Well.... Quite stupid to try and ban anything in a game in an entire country.

Loot boxes, yes they're gambling. So are bags in-game? If they wanna ban them then the companies like Blizzard may say "Overwatch makes no money here. Close the servers."

Interesting article, and video. Good to see, but bad for game developers who probably make a bunch of cash on llot boxes

The Crown Store is fine. Here's a set price. For a specific item that you want.

Crown Crates is gambling. You don't know what you are paying for. You might get something great. You might get trash. You might get the one specific item that you want. Or you might get two dozen items that are nice, but not what you were looking for.

Game studios want revenue? No problem with that. Just sell stuff like every other retailer in the real world.

Well, at least we wont hear anymore arguments for NA vs EU once they ban the game in Europe.

Well yes of course its gambling its like a lottery and feeds off the human mind via addiction.

When you then consider that children play these games then you begin to understand the threat it causes not just children but adults too.

Loot boxes are a cancer to the gaming industry and are the epitomy of greed. Banning it in the EU would be a huge step in forcing gaming companies to stop altogether.

Look, I dont mind paying real money for items but dont tell me I might get the item I want if I pay.
Most of the time that "might" is genuinely about 2% chance or less.

Can you imagine going into Zara and trying to buy a jacket for £100.

The worker then says okay pick a number between 1 and 20.

You pick 18...

Worker: Ah, the number is 6. So we'll give you a pair of socks and if you want to try for the jacket again, its £100.

This is why I don't visit casinos. I do not like giving my money away. Nor do I like parting with my money for something I didn't want.

However, I do like that model ZOS has chosen. As I do want to support them so I do via a subscription. I will also spend crowns on costumes and fluff items. I will never spend money on a studio that adopts p2w.

Draxius82 wrote: »

This is why I don't visit casinos. I do not like giving my money away. Nor do I like parting with my money for something I didn't want.

However, I do like that model ZOS has chosen. As I do want to support them so I do via a subscription. I will also spend crowns on costumes and fluff items. I will never spend money on a studio that adopts p2w.

I have been here for almost 4 years now with just a couple of short breaks (Archeage and Black Desert... my bad ) and I've been happily subbing most of that time. It always was and continues to be a fair system to support the MMORPGs we play.

It's the "F2P is cool, subs suck" crowd that has led to the morally dubious mess we're in.

Have never seen the point of Crown Crates other than to make money for ZOS. Considering there is nothing in them of any real value or benefit in game for long time players, I don't buy them.

Be interesting to see how they could ban them from one country or a particular region - people who want them would still find a way to get them.

Battlefront is pay to win. Eso is not. Big difference. Zos has nothing to worry about.

Now I have written many posts in defense of mircotransactions and the crown store. About how if you want something from the crown store you have to make good financial desicions for yourself. Done well mircotransactions help both money rich time poor and the time rich money poor players and everything in between.

but... crown crates are gambling.

Perhaps they need a warning, someway to make it clear they are gambling, perhaps age resitrictions somehow. I like the suggestion of posting the odds as well.

I mean opening Magic the gathering booster packs is gambling as well but at least you kind of know the odds.

I don't know what game started the loot box, money making scheme but I don't really like it, as opposed to a mircotransaction systems which are fine as long as they are not pay to win.

To be sure, we are talking about one EU member thus far - Belgium. To get any regulation of this kind adopted on an EU-wide basis is typically an exercise in bureaucratic obstructionism that lasts for the better part of a given decade. And the article didn't say about any legislative action inside Belgium itself. So the sky isn't falling quite yet.

Plus, the Brits are leaving. Of course, the way they are doing it they might not have any planes flying the morning after, but at least they'll still have their loot boxes. [Unless parliament finally decides to go after the whole "online gambling" sector, which some have been urging it to do for a while - but that's a much broader discussion in itself.]

Besides which, in the absolute worst case scenario (loot box ban worldwide, penalty of death by firing squad, French commissars overseeing video game developer teams like back in the revolutionary days, et cetera), the whole sticking point seems to be randomization of loot. I quote the article that the MMORPG.com page ultimately links to: "Minister of Justice wants to ban purchases in video games, if you do not know what exactly you are about with that purchase." [Thank you, Google Translate. You blithering sods.] Fine, now you get to directly purchase that one item you were hoping to roll, but for - I don't know, 10-50 times the cost of a single loot box to reflect its rarity slash market demand. Presumably Belgium's Minister of Justice will then declare some form of victory, possibly marked by a parade culminating with a mass *** in the parliamentary chambers.

As I've said above, the sky isn't falling quite yet.

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What I really want to know is why, why the Minister of Justice - one Koen Geens, of the local version of Christian Democrats (center-right-ish with a moralist twist, I presume) - bothers. Surely loot boxes cannot be some sort of a scourge sweeping the...glens and heaths...or something...of Belgium, reaping a grisly harvest among its youth. I know next to nothing about Belgian politics, well, aside from the Franco-Flemish split, but ordinarily an elected minister would announce something like this because a) it makes them look as if they are doing something; and b) they do not actually have to do anything (not the least as they can use EU bureaucracy as an excuse). "Look at me, see how vigorously I am defending your children against...scourges." Just seems daft to me, the whole thing does.