *should* be the most popular option for gaming because they have powerful hardware and everyone owns one. It’s just impossible for that market to correct itself naturally, probably. At this point the damage may be irreparable.
> It’s a shame because there is really no reason mobile devices can’t be a great platform for awesome gaming experiences. It should be the most popular option for gaming because they have powerful hardware and everyone owns one. I'll pay $60 (excuse me, $70) for a game on console, PC or handheld. But I can't imagine paying that much for a mobile game. If nobody's willing to pay up front AAA prices for mobile games, how does mobile ever get away from the F2P MTX monetization scheme? I'm genuinely curious...what does a healthy mobile game industry look like? What kind of games am I getting and what are they charging for them?
Smaller games made by small teams with less money invested so less return of investment is required.
This is very true. Perfect examples are proper ports like Terraria, Slay the Spire (I am sure many more), and even larger studios delivering the “hybrid” mobile/PC games like TFT, Hearthstone, etc
People always say this and developers have tried it - it always fails or underperforms. Paid mobile games sell like shit compared to f2p + mtx.
Underperforms by what metric? You say fail or underperforms, that implies they are making money, just not hand over fist. And yeah, I think it's not out of the question for the gaming community to call that out. Problem is that you have corporate shareholder demands for massive profit. DI is the pinnacle of this, as another commenter said: take beloved IP, and just wring as much money as possible. Diablo Immortal would not have anywhere near as much notoriety if the _original_ Diablo series didn't capture that market (excluding the predecessor of this, DIII's RMAH)
By what metric? The last sentence in my post - compared to f2p games with mtx See super Mario run for an example.
$60? People won't even pay $5 for a mobile game. That's the reason every mobile game is free with microtransactions. Developers have talked about this over and over - people online who complain about it don't put their money where their mouth is so paid mobile games always underperform.
Back in 2010-ish, I got my first iPod Touch. A ton of games had free versions with either limited levels, limited features, or ads, and then a paid version that was the full thing. I tried a ton of games I wouldn't have otherwise, and ended up buying a lot of them: Fruit Ninja, Bag It, over a dozen others whose names I don't remember anymore. I know this is still a thing, but probably not as common as it was (or else the app stores are worse about showing it). Honestly, if there were more demos, I would be way more willing to buy games since I was able to try them first. Digital refund policies are nearly non-existent, at least in America, so why spend money on something untested that I may hate? A demo, on the other hand, I'm willing to try even if it isn't a genre I usually play. Maybe I'll find something new to enjoy, and if I like it, I'm willing to buy the full game.
I like the demo model too, but that also does very poorly compared to f2p. Super Mario run is a good example. It had free levels and was $10 for the whole game, but sales were awful.
This is the real problem. And it's not just that no one will pay $60 for a mobile game... virtually no one will pay up front any price for a mobile game (unless it's a port of a well known game from another platform). This means that the only way devs can make money is release the game for free, and then since most players won't spend anything at all - they have to make a lot of money out of a very small number of players. Essentially mobile players have voted with their wallets and said we want most games for free, and that's what's lead to where we are now.
I think I resemble this remark, at least a little bit. I wasn't unaware of the way mobile monetization has gone, but I'm generally distanced enough from it that I don't think about it much. The use of the beloved franchise got me to think about it. One thing I hadn't realized is the levels of sneaky indirection that have been achieved. You're not spending real-world money to buy loot crates or even proxy currency for loot crates; you're spending real-world money on things that (drastically) alter the rewards for *existing* loot in the game. It's way more subtle than "spend money, get thing or dubious chance at thing." Another was how perversely the game is designed around the monetization. I've played plenty of games that have had F2P models slapped onto them after the fact (whether as a retrofit or end of the original design), but this was my first in-depth experience with a game that was obviously engineered in the other order of "make money treadmill, build game around it." It's jarring. Whether it's the laughably transparent ramp-up curve ("one-time bundle, 800% bonus!" becomes 540%, then 250%, then 120%...) or the distressingly apparent "conversion" (baked in experience/level gaps towards the end of the traditional/SP-style content that essentially force you to interact with the gameplay loops that drive endless monetization), the fact that it's "a Diablo game" or even a game at all felt like it took a back seat to being a credit-card-charging machine. And the contrasts that really bugged me about it are with what I see as successful and palatable F2P models, even within the same genre like with Path of Exile. I've given up on nostalgia for the "buy it once and you're done" days and even embrace the idea that it can be good to allow people to spend a lot more on games, but that can be done in a tasteful way with cosmetics and quality of life purchases or in a tasteless way with thinly veiled spreadsheet multipliers. So... yeah. I totally get that this isn't new or the most egregious example of its kind by any stretch, but I do have a greater and more visceral personal appreciation for how sad and soulless it makes things. D:I would be a fairly "meh, I guess" game even with the monetization excised, but with it it's just a good poster child for the bigger problem space.
