In Sweden, loot boxes are starting to get mainstream – and political – attention. Will it lead anywhere? Who knows? Anything that keeps the pressure on the publishers, however, is good news.
Loot Boxes And In-Game Gambling Get Swedish Scrutiny
In Sweden, loot boxes are starting to get mainstream – and political – attention. Will it lead anywhere? Who knows? Anything that keeps the pressure on the publishers, however, is good news.
One word: Good.
A small step for a gamer… a big step for gamers everywhere.
I seriously hope we see an EU and US wide ban. That’d probably cripple the entire business model and if that causes the Big triple A companies to collapse, oh well. They played the game of the market and if they can’t survive when it changes then they can perish like the dinosaurs.
I’m sat on the loo
What? No micro transactions? But how will we get all the money? Not just some or even a lot of money, we NEED all of it! How else will we pay for our fourth summer homes and pompous extravagant lifestyle!
You know how the internet will react. “Sweden! SJW! Trying to take our games away!”.
Hi Jim! Germany is investigating as well (notified you on FB a few days ago). A side note: Seen on PSN, the NBA 2018 game is down to 9,99 Euro and SWBII is at 29,99 Euro. Surely that reflects the great success the games had and have. EA seems desperate to sell its game right now. In the light of the apparently very popular “watch me open tons of FIFA loot boxes while I jump up and down madly” channels on YT I am very curious how the (supposedly younger) audience is going to take any restrictions on loot boxes.
I was worried the loot-box legislation wave had died down, thank god for Sweden, and Jim of course!
As a FIFA player, I want to say “fuck you” to EA for the way they do Ultimate Team. It has completely turned me off of playing multiplayer online, and I only play the single player and sometimes local multiplayer when I meet up with family and/or friends.
But as you can imagine, the single player suffers because EA focussed on the money making machine that is FIFA Ultimate Team.
People always respond to these videos by saying that Loot Boxes are “equivalent” to baseball cards and blind-bags, But I don’t agree. They’re only “equivalent” in the same way that Wikipedia is “equivalent” to an Encyclopedia Britannica set, or Netflix is “equivalent” to driving to Blockbusters to pick out a VHS tape.
That is to say, you can reduce them down to the same core idea, but when you introduce instant digital distribution and manipulative behind-the-scenes algorithms not possible with physical items, you’ve taken that core idea and created a much more insidious beast.
It has been 10 minutes, and the comments are already filled with people Who have no clue about sweden saying how dangerous it is to live here.
Thank God.
The more countries investigating this the better.
I hope you’re filing that dopamine rush quote from the kid for the next time a company or someone else claims that ‘Lootboxes aren’t gambling because you can’t cash out’…
The outrage against loot boxes and micro-transactions is typical of this generation and their lack of self control…”oh i spent my life savings on opening packs for fifa….EA You are to blame, i want you to shut down!!” Grow a pair and take responsibility for your own actions. Jim Sterling is Morbidly obese and obviously suffers from huge lack of self control but he and his followers would rather blame McDonalds and start making youtube videos about how McDonald’s should close down. It’s bullshit.