The maker of the video game Genshin Impact has agreed to pay $20 million and to block children under 16 from making in-game purchases without parental consent to settle Federal Trade Commission all
Ughh. The selective enforcement is maddening, both with this and TikTok. So much of the filed complaint especially applies to Roblox, but it’s clear that we’re only interested in protecting our consumers when it really means chipping away at a foreign rival’s burgeoning soft power.
I’m confused. I’ve played Genshin, and I don’t remember any sort of loot box system in the game. There’s a gacha system which seems to be what the article keeps referring to, but that’s very different from what I think the average user considers a “loot box”.
I feel like the difference is the loot “box”, itself. Granted, I’ve not played any loot box games since Team Fortress 2, but in that game the box was an actual inventory item you could store and open whenever you wanted, and those items would always be from the same pool.
With Genshin, you’re basically just pulling from a singular, infinite loot box that rotates its reward pool. So you can’t, as a player, decide to open a Year 1 item when it’s not in the current rotation.
It’s a small difference, but I feel like that’s why we have separate terminology for “gacha” and “loot box” games.
My apologies if I’m getting this wrong, as I don’t play Gacha games, but isn’t that worse?
As in, if the players know that a certain reward they’re trying to get will be rotated out soon, won’t that drive up the FOMO even more?
My apologies if I’m getting this wrong, as I don’t play Gacha games, but isn’t that worse?
It depends. I’m not sure how current loot box games handle it, but with most gacha games, there are determined odds for the prizes, so they have a “pity” system. So after a certain amount of pulls, you’re always guaranteed to get the top reward. RNG will make it so that you’ll typically pull all the way to nearly the end of that pity timer before you get the top reward, but you’ll eventually get it.
I’m not sure if traditional loot “boxes” have such a protection in place. I dunno if it’s any better or worse since they’re both pretty manipulative tactics, but it’s different.
not all gacha games have a pity system, and a pity system is not part of the definition of a gacha game. For example, Puzzle and Dragons, one of the first major gacha games on mobile, whose gachapon system is literally modeled off a gachapon machine, does not have a pity system. It’s not different. Having a pity system is not a requirement for being a gacha. For example, Fate Grand Order for the longest time, did not have a pity system. You would not suddenly call it a gacha game after it got a pity system, as it was already one before hand.
There isn’t a meaningful difference; gachas are just a subset of lootboxes, and anybody claiming otherwise is a player lying to themselves or is a game publisher defending themselves from these predatory practices.
As an old person who plays Genshin Impact, the “character banners” are 100% loot boxes. They have a pity system which guarantees a five star character after 100 “wishes” but even then it may not be the character you wanted. You might have to “wish” up to 200 times to get the five star character you are “wishing” for on the banner. Since you are not buying the character out right and gambling to get them it’s a loot box.
For anyone who doesn’t play “character banners” are a limited run (3 weeks) of a five star character that you can only get from the banner. “Wishes” are like rolls for the character. Each wish you lose gives you either a weapon (3 star/practically useless in game) and every 10 wishes gurantees a four star weapon or four star character.
Hard pity is at 90 wishes and soft pity starts at 75 (which means that the chance to get a 5 star increases significantly with each additional wish past that point). Getting to hard pity almost never happens.
As a person that have played Genshin since the launch. Those are all loot boxes. Just because it’s limited or has a pity system, that doesn’t change the fact. It just limits the results or gives you a guarantee
If you are taking a chance at all to get something from a list of items, as opposed to selecting a specific item to buy, IT IS A LOOT BOX.
The specifics of limits or pity systems, or guarantees after X amount do not matter. The slot machines in Vegas have a fixed and regulated chance to payout as well, it’s still gambling.
a gachapon, the system gacha is named after, its litterally a form of a lootbox. you know, those machines found in places where you place tokens to vend out a random goodie?
'Member when Kyle’s Mom freaked the fuck out and tried to ban Pokémon Red and Blue because they “depicted gambling” in the game corner, which had no links to the outside world and could not be fed with real money in any capacity, was completely contained within the monochrome screen on your Gameboy, and could be save scummed anyway? Pepperidge Farm 'members.
My, how far the bullshit has come.
Anyway, 16 is sure a funny way to spell 18. Why the hell is the age requirement 16 when you can’t buy a lottery ticket until you’re 18 and in most places you can’t enter a casino until you’re 21? It’s the same thing.
Lootboxes is gambling. So are gacha pulls, and doubly so for both of the above when they can be fueled with real world money. People who are not adults should not be enabled to gamble.
Since PEGI gave us an 18+ rating for having evil playing cards maybe I should add microtransactions/loot boxes/real gambling to lower that rating to 3+ like EA sports FC
And millions of children cried out for their waifus.
(This is good: I play and enjoy Genshin but they’re using every single psychological trick to get you to spend money to gamble and that kind of shameless shit shouldn’t be put in front of children who don’t have sufficient experience and developmental time to not get totally taken.)
I never played Genshin but I did check out ZZZ for a minute. The gacha element was just too intense and it reminded me of games from 15+ years ago that used similar mechanics.
