U.S. Senator Introduces Bill To Ban Loot Boxes And Pay-To-Win Microtransactions

AlbqOwl said:

So does horseracing, Las Vegas and Atlanta and Indian casinos that are cropping up everywhere, and the weekly poker game at the pub. So does marijuana affect a certain percentage of the people that way, almost 100% of those who use cocaine or heroin will be addicted, opioid addiction and obesity is epidemic in America, 10% of those who drink will become dependent on alcohol, probably a higher percentage of those who consume red meat will have health problems as a result, and if no refined grains or sugar is consumed, no diabetes develops.

Once you start trying to control one destructive vice, you only take away liberties from all, but you don't put the slightest dent in the overall problem.

Click to expand...

Modern Video games are far more complicated a product than a simple cigarette or bottle of vodka.

Micro transactions, loot boxes, pay to play, all of these are put into games to make money and as a result the quality of the games themselves seem secondary. Player content that was once considered standard features for for games like single player campaigns or local multiplayer is either gutted or put behind paywall Barriers.

It’s like ordering a bottle of beer, but you are given a bottle of Unfermented beer that has not even gone through the fermentation stage. That is what modern video game companies are doing nowadays: shipping out unfinished service games full of micro transactions and loot boxes on top of the 60$ price of a normal AAA game.

Lord Tammerlain said:

I believe if there is no valid card attached, nothing could be charged to the account. It is what I do,

Click to expand...

If the game is on an ipad, for example, apple already has your credit card and the game can bill you that way.

dirtpoorchris said:

You are gonna have to ban YuGiOh cards and Pokemon cards too then......

Stupid bill.

If a kid wants to spend his money on a frivolous digital transaction who are you to stop um? If the kid really wants to buy a 2 dollar digital pack WHO CARES.

You are basically getting mad at parents for giving their kids money to get something special in a game. WHO CARES.

Alot of the times these micro-transactions make the game FREE to the kids and they wouldnt even get to play it otherwise unless they had a micro-transaction model.

Why not ban unhealthy Kids meals from McDonalds that come with a free toy? This is just feel good Sin-Tax-bills.

Click to expand...

The mechanism specifically exploits the mechanisms in the brain that cause gambling addiction.

You might as well be saying "so what if kids smoke cigarettes?"

Let's also ban children from buying baseball cards and football cards, or any sort of sports equipment or accessories.

Or, parents can be intelligent and not tie their cc and debit cards to their kids gaming accounts. Forcing said kids to buy the gift cards with cash they steal just like baby boomers did back when life made sense to them.

Deuce said:

If the game is on an ipad, for example, apple already has your credit card and the game can bill you that way.

Click to expand...

Yes and you can go into the payment profile and change the valid date or the card number to make it non valid. Changing it to be correct when you actually want to make a purchase.

I do that for the Sony PlayStation store, the Microsoft store and Google's Play store. That way no purchase can go through

I do think it's sad that we will be cancelling all state lotteries, sales of any packaged item with random goodies (kinder eggs, blind box toys, baseball cards), and anything where you might not get exactly what you want out of the purchase. It's sad that a very small percentage of people who have no self-control or awareness of what they are spending will ruin it for the rest of us. Thank god our big brother is here to keep us from doing stupid things. I look forward to their protection from my children playing carnival games or anything else they might lose money on, because I sure have no ability to stop them from spending my hard-earned money.

If we don't change everything for some people who can't handle their own problems, we may end up with so many freedoms that people make bad choices all the time. We have got to put a stop to this.

Unitedwestand13 said:

Modern Video games are far more complicated a product than a simple cigarette or bottle of vodka.

Micro transactions, loot boxes, pay to play, all of these are put into games to make money and as a result the quality of the games themselves seem secondary. Player content that was once considered standard features for for games like single player campaigns or local multiplayer is either gutted or put behind paywall Barriers.

It’s like ordering a bottle of beer, but you are given a bottle of Unfermented beer that has not even gone through the fermentation stage. That is what modern video game companies are doing nowadays: shipping out unfinished service games full of micro transactions and loot boxes on top of the 60$ price of a normal AAA game.

Click to expand...

So again I have no problem with limiting these games to persons 18 and older and I would support a federal law that addresses that as the internet does not respect state or national boundaries. But I can't make a case for banning them altogether at the federal level. At the state level okay if a majority of the people want that.

Carjosse said:

From Kotaku:


Game companies refused to restrain and regulate themselves so now they need government regulation.

Click to expand...

Republicans love stripping people of their rights. Case in point above.

dirtpoorchris said:

By that logic you proclaim these are illegal

What they SHOULD be doing is sniffing the algorithms to make sure they are TRULY random and not pseudo random and paying attention to how much someone is willing to spend and editing their odds and finds based on how much MORE money they MIGHT be able to get out of them.

Click to expand...

You don't buy a Kinder egg for the toy inside, it is candy with toys inside it and what you can get is marked on the box. Lootboxes are gambling and should be regulated as such, remove the random element and they would not need to be.

Carjosse said:

You don't buy a Kinder egg for the toy inside, it is candy with toys inside it and what you can get is marked on the box. Lootboxes are gambling and should be regulated as such, remove the random element and they would not need to be.

Click to expand...

Bull****. I only buy them for the cool little toys you have to put together. I actually dont even like the candy. The little toys are awesome!

AmNat said:

I'd like to see it, but I doubt such a suit would be successful. CDA safe harbor still probably applies.



I hope they're able to cure TDS soon.

Click to expand...

The CDA either should be eliminated - or granted to everyone.

joko104 said:

The CDA either should be eliminated - or granted to everyone.

Click to expand...

It’d be interesting to see a traditional publisher try to use it, e.g. the New York Times publishes a defamatory letter-to-the-editor exclusively on its website (while withholding it from its printed paper), and uses the CDA as a defense. It’d seem to me that they’d be in the same position as Facebook, at least if the letter were originally submitted electronically.

In any case, removing CDA safe harbor and treating social media as publishers would just force them to shut down. It’d be better, imo, to simply regulate the major social media platforms as utilities (no censoring lawful content), while retaining safe harbor for both them and smaller websites (like this one).