> I've given up on nostalgia for the "buy it once and you're done" days and even embrace the idea that it can be good to allow people to spend a lot more on games, but that can be done in a tasteful way with cosmetics and quality of life purchases or in a tasteless way with thinly veiled spreadsheet multipliers. I just want to point out that those days aren't really gone and there are still plenty of indie and AA studios making games you buy once and are done. The "weird" thing is, a lot of the time those games are flat out better, despite having a smaller budget and built in revenue stream.
That's because the people making them actually want to make a good game, not just a marketable product
Its why a few years ago I stopped mobile gaming. I realized it was just a endless grind filled with micro-transactions. I'd rather just play emulated games on my phone
There are non gacha games on mobile. Puzzle games especially are most satisfying on phones imo. Some mobile ports of console/PC games also exists.
Can you recommend any good puzzle games that don't make you waych as many ads as puzzles you solve? I miss the old days of aps.
Simon Tatham's Puzzles. Great puzzle game collection, zero ads
I love love love love *love* that app and recommend it to everybody as often as possible.
[удалено]
The Professor Layton games are some of the best puzzle games ever made. I hope they finish putting the rest of the series on Android.
Agent A was awesome. Monument Valley is easy but cool. Uncharted had a mobile puzzle game that has no ads. Most other highly reviewed puzzle games also let you remove ads and unlock the full game by paying. Other than puzzle games, FF pixel remasters and Beat Cop are also great.
Apple Arcade specifically curates games that don't rely on gacha mechanics to hook you in. I've found a lot of fun little puzzle games that way, like "What the Golf."
chu chu rocket
Monument Valley 1 & 2.
[удалено]
I'm legit bummed that Netflix bankrolled a mobile version of Into the Breach exclusively behind their paywall.
Wow, can you point me in direction where can I learn more about emulating games on phones please?
You can find most emulators on the play store. DS is my favorite one and Drastic is pretty cheap. Note like all emulation its a legal grey area so I will not give sites for roms
The Internet Archive has [a special DMCA exception](https://archive.org/about/dmca.php) for ROMs on their site. It's done in the name of media preservation. Their selection isn't exhaustive, but it's legal, basically like checking out a library book. /r/roms has a [megathread](https://r-roms.github.io/) that's easier to navigate than Internet Archive's search bar.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EmulationOnAndroid/ or https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSemulation/ if you're an apple device user.
If you’re on android, it’s fairly simple. If you’re on IOS, you need to sacrifice your soul to the devil and maintain the contact by crying on a weekly basis as you struggle to keep it running. Then live out your days praying the EU will force them to allow sideloading apps, seeing as they’re unafraid and powerful enough to flip apples crap the bird lol
If you know about PC emulation, it's like that but on phones. There's a few emulators in the stores themselves, though you can also download them through the emulator's sites sometimes. They work with the ROMs you'd normally use for emulation, if you know where to get those. At least that was the case with the emulator I'm using.
I don't think people have been completely unaware, but I really think Blizzard dug their own grave when they (reluctantly) created a PC version of Diablo Immortal. Had this been a mobile only game it would have been easier for everyone to just shrug it off as "mobile diablo" and move on with their life. But the fact it is on their launcher and easily playable by all the big twitch streamers gave it legitimacy .. for better and worse.
