Star Wars: Battlefront II (The villagers are outside with pitchforks and torches)

I want GaaP not GaaS!

Seemed relevant to both threads:

Still, that's not a bad score from Joe, all considered...

under the treaty protocols that form the bedrock of the EU and its progress to "unity through harmonisation" (the end result of conquest without the violence) the laws of the strictest nation are adopted by all the other nations as the baseline law, new laws are created through the institution of the EU.




um no your warping the definition of gambling to suit your own sensibilities (as do most folks),

the problem with loot boxes is unlike "normal online gambling" there is no possibility of gaining a tangible physical reward (like cash in your wallet) all you get is the chance to have some different pixels on your screen, however it fits all the other ideals of gambling including the psychology of "needing to win" it has the same process as any other addictive habit forming gambling does there's risk vs reward and it all comes at a cost with only a chance of getting the desired outcome..... its exactly the same process that scratch cards rely on only with worse odds higher prices and even worse possible outcomes for the addict.....

and thats only half the problem, the other half of the problem is that "micro transactions" are supposed to be fractions of the minimum payment value (iirc minimum transaction value for card payments used to be $10) meaning they have the prices set to high and try to hide it buy selling you "point packs" which adds in an element of legal obfuscation.... and on that one the legislators will really hammer them EA doesn't have enough cash to out bribe the EU's decision makers and the casino companies already have the legislation in place, all thats needed is for the obfuscation to be exposed and they can legally shut them down already (at least in the EU) indeed if the courts in any EU nation determine that EA has breached the current legislation then all other territories are obliged to follow the same ruling, the best part of that though is it only applies to the company and game(s) specified in the ruling, separate legal arguments would need to be made for any others to be added to it..... unless they are dumb enough to appeal to the ECJ who being the libtard elitist shitbags they are would get rid of microtransactions completely and kill 90% of the games industry overnight ...... 

so really the only question is how big a bag of dicks is EA corporate?  and there clearly a pretty big bag because all this has come up again after the last time they were hauled over the coals for the same shit 

Problem is those pixels are the reward, vs a physical item. You are gaining a reward for cash without strings attached, the only chance being the randomness of the reward. 

Think of a slot machine that always pays out evenly, regardless of what you put in. It may be digital and you are "betting" money for a higher reward, but the compensation of "a" reward is guaranteed, which removes the risk of actual stake of losing value when you actually gamble.

It's a textbook definition of the term, really. The barrier of this being the fact that its a digital product is an odd avenue to go by, because it implies digital products have no inherent value; when they do based on the parameters of the marketplace and the value attached to them by a company. The risk of addiction and "risk vs reward" is irrelevant because a lot of behaviors incorporate the same psychology and behavioral patterns which a company like EA has no control over. Car commercials do that, tobacco companies do it, so on and so on.

The one thing they can do is  say "if you are addicted to our product, seek professional help" but they won't, unless they are forced to. 

It becomes a semantical debate over what can constitute a reward now, but a very good lawyer would likely be able to argue that the lack of high risk of losing a stake, when the boxes mark themselves on what it "could be" is not only legal but not gambling. 

I would think EA will be forced to do what Activision Blizzard did for Overwatch in China; showcase the odds of acquiring certain rewards per loot box. That is bare minimum here though. 

He gave a 6/10 to the first one, he can't give this game (unfortunately) a lower score when it kinda improved on the first one, even if this "improvement" over the first one isn't particularly big.

thats why so many are so fucking glad for brexit and are hoping their own nations opt to leave before all that horse shit from other nations enters the statutes in their own countries....

France has made it illegal to take photos in public places without a licence

Germany has made it illegal to post things on the internet without a licence (you get the licence as part of your service if your the bill payer) 

add those two stupid laws to a few others and suddenly china looks like its an open and inclusive country in comparison.....

and thats one of the least incidious treaty clauses there building the EU on, my favourite though are these gem's "EU law supersedes or overrules any national or supra national laws" and "anyone who is employed under an EU department is immune from any and all prosecutions from any member state and hold diplomatic immunity for any and all reasons during the time of their employment and enduring afterwards unless removed by unanimous vote of the parliament of the EU" 

that second one is the reason why they freely take bribes during the "negotiation phase" of creating new legislation like recently when the TPB was being discussed the commissioners each met with representatives from two tobacco companies and 2 pharmaceutical companies whilst refusing to meet with anyone from the vape industry, they ignored green legislation and introduced the TPR.... a week later the public account filing for one of those tobacco companies detailed in one line how much that renegotiation on the law had cost them with "EU political activity" at a cost of 120 million (one thing you can say is those fuckers don't whore themselves out on the cheap) but then the ECB got its knickers in a twist because they weren't receiving the needed tax income from them and decided they wanted a larger kick back for letting the sale of tobacco products keep going on .... 


the only real difference is that in the USA everyone has the good graces to at least try and keep such things out of sight rather than people walking around openly handing over envelopes stuffed wiht cash in the middle of the workers canteen .....

not that i could care less but 

pixels have already been determined not to constitute a tangible good as onwards transfer or sale is not permitted, the grade of the pixels is not guaranteed the type or pixels is not guaranteed and the company has previously admitted that below a certain grade everything is considered "junk" thus just like the scratch cards you buy in the local store (or virtually on the lotto websites) your paying for the junk grade materials in your hand (the physical piece of card) wiht the hope that it will have a winning code printed on that when interrogated causes you to receive a physical reward that may or may not be worth more than you paid out in the first place .... wiht loot boxes there is never any physical aspect to the reward and as such it is classed as a non service based intangible asset (and thus always worthless) 

this has already been argued under EU law on several occasions, and the games companies lost out in the past which caused several companies to go out of business due to breeching the laws or not being the ip owners and thus not able to modify the games in order to become compliant (its what killed codemasters online off almost overnight) and if EA aren't careful about this it will kill them off as well...

the problem is other companies skirt round the complications by being less greedy (cheep enough that nobody cares, and not selling the best level of gear through the cash only boxes) or not selling that service within a certain territory but not actively preventing someone from accessing it...  EA breaks all the gentlemen's agreements to not care by ignoring the laws, charging too much and only offering certain things with any regularity through the cash boxes.... and now they have lost the race to head this off at the pass so they will likely be another acquisition by a certain vulture capital/media conglomerate thats been buying up everyone and already tried to buy them out twice and failed to get enough shares .....which happens to be headquartered within the EU....

Take it to the politic thread - there's at least two who'll jerk off to your mental diarrhea. This is about SWBF2.

Australia joins the fray, hooray. According to VG247 loot boxes are indeed considered gambling by them. Yet again, they can't do much because the companies going on with this practices are not Australian, but you get the idea.
I wonder if Brazil may take a look into it too, after all, if I'm not mistaken it's one of the few countries that has some sort of game regulation organism.