Games of chance in and of themselves are not gambling. To be gambling you have to be able to win money. You can play the exact same games they play in the casino and it's not gambling unless you can win money on your bets. They sell poker sets at Wal*Mart with plastic chips to play with, and the reason it's not gambling is because the chips have no cash value. The prizes in the lockboxes also have no cash value. It can't be gambling if you can't win money. All you're doing is making a purchase where the item is random and has different -subjective- value but the same exact cash value which is zero.
Step out of the game mentality where "ships" and "weapons" and "consoles" and "traits" and such have value to us because we're invested psychologically and emotionally into the game. From a practical real world perspective, these things have the same worth as getting the race car instead of the shoe in a game of Monopoly. Even if it gives you an in-game advantage, it has no actual value because the game is for entertainment purposes only. From a real world perspective, if someone is dumb enough to pay real money for Monopoly money you cannot redeem for real cash and only helps you win a game that's only played for fun, that's on you. It's not gambling because you can't win anything of value.
NOTHING in this game has real world value. None. A T6 Connie isn't even worth a single penny. You can't sell it. It has no use outside the game, and no cash value. Any money you put into acquiring it is sunk and gone, you're never getting it back. If you bought boxes, you didn't make a bet because you can't win anything of actual value. You made a purchase, plain and simple, you just didn't know exactly what you'd get. You didn't gamble for it, you bought whatever was in the box. No cash value, no refunds, no payouts. Not gambling.
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Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
@darthmeow504 Unfortunately you miss the point. This is about German laws, not our personal opinions. You don't have to win cash for it to be classified as gambling in Germany just something 'of value' [sic] - German laws are often quite omnious like that so a court can decide a ship is something of value. I personally don't think STO boxes would qualify as gambling because they don't require a monetary wager (that's the important thing) but I said that before.
@baddmoonrizin can a post be 'MVP' if it completely misses the ongoing debate?
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
The terms of service explicitly point out the value offered from the sale of zens is not-monetary, but rather the right to use (license) Zen. Licenses like this, which are non-transferable do have value in terms of service obligations.
Intangibles like non-transferable licenses or service contracts may have no monetary value, but that certainly doesn't mean they have no value.
Games of chance in and of themselves are not gambling. To be gambling you have to be able to win money.
Wrong. And very wrong, at that.
For something to be considered to be called 'gambling,' real life money has to be involved. Nothing more.
The prizes in the lockboxes also have no cash value. It can't be gambling if you can't win money. All you're doing is making a purchase where the item is random and has different -subjective- value but the same exact cash value which is zero.
Your entire argument is basically like that: "It's just pixels, therefore it isn't gambling." Yeah, no. That university in Germany (statistically) related PWE's revenue stream to the sale of the chance-based lock boxes. THAT makes it gambling. Saying "A T6 Connie isn't even worth a single penny." is utterly irrelevant, as your whole notion that the item you gained needs to have some cash value, for the process to be called gambling, is not applicable.
Also wholly irrelevant is your argument that ppl can potentially grind for Dilithium, and get Zen for lock boxes that way. Like I said, a very 'clear & present' statistical relationship has been established -- by a scientific institution -- between the way PWE makes money, and lock boxes. Period.
You made a purchase, plain and simple, you just didn't know exactly what you'd get.
And that, manfriend, is the very definition of gambling. And it becomes illegal (without a license) when RL money is involved: not RL money from every single person per se, but when said RL money is tied to the process as a whole. And that's what's been proven now.
@baddmoonrizin can a post be 'MVP' if it completely misses the ongoing debate?
To which I'd like to add, that I found the 'MVP' thing a mite weird. I feel a moderator should intervene when possible rule infractions are involved, and not use moderator badges to show his or her personal bias in a discussion. Something about keeping up (at least the semblance of) impartiality when he or she puts on their official moderator hat.
And that, manfriend, is the very definition of gambling. And it becomes illegal (without a license) when RL money is involved: not RL money from every single person per se, but when said RL money is tied to the process as a whole. And that's what's been proven now.
The problem with this overly simplistic way of thinking is that by that definition buying baseball cards and those plastic capsule things are also gambling.
And the monetary value of every one of the "prizes" in a lockbox is zero. You can't sell a T6 Connie or Crossfield for cash at even the dodgiest pawnshop - it's a thing which exists only in STO, and whose value is hardly universal. (Or did you miss the chorus of voices when the Discovery Lockbox was announced, crying that they would never want one of those horrible Disco spaceships? To these people, those prizes had in fact a negative value.)