As much as I like putting limitations on lootboxes or banning them out right, I’ve seen what developers do when they can’t use lootboxes. $20 to $30 “micro” transactions with predatory menus and game mechanics that make you feel bad for not owning the latest hotness. They will do anything to make that microtransaction money regardless. They’ll just take advantage of a different part of your brain.
We shouldn’t allow children online or playing video games. If we’re going full jack Thompson, let’s go full jack Thompson. No one under 21 gets Internet or games.
You could just sell the game at a flat cost. You know, like they use to and still do. If you want a “Live Service” game, just sell a DLC/Expansion Pack every few months.
No. That would be taking money from the parents when they purchase the game. The kids would only be playing the game and so long as there’s no store front in the game, there’s no problem.
Would you ban kids from riding bicycles because stores sell them?
Most people consider lootbox/gacha predatory and regular advertising a necessary evil. Regular advertising is often manipulative too, but most people consider lootbox/gacha to be more so, especially because of the addictive gambling mechanics it uses that regular advertising doesn’t. Also, most people are used to advertising, and putting lootboxes/gacha in video games is something I am assuming most Lemmy posters can remember there being a controversy over before microtransactions became The New Normal.
Probably got put on their radar by people complaining about the Chinese gacha game being too popular or something. Those same people complain much less about their manly sports/shooting games made in the good ol’ United States of 'Murica. Even though they have similar predatory mechanics.
20 mil is peanuts. Selling shit to children for as long as you can is worth way more. FTC has proven that exploiting kids with gambling mechanics is just good business.
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Ughh. The selective enforcement is maddening, both with this and TikTok. So much of the filed complaint especially applies to Roblox, but it’s clear that we’re only interested in protecting our consumers when it really means chipping away at a foreign rival’s burgeoning soft power.
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I don’t expect them to continue, is the problem
Yeah Lina Khan is fired the second Trump takes office, and she’s the one opening up all these antitrust suits
Yes it maybe selective and hypocritical but it also sets precedent. Other companies can be held accountable more easily now.
Good. The last thing we need is kids addicted to gambling.
The important data I’d want out of this is how much money went down if younger kids couldn’t get addicted.
Just to see how much they could bank off of giving kids addictive personalities for the future.
20 mil isn’t that much, but this is good news. Hopefully this sets a precedent for other manipulative gacha games.
Genshin alone made over 700 mil last year, this is just cost of doing business for them
Kinda surprised it wasn’t a bil, it’s a big game
Genshin is in year 5, so it’s still an impressive number. Plus they have 3 other live service games running concurrently (one released this past July)
I’m confused. I’ve played Genshin, and I don’t remember any sort of loot box system in the game. There’s a gacha system which seems to be what the article keeps referring to, but that’s very different from what I think the average user considers a “loot box”.
You’re gonna need to explain what you think the difference is, because most people think they’re synonymous
I feel like the difference is the loot “box”, itself. Granted, I’ve not played any loot box games since Team Fortress 2, but in that game the box was an actual inventory item you could store and open whenever you wanted, and those items would always be from the same pool.
With Genshin, you’re basically just pulling from a singular, infinite loot box that rotates its reward pool. So you can’t, as a player, decide to open a Year 1 item when it’s not in the current rotation.
It’s a small difference, but I feel like that’s why we have separate terminology for “gacha” and “loot box” games.
My apologies if I’m getting this wrong, as I don’t play Gacha games, but isn’t that worse?
As in, if the players know that a certain reward they’re trying to get will be rotated out soon, won’t that drive up the FOMO even more?
It depends. I’m not sure how current loot box games handle it, but with most gacha games, there are determined odds for the prizes, so they have a “pity” system. So after a certain amount of pulls, you’re always guaranteed to get the top reward. RNG will make it so that you’ll typically pull all the way to nearly the end of that pity timer before you get the top reward, but you’ll eventually get it.
I’m not sure if traditional loot “boxes” have such a protection in place. I dunno if it’s any better or worse since they’re both pretty manipulative tactics, but it’s different.
not all gacha games have a pity system, and a pity system is not part of the definition of a gacha game. For example, Puzzle and Dragons, one of the first major gacha games on mobile, whose gachapon system is literally modeled off a gachapon machine, does not have a pity system. It’s not different. Having a pity system is not a requirement for being a gacha. For example, Fate Grand Order for the longest time, did not have a pity system. You would not suddenly call it a gacha game after it got a pity system, as it was already one before hand.
That’s still just gambling in another costume 😭
There isn’t a meaningful difference; gachas are just a subset of lootboxes, and anybody claiming otherwise is a player lying to themselves or is a game publisher defending themselves from these predatory practices.
Yup, it doesn’t make a difference if you pay for:
Gacha
Gacha is the prime example to use for loot boxes.
The presentation is different, but the core problem that the FTC is targeting is the same: spending real money to gamble on artificial digital goods.
Gacha is a type of loot box.
You aren’t purchasing a specific item when you spend money. If there’s any sort of chance involved with that purchase it’s a loot box.