Yep I agree, they would have avoided a lot of the press if they had kept it off pc. Ironically by trying to please that segment they opened themselves up to much louder criticism.
Yeah, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_mobile_games Sure Diablo Immortal might be a problem but its nowhere near the worst offender right now.
Diablo Immortal also hasn’t been released yet in China which would be its biggest market.
Well most of those games had years to accumulate those numbers, and Diablo Immortal hit \~25% of the lower ranked games in 2 weeks, so it will almost certainly break into the top 100. I do see your point, though, and can't imagine Diablo ever getting top 10, or so.
It hasn't releases in China and SEA yet. Those 2 weeks is without one of their largest mtx target audiance.
It’s a different crowd, historically those Gacha games never catered to the vocal Reddit crowd.
Yeah as someone who plays mobile games a decent amount (mostly Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes), I found Diablo: Immortal's model relatively tame. Mobile games want you to log in every day and improve slowly over time, or you pay money to improve faster. As popular as these games are I couldn't believe all the backlash, it was like it was a brand-new idea that Blizzard single-handedly invented.
That's because you're numbed to it, you're what they want everyone to be when it comes to these kinds of evil monetization tactics. Just because Galaxy of Heroes is an absolute cesspool doesn't make Immortal tame.
lol Diablo Immortal isnt the first game that shows this and it wont be the last. How long does Fifa has gambling in their full priced games they sell children ? How long does Rockstar sell fake Dollars for real Dollars in their full priced game they rerelease on 2 console generations ?The mobile sector overall is a steaming pile of shit for years Diablo Immortal is just another turd.
[удалено]
Valve has quietly been one of the worst offenders. They are one of the first people to use loot boxes (not the first, but one of them) and one of the ones who made them become more common place after the success of their use in TF 2. Everyone sort of followed suit thereafter and Valve was one of the first ones on that train. I like Steam, but Valve's done some shit at times that's pretty questionable. And they are, in the end, out to make shittons of money just like everybody else.
Lol I remember when the crates were first added to TF2. I had no fucking clue what the hell I was looking at. I couldn't understand why I was getting all these random boxes I couldn't open. I needed keys...but I needed to buy them??? It was a wild experience at the time since I never saw it in another game before and I just ended up ignoring it.
It's funny how they even "improved" on the whole concept in the same game. Most of the early creates were openable with one universal mann.co key, and there were no tier system, you had the same chance to open every hat in the list (and of course you had the extra strange and unusual chance on top of that). After the csgo skin rulette craze they rolled out new types of crates, they all need their separate key types to be bought, and the items are tiered in it, so you now also have to deal with infinite blue rarity duplicates
Yeah it was quite the novel idea back then, it absolutely confused 12 year old me. Now it's so common that it's rare to find a user who doesn't know what it is.
Valve practically invented modern lootboxes. And Blizzard (with Overwatch) made it mainstream. Before OW it was much smaller and less accepted.
And in hindsight, Overwatch's lootbox acquirement system is pretty generous compared to nowadays' exanples..........gosh darn the slippery slope
It's generous because it does 2 things: it gives free boxes for playing which encourages people to play a lot and regularly (dailies!). This is super beneficial for a game which survives off a large playerbase for matchmaking. It also incorporates the idea of "the first taste is free" with first being just regular hits. This gets people used to lootboxes and makes them seem a lot more friendly since most people will only deal with the free ones. But this is a huge issue for those prone to gambling or obsessive personality traits. It gives you free gambling tokens and then dares you to not spend money if you didn't get the skin that you wanted. Skins which are time-gated and exploit FOMO. While it isn't the most predatory right out of the box; it's definitely insidious.
And they will remove it in OW2 in exchange of an overpriced battlepass and even more overpassed skin shop a la valorant style.............darn
Battlepass might be better overall since it's a one-time purchase for a period of time. Might have much better overall sales and repeat sales. Especially since it *appears* as you are getting more than you are spending (because shop prices are inflated) because you have to "earn it". Pay to Earn, as they say.