By comparison, at least the things found in those plastic balls, or in a Kinder Egg, can at least have collector value - and if nothing else, they have physical existence and can be used in ways their creators never intended. A STO lockbox prize, on the other hand, can be nothing except what it is - a virtual toy to be played with in a game, and one which confers no special benefit on the possessor.
Games of chance in and of themselves are not gambling. To be gambling you have to be able to win money.
Wrong.
To second meimeitoo here, I'd like to quote the German legal definition of gambling ("Glücksspiel"). I already did so in my removed post above but I had too much going on.
Ein Glücksspiel liegt vor, wenn im Rahmen eines Spiels für den Erwerb einer Gewinnchance ein Entgelt verlangt wird und die Entscheidung über den Gewinn ganz oder überwiegend vom Zufall abhängt.
My rough translation, feel free to improve on it: "Gambling is, if during a game, for having a shot at winning something, money has to be paid, and the decision on whether or not you win depends wholly or predominantly on luck."
(Added a couple of gramatically awkward commas to separate the parts of the sentence better. The definition continues with a definition of wagers on future events like betting on sports which are not relevant to this case, but by definition they are considered gambling, if you're interested.)
There is no need at all in German law for the price to have any monetary value whatsoever to call it "gambling". Of course, not all gambling is illegal, so meeting the criteria alone isn't a problem.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
If I may step in in an attempt to help conveying the meaning of the definition in German law more clearly, adding up on xyquarze's earlier post:
"It is considered gambling, if money is charged for a chance to win a prize and the decision about the prize depends wholly or predominantly on luck."
Reading the German text, I would even go so far as that it's not only the question whether you win something or not, but it depends on the nature of the prizes involved. Specifically: If you can win 3 Lobi and a 1000 XP Skill boost token vs 3 Lobi and a T6 ship, and if one is considerably more valuable in game-terms (!) than the other, then it may very well meet the German definition of gambling if Cryptic charges money for opening lockboxes - which they do, even if there are alternative ways to obtain keys.
Of course, things may be totally different in US law - talking about cultural differences. But then a company has to obey the local rules, if they want to make business; which is one reason why international companies have large legal departments...
Games of chance in and of themselves are not gambling. To be gambling you have to be able to win money.
Wrong.
To second meimeitoo here, I'd like to quote the German legal definition of gambling ("Glücksspiel"). I already did so in my removed post above but I had too much going on.
Ein Glücksspiel liegt vor, wenn im Rahmen eines Spiels für den Erwerb einer Gewinnchance ein Entgelt verlangt wird und die Entscheidung über den Gewinn ganz oder überwiegend vom Zufall abhängt.
My rough translation, feel free to improve on it: "Gambling is, if during a game, for having a shot at winning something, money has to be paid, and the decision on whether or not you win depends wholly or predominantly on luck."
(Added a couple of gramatically awkward commas to separate the parts of the sentence better. The definition continues with a definition of wagers on future events like betting on sports which are not relevant to this case, but by definition they are considered gambling, if you're interested.)
There is no need at all in German law for the price to have any monetary value whatsoever to call it "gambling". Of course, not all gambling is illegal, so meeting the criteria alone isn't a problem.
I would change "during a game" to "within the framework of [the legal definition of] a game," but that's just me nitpicking, really.
Essentially, what the Hamburg university determined, is that companies like PWE are primarily carried by whales. Whales don't buy up huge amounts of C-Store ships (for one, because you can possess only 1 of each, and they're non-transferable). Instead, they predominantly buy lock boxes -- in large numbers -- to either get the Grand Prize for themselves, or to sell them. And since lock boxes are undeniably chance-based, they concluded that the revenue stream from companies like PWE primarily hinges on gambling. A very lucid line of reasoning, IMHO.
Again, it doesn't matter that opening a lock box, which doesn't carry the Grand Prize, isn't a total loss per se. Nor does it, in the strictest sense, matter whether a whale were opening a zillion boxes just for the Lobi, and not for the Grand Prize, as even the Lobi amount is chance-based (the guaranteed minimum pay-out despite).
And that German judge who ruled that something can have value, even when you can't sell it for cash, it dead-on right too. If someone paid $250 to get his or her T6 Connie, then said ship has value -- even a monetary one -- if for nothing else, because $250 was paid to obtain it. Like thieves stealing a famous painting from a museum: chances are they can never sell it, but it has great monetary value nonetheless.