As an old person who plays Genshin Impact, the “character banners” are 100% loot boxes. They have a pity system which guarantees a five star character after 100 “wishes” but even then it may not be the character you wanted. You might have to “wish” up to 200 times to get the five star character you are “wishing” for on the banner. Since you are not buying the character out right and gambling to get them it’s a loot box.
For anyone who doesn’t play “character banners” are a limited run (3 weeks) of a five star character that you can only get from the banner. “Wishes” are like rolls for the character. Each wish you lose gives you either a weapon (3 star/practically useless in game) and every 10 wishes gurantees a four star weapon or four star character.
Hard pity is at 90 wishes and soft pity starts at 75 (which means that the chance to get a 5 star increases significantly with each additional wish past that point). Getting to hard pity almost never happens.
As a person that have played Genshin since the launch. Those are all loot boxes. Just because it’s limited or has a pity system, that doesn’t change the fact. It just limits the results or gives you a guarantee
If you are taking a chance at all to get something from a list of items, as opposed to selecting a specific item to buy, IT IS A LOOT BOX.
The specifics of limits or pity systems, or guarantees after X amount do not matter. The slot machines in Vegas have a fixed and regulated chance to payout as well, it’s still gambling.
a gachapon, the system gacha is named after, its litterally a form of a lootbox. you know, those machines found in places where you place tokens to vend out a random goodie?
In what world is a “gacha system” not a lootbox
'Member when Kyle’s Mom freaked the fuck out and tried to ban Pokémon Red and Blue because they “depicted gambling” in the game corner, which had no links to the outside world and could not be fed with real money in any capacity, was completely contained within the monochrome screen on your Gameboy, and could be save scummed anyway? Pepperidge Farm 'members.
My, how far the bullshit has come.
Anyway, 16 is sure a funny way to spell 18. Why the hell is the age requirement 16 when you can’t buy a lottery ticket until you’re 18 and in most places you can’t enter a casino until you’re 21? It’s the same thing.
Lootboxes is gambling. So are gacha pulls, and doubly so for both of the above when they can be fueled with real world money. People who are not adults should not be enabled to gamble.
See the tweet from Balatro’s developer:
Best way to train new gamblers
And millions of children cried out for their waifus.
(This is good: I play and enjoy Genshin but they’re using every single psychological trick to get you to spend money to gamble and that kind of shameless shit shouldn’t be put in front of children who don’t have sufficient experience and developmental time to not get totally taken.)
I never played Genshin but I did check out ZZZ for a minute. The gacha element was just too intense and it reminded me of games from 15+ years ago that used similar mechanics.
Anything more specific they do more than any other Gacha game?
Yes. They are bigger. It sends a message to the entire predatory ecosystem. Which would not happen if they went for a smaller Gacha game.
Other than that, no, let’s give them fines too.
I don’t think so, no. At least nothing I’ve noticed, but they’re also not being any better than any other gacha game, either.
Yeah, there’s a reason we don’t let children into casinos. Putting cute cartoons in the casino on their phone just makes it worse, if anything.
this should have to go through the same regulations as casinos. although that would probably just mean no official release or support for Canadians
You love to see it.
As much as I like putting limitations on lootboxes or banning them out right, I’ve seen what developers do when they can’t use lootboxes. $20 to $30 “micro” transactions with predatory menus and game mechanics that make you feel bad for not owning the latest hotness. They will do anything to make that microtransaction money regardless. They’ll just take advantage of a different part of your brain.
Then ban that shit too
We shouldn’t allow corporations to psychology manipulate children.
We shouldn’t allow children online or playing video games. If we’re going full jack Thompson, let’s go full jack Thompson. No one under 21 gets Internet or games.
Playing games is different than manipulating money out of minors.
You know that too
So all games should be free?
You could just sell the game at a flat cost. You know, like they use to and still do. If you want a “Live Service” game, just sell a DLC/Expansion Pack every few months.
That would still be taking money from kids. One would assume marketing is involved so that’s tricking kids into making a purchase.
My solution is simply stop letting kids have video games. If we want to censor things, let’s censor them.
No. That would be taking money from the parents when they purchase the game. The kids would only be playing the game and so long as there’s no store front in the game, there’s no problem.
Would you ban kids from riding bicycles because stores sell them?
Most people consider lootbox/gacha predatory and regular advertising a necessary evil. Regular advertising is often manipulative too, but most people consider lootbox/gacha to be more so, especially because of the addictive gambling mechanics it uses that regular advertising doesn’t. Also, most people are used to advertising, and putting lootboxes/gacha in video games is something I am assuming most Lemmy posters can remember there being a controversy over before microtransactions became The New Normal.
Don’t worry, Genshin has that already
Good. Now do the same to the major triple A studios attaching loot boxes to every sports game and battle royale. Why the fuck start with Mihoyo?
Probably got put on their radar by people complaining about the Chinese gacha game being too popular or something. Those same people complain much less about their manly sports/shooting games made in the good ol’ United States of 'Murica. Even though they have similar predatory mechanics.
20 mil is peanuts. Selling shit to children for as long as you can is worth way more. FTC has proven that exploiting kids with gambling mechanics is just good business.