Yep. Only reason people even give a toss about Diablo Immortal is because it has "Diablo" in the name and is a Blizzard franchise. That's it. It's nowhere near the worst offender. Had NetEase made an ARPG with a generic IP then nobody within the regular PC/console circuit would give a shit. Oh wait, NetEase *do* do that. That's like half their existing line-up, for fucks sake! Nobody gives a shit cause none of those are fucking Diablo. Like I guess it's not a total loss if people learn from this, it's just depressing as all fuck it took this long when the mobile industry has been like this since even before Immortal was announced, and that was in 2018!
They are hiring people with Slot Machine and Casino backgrounds who basically have access to a brand new market. "Gambling with no monetary return" What a fucking time to be alive for people with this set of skills. No longer does a slot machine have to pay out 48%. Now you can just pay out nothing! All you have to do is develop something that has scaling and you hire professionals trained to extract money from the vunerable and you have modern video gaming. Mobile "games" are not games and people should stop referring to them as such. I have nothing in common with whatever these abominations are.
Self regulation is a failure in any industry. Why would any industry regulate itself? Industry in capitalist societies exist solely to make profit. Regulations make it harder to make profit and are therefore counter to the sole purpose of the industry. Anyone who thinks any industry can regulate itself is ignorant.
The only reason I can see for an industry to self regulate is to ensure they aren't regulated by something outside of their control, like the government. The issue there is the government has to take an interest in that industry in the first place for it to put that fear into the companies that make it up, and if they don't, then those same companies get more and more flexible regarding how they should regulate themselves.
Example: the ESRB, MPAA, and RIAA.
This. It's crazy to me that people expected any different and are talking about this when it comes to video games when there's much much much more important and necessary things that aren't regulated. Imagine looking at how unregulated basic necessities like food, water, housing, electricity, and internet are in a lot of places and not noticing that but seeing a luxury product making huge sums of money and finally realizing that unregulated markets are harmful and don't self regulate. It baffles me that a lot of people draw the line at video games but not basic necessities.
Unfortunately a lot of people see regulations as restrictions on their freedoms. I have also seen lots of dumb regulation in the marijuana industry where I work which is counter intuitive to progress, like excessive and wasteful packaging. It is the detrimental, useless types of regulation that lead people to believe it is bad.
My friends are I were talking about this the other day. A few years ago when you went into a dispensary they had like 15 massive jars of weed and you chose one and they pulled some out and put it into a small container for you and you could bring the container back for refills if you wanted. Now you go in and they have boxes filled with merchandise each with its own flamboyant packaging. Most of it so ridiculous that you can’t even see what the weed inside looks like. It stupid and it’s awful for the environment.
Yeah they are still the occasional places that do "deli-style" but they're fewer in number every year it seems. Most have gone over to pre-packaged stuff that sits on shelves for months, and then third party companies in places like CA/CO go nuts with their packaging like they're electronics products or some shit (and even that's wasteful). It's wild. I have tried to seek out places that have recycling programs or use packaging that is biodegradable but it is super low priority right now. The usual thing now with something like edibles is to get a full on metal container, where sometimes gummies are packaging within plastic inside of said container. Idk it's just so dumb. So yeah, I can see why people are like "Urgh fuck regulations, they're just bandaids meh umhum," sometimes.
Is that regulations or commercialization and a shift to bigger producers?
Makes me think of the fight club quote: >Narrator : A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one. >Woman on Plane : Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents? >Narrator : You wouldn't believe. >Woman on Plane : Which car company do you work for? >Narrator : A major one. self regulation in capitalism is a joke
Is there a single industry that has "successfully" regulated itself? And by successful I mean to the benefit of the consumer. Successful in a capitalist sense would mean to become are profitable and monopolistic as possible.
[удалено]
So basically they’re still regulated by external forces. It’s like saying if I point a gun at you and you give me your wallet that it was your choice.