[*] Vastly increase the (fixed) prices of ships, make them more scarce and possibly single-character items (though account-wide wuld certainly be more popular and would soften the blow). Introduce a new tier to get people to aquire ships under the new scheme. Prices could be at around 20,000 zen or 10,000, or something like that. (Might not be accepted by the playerbase... be very careful in communicating the necessity!)
Earlier I was thinking along the same lines, like 'Why not just do away with the lock box, and just sell the Grand Prize ship for 10,000 Zen outright?!' Then it occured to me, that I just stumbled upon one of the very pillars of gambling: Cryptic has never done so before, because the very nature of a (compulsive) gambler makes it so that they won't stop at 100 boxes, but keep opening more, because they feel they're now surely 'near winning' (and they feel they already invested so much, quitting now would mean a total loss). So, per saldo Cryptic makes more money exploiting the chance-based nature of the lock box. That mechanism alone is prima facie evidence that lock boxes are gambling.
Reading the German text, I would even go so far as that it's not only the question whether you win something or not, but it depends on the nature of the prizes involved. Specifically: If you can win 3 Lobi and a 1000 XP Skill boost token vs 3 Lobi and a T6 ship, and if one is considerably more valuable in game-terms (!) than the other, then it may very well meet the German definition of gambling if Cryptic charges money for opening lockboxes - which they do, even if there are alternative ways to obtain keys.
@xyquarze said "not all gambling is illegal". To emphasize this here's a interesting bit:
In Germany, lottery booths at a fair that tickets for a buck to win plushy animals are, in fact, classified as gambling by law. It is just that the value of ticket and prize are low enough to not require regulation of the game as long as it's a legitimate business.
German gambling legislation, as stated before, primarily nakes sure taxes are paid and organized crime can't use it as a front. The main reason it's prohibited for minors is to make the whole thing not public - in Germany all establishments offering gambling need to have opaque windows so the gambling is not publically visible and a bouncer can restrict entrance to minors. This is very important as the law explicitly mentions public access in the paragraph setting up the definition of illegal gambling. Protection of minors from gambling is not regulated via these laws, but a different youth protection one.
Anyway, that means that even if STO boxesvare gambling, the 'value' involved can still be jugded to be below that threshold mentioned initially.
The decision is pretty open and I'm no lawyer. I'm an ecologist with a degree in nature conservation so I can navigate German and EU environmental laws and my legalese is good enough to interprete things relevant to this but I concede if someone with better knowledge comes in. However it reminds me that somewhere in here somebody stated that German law is impartial since this isn't the US. That's of course nonsense. German law and *especially* EU law are strongly influenced by lobbyists. EU regulations are toba large part directly written by and for lobby groups - for the simple reason hardly anyone cares, European election turn out is embarassingly low in Europe, thus "we" let this happen.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Anyway, it may be that Cryptic/PWE need to find other ways to finance this game.
Suggestions made thus far:
Transfer everything to the lobi store, and sell lobi directly, for about 25-30 Zen per lobi.
Transfer everything to the C-store. Possibly make big packages that contain what you'd usually win out of a lockbox that you open 200 times for a big pricetag.
Make keys account bound and tie an age verification process to being registered as a paying customer. (Hard to implement)
Disclose the odds for the various prizes. (Doubtful if it's sufficient; Roulette in a casino has known odds and is still gambling.)
Vastly increase the (fixed) prices of ships, make them more scarce and possibly single-character items (though account-wide wuld certainly be more popular and would soften the blow). Introduce a new tier to get people to aquire ships under the new scheme. Prices could be at around 20,000 zen or 10,000, or something like that. (Might not be accepted by the playerbase... be very careful in communicating the necessity!)
Fixed amount of lobi per pox (highly doubtful if that is sufficient).
A good summation of the options, really.
I foresee one semi-humerous conundrum with the fixed prices, though. If Cryptic were to sell lock box ships for too little, then obviously they'd lose money; but if they started selling them for what they actually make per lock box, on average, say, 20,000 Zen, people would be outraged at how they've been taken advantage of for years. Yes, choices.
Nonetheless, I think your top 2 options are the best: the best way to survive this, is to do away with the chance-based boxes altogether -- even if that means fixed (and much higher) base prices.
Games of chance in and of themselves are not gambling. To be gambling you have to be able to win money.
Wrong. And very wrong, at that.
For something to be considered to be called 'gambling,' real life money has to be involved. Nothing more.
The prizes in the lockboxes also have no cash value. It can't be gambling if you can't win money. All you're doing is making a purchase where the item is random and has different -subjective- value but the same exact cash value which is zero.
Your entire argument is basically like that: "It's just pixels, therefore it isn't gambling." Yeah, no. That university in Germany (statistically) related PWE's revenue stream to the sale of the chance-based lock boxes.
I don't think that it's PWE specifically that the researchers analyzed. But I am not sure which games they analyzed.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
@xyquarze said "not all gambling is illegal". To emphasize this here's a interesting bit:
In Germany, lottery booths at a fair that tickets for a buck to win plushy animals are, in fact, classified as gambling by law. It is just that the value of ticket and prize are low enough to not require regulation of the game as long as it's a legitimate business.
German gambling legislation, as stated before, primarily nakes sure taxes are paid and organized crime can't use it as a front. The main reason it's prohibited for minors is to make the whole thing not public - in Germany all establishments offering gambling need to have opaque windows so the gambling is not publically visible and a bouncer can restrict entrance to minors. This is very important as the law explicitly mentions public access in the paragraph setting up the definition of illegal gambling. Protection of minors from gambling is not regulated via these laws, but a different youth protection one.
Anyway, that means that even if STO boxesvare gambling, the 'value' involved can still be jugded to be below that threshold mentioned initially.
I suspect that this is the point where STO doesn't have such a good stance, because you can really spend a ton of money in a very short amount of time, with little to no effort at all.
It's really just the click of a button to get yourself some keys. (And remember, you don't have to wait for lockboxes to drop - you can just buy them on the Dilithium Store for a tiny amount of Dilithium).
Getting plushy animals on a fare with lottery tickets will quickly run into physical limitations - how many tickets are there, how long does it take to get one and to check whether you won or not. How often do you even have the opportunity to play there?
But PWE has a limit on how much Zen you can buy over a time period. At least they used to.
I am not sure how much that is an anti-fraud measure and how much that is an anti-gambling-law-protection for them, but it might help.
The decision is pretty open and I'm no lawyer. I'm an ecologist with a degree in nature conservation so I can navigate German and EU environmental laws and my legalese is good enough to interprete things relevant to this but I concede if someone with better knowledge comes in. However it reminds me that somewhere in here somebody stated that German law is impartial since this isn't the US. That's of course nonsense. German law and *especially* EU law are strongly influenced by lobbyists. EU regulations are toba large part directly written by and for lobby groups - for the simple reason hardly anyone cares, European election turn out is embarassingly low in Europe, thus "we" let this happen.
Yes, that is a bit idealistic and naive assumption. What is true that currently it's about interpreting existing law, which is not so strongly influenced by lobbyists.
And it also often seemed to be that the gaming industry doesn't have really a strong lobby in Germany, and it's kinda popular to blame video games for stuff. On the other hand, very little hapens about it. The USK and BPjS have existed for decades...
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
@baddmoonrizin can a post be 'MVP' if it completely misses the ongoing debate?
Of course it can if it suits Bads take on the topic
On a different note, mvping stuff @badmoonrizin is a bad idea unless its a personal award - as it is, you are more or less implying this is the viewpoint of PWE/Cryptic which is shaky ground for a mere community moderator
If someone paid $250 to get his or her T6 Connie, then said ship has value -- even a monetary one -- if for nothing else, because $250 was paid to obtain it.
Point of order - no one has ever paid $250, or any other sum of cash, to get a Connie. They may well have purchased 200 keys for whatever reason, but the Connie is available in one of two ways - via opening a lockbox (in which case it may appear on the first try, or it may never appear - such is the operation of probability), or via purchase from the Exchange (where the purchase is carried out in EC, which cannot be purchased for cash).
Perhaps someone purchased keys with the expectation of getting a particular ship out of a lockbox - I cannot read minds, I cannot ascertain the original purpose. However, as multiple threads in this forum have demonstrated, if someone did this, they were foolish. It would be easier and more certain to simply sell those keys on the Exchange, reap the reward in EC, then spend the EC to purchase the desired ship (which is generally available at some EC price in there). Either way, transferring the responsibility to Cryptic rather than the owner of the keys (and the credit card - you can't use cash to buy Zen, it's strictly an online transaction) would involve some of the most bizarre legal theory I've yet heard.