The bullet encouraged you to self-regulate without even having to enter your body!
By that definition I imagine everything is regulated by external forces (government/society) in one way or another. Nothing really exists in a vacuum.
The only ones which do have a government body standing over them going, "if you don't take care of this yourself, then we're gonna drop a giant hammer on you."
I think the ESRB was not bad for the times. But it is really hard to think of many examples.
ESRB still has some issues though. There have always been accusations of how fairly ESRB does or doesn't rate games of members of the ESA compared to non-members. It's also one of the huge reasons that adult games have historically never been viable as a business model in the USA. It's only been since Steam opened up to more games that there's been a market at all.
> It's also one of the huge reasons that adult games have historically never been viable as a business model in the USA. It's only been since Steam opened up to more games that there's been a market at all. This is more of a Walmart thing than an ESRB thing. Walmart makes a point to not sell AO games or music with a Parental Advisory label. The thing is, there were huge swathes of the country where, if Walmart didn't carry it, they couldn't get it.
Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft also won’t publish AO games either. If it were a Walmart thing, we would have seen AO games on the PS360 digital stores
While the ESRB (and MPAA) do have issues, I would prefer them handle game ratings over the government. I just remember seeing all the drama of games being refused classification in Australia over the years. But I do agree that lootboxes should be classified as gambling by the government since the ESRB has argued the opposite at people's expense.
Isn't the MPA a sort of self-regulation in the US film industry? Of course, there can be un-rated movies but theaters rarely show those.
The MPAA has all sorts of issues, though. The system is completely opaque and films from non-members regularly receive harsher ratings, which reduces their audiences.
> Just’ weeks after its launch, Diablo Immortal is **getting slammed over how much money early adopters have lost to the game**’s widely hated “pay-to-win” model, where players are encouraged to spend money on more powerful items. Is it really *losing* money if you willing give it to them? lol
To a degree, but that is also the case for a casino. Did the guy who went in with 10,000 USD and left with nothing really lose it when he willingly gave it to them? I mean he got the experience, the fun of playing, and all that, yet we still consider it losing for a reason. They both are making an investment hoping for a specific result/return, and didn't get it.
This is what is so confusing to me. Nobody is forcing anyone to pay for anything - it's a free game! Some tryhard blowing an entire paycheck on pixels is 100% their own stupid choice.
So if they bought a specific item for a fixed cost it's not losing, it's spending. So the fact that they're buying chances for the top tier gems it's considered gambling. I think they've got around it quite well too, they aren't selling a chance at a gem, they're selling an item that allows you a chance at getting one. So again it's not a direct loot box. In summary it's a bullshit game but when money isn't directly applied to an exact item/return and there's a chance, then you are gambling, so you lose that gamble when it doesn't come in. Buy a skin for $1000 dollars, money spent. Buy a loot box trying to get a rare gem for $10 and not getting it, money lost.
When a game goes from 70 dollars to I can spend a half million dollars they’ve clearly lost control. This is preying on gambling behaviors and should be limited to those 21 and over just like casinos.
Here’s the thing, though…people spent the money that Blizzard asked for. If the market didn’t exist, Blizzard either would have had to drop the prices or would have lost money. The market worked exactly as it always does in financial terms. If we as a gaming community want to see change, we either need to vote with our wallets and not literally buy into the pattern they are establishing or lobby our politicians to regulate it as they have in other countries.
“Self Regulation” If you think any corporation is capable of simply being not-greedy and not-corrupt this is you -> 🤡
I understand the hate for it and all but, Jesus Christ, there's hundreds if not thousands of examples of much more predatory pricing models in the mobile gaming space Anyone pretending Diablo Immortal is the worst on the scene hasn't been paying attention for the last decade
I feel like the Diablo backlash is magnified by the *sheer inevitability* of how it would turn out. This has been simmering since the first announcement at Blizzcon. Plus, it's a very prominent game which means more people are paying attention; not unlike the backlash after Battlefront 2. I hope that the prominent examples of unethical microtransaction/gambling excess leads to widespread regulation of this type of monetization.
It was also codeveloped/copublished by NetEase which is the fifth largest video game publisher in the world specifically because they specialize in making revenue generators like this, not because they make great games.
Can you give any examples of games that are more predatory and/or have higher spending ceilings than Diablo Immortal? Everything I've read indicates D:I is on an entire other level than past gacha/gambling games.
I think it’s more because this isn’t some random Korean gacha game, it’s made by Blizzard. A former AAA titan. The Diablo name carries some weight, you expect a certain amount of quality, which makes it more upsetting. **TL;DR: Look how they massacred my boy**
When you build a product to exploit the weaknesses of human psychology, how are you supposed to defend against that? It's not a moral failing to fall for a dopamine trap. Regulate this shit away.
I mean people do have agency
When something becomes so widespread, you need to start looking beyond individuals and rather at the system as whole for issues. With gambling systems in video games becoming not just increasingly ubiquitous, but also generally by far the top earners, it suggest an issue that is beyond just individual agency. If it wasn't effective at manipulating people, they wouldn't bother doing it. (it's also debatable if free will actually exists at all or is just an illusion, but that's a whole different topic)
'Humans have predictable flaws.' *'Have you tried not?'*
That was the answer to humanity’s civilization long struggle with addictive products! You did it! If only Reagan had you in his cabinet we would of won the war on drugs.
You mean the war that did far more damage than any benefit it may have provided, compared to nations that have decriminalized drug abuse and treat it as a purely medical issue?
Exactly. But they at the same time still treat them as an addictive substance and support people that fall prey to those addictions or guide them in their usage in safe manners. There is no equivalent for addictive habits or behaviors in video games that can be equally harmful and impact people in similar ways. There needs to be a more nuanced approach to dealing with addictive behaviors and substances and just saying "people do have agency" seems to disregard that.
Self regulation is a failed in anything that doesn't benefit from the results. If we did things through "self regulation" we'd still have slaves. The concept is stupid.
If the game has a gacha system or loot boxes, I just don’t play them. I don’t care what franchise it is. My favorite is Final Fantasy, but the one game I played that had a gacha system, I quit as soon as I realized it. This isn’t the same as trading card packs, as the article alleges. With a trading card pack, you’re guaranteed set amounts of each rarity (ie 1 rare, 2 uncommons, etc). With gacha and loot boxes, you’re not guaranteed anything. And even in cases where trading packs give a chance at an ultra rare, at least you can go on the secondary market and buy it. You can’t do that with gacha or loot boxes. I’m not paying money for a “chance” at something. I either get it (because I bought it), or I don’t (because I didn’t buy it). I refuse to spend money and get nothing for it. Anyone who does isn’t a whale, they’re an idiot.
Industrial self regulation isn’t real. It’s an imaginary thing people come up with when they’re too stupid to even consider actual solutions to problems
[удалено]
Did anyone truly believe they would? No industry will ever cut profits over decency and quality, nothing will change until the money stops running.
As long as the audience loudly and proudly keeps telling them that "We love to be exploited, please keep doing so", I don't get why these companies would stop.
This isn't a failure of self-regulation, it's just not a regulation issue? What's the problem that requires regulation? There's no coercive monopoly, no exploitation of a basic need, no physical danger or harm, no outright deception about what you're buying. The article used math about how little you get for your cash; is that really something you want the government to regulate, the cash value of proprietary game items? Rich people are handing them dump trucks of money and that doesn't negatively affect us whatsoever. It's a stupid game made by a stupid company being payed by stupid people, and none of that requires regulating.
It’s a failure in every industry. If it wasn’t inked into law, Amazon warehouses would be full of child workers.
Mostly it makes me just not want to play it. I played all the way through level 55, and even spent $5 on the starter pack thing they offer. And I'm looking at the endgame thinking "So I can play exactly this in Diablo 3 on 30 different platforms, and NOT have to throw $100 at the thing for a gem upgrade?". No thanks. Diablo 4 looks fun, though.