Even in German law, there must come a point somewhere at which the owner of a credit card is held responsible for purchases made in good faith when the card has not been stolen. If you're silly enough to simply hand your CC information over to a child, it is not and should not be an online company's responsibility to ensure you meant to do that.
The problem with gambling isn't the type of payout. The problem is the addicting behavior that it cultivates in humans to get that shiny prize. It's like a drug addiction for some people and dismissing them as "get more self control" doesn't solve the problem and creates problems for other people who have no part in the gambling. Wither it's the parent of a child who just had their credit card drained for lock box keys or what have you.
The Hook Up: Buying the keys.
The High: Playing the lock box game.
The Fall: Not getting the shiny T6 carrot ship you were hoping for.
It creates an cycle of addiction because your playing with odds that aren't in your favor and some people can't resist that.
Side Note: It would be kinda funny seeing a giant space carrot in sector space.
Maybe the duty officer pack for this could have a tactical boff of...
Actually... you can put a (rough, due to fluctuation) monetary cost on ec
-Facts-
A lockbox key on the exchange is 4.309m ec (as of just looking at the exchange)
A key costs 125z
1z =/= 278dilithium ( as of just looking at the dx)
Your post can only be called "accurate" because the symbol =/= means "not equal to". Any parity between keys and in-game cost is only by player collusion - you can see this in action in STO's sister game, Champions Online, where players are actively trying to maintain a cost in the Auction House (same thing as the Exchange, really) of approximately 100 Globals per key. (1 Global would be roughly equivalent to 100,000 EC). This activity is purely player-driven, and is frequently disrupted by other players who just want to sell their doggone keys and to heck with another player's idea of how the economy should work.
Your post can only be called "accurate" because the symbol =/= means "not equal to". Any parity between keys and in-game cost is only by player collusion - you can see this in action in STO's sister game, Champions Online, where players are actively trying to maintain a cost in the Auction House (same thing as the Exchange, really) of approximately 100 Globals per key. (1 Global would be roughly equivalent to 100,000 EC). This activity is purely player-driven, and is frequently disrupted by other players who just want to sell their doggone keys and to heck with another player's idea of how the economy should work.
I'd argue though thats the same as realworld economics, money and resources only have a value to the 'players' so its as valid as anything - all economic are created by consensus; there is nothing naturally occuring.
The whole "it's not gambling because it isn't worth money outside of STO" argument is patently false, and likely intentionally so. There are numerous websites set up by gold sellers, selling keys, lockbox, and lobi ships, all kinds of things you can only get in the game itself.
Pretending that one isn't aware of (and constantly blocking) gold sellers is disingenuous. We all get spammed about it, it's complained about on the forums, we all block the annoying gold sellers-except for those actually buying things from them.
If the stuff wasn't worth real-world money, there would be no such thing as these spammers. A 5 second internet search yields numerous examples of this, as everyone here likely already knows.
If someone paid $250 to get his or her T6 Connie, then said ship has value -- even a monetary one -- if for nothing else, because $250 was paid to obtain it.
Point of order - no one has ever paid $250, or any other sum of cash, to get a Connie.
I'm glad you know this with such certainty. Me? I'm equally certain many people have. I'm even willing to bet (oh wait, no gambling *g*) that the vast majority of people buying keys, for the purpose of opening boxes, do so by buying the keys directly from the C-Store: because if they already had the EC to buy the keys off the exchange, they would have simply bought the ship off the exchange (!).
Even in German law, there must come a point somewhere at which the owner of a credit card is held responsible for purchases made in good faith when the card has not been stolen. If you're silly enough to simply hand your CC information over to a child, it is not and should not be an online company's responsibility to ensure you meant to do that.
I don't know German law well enough to contend you on this; but in Dutch law, when a child is handelingsonbekwaam (often translated as 'legally incapacitated', which, IMHO, hardly covers the term properly, as you can't be incapacitated when you never had the capacity to begin with; it's much closer to 'legally unable to enter into legal obligations/contracts'), covered by Article 1:234 BW, a parent can nullify whatever purchases said child made (ex Article 3:32 BW), unless permission is presumed to have been given. Like you can send your kid to the store to get some bread and milk, and such purchase would be legally binding. But if your 14-year-old buys himself a scooter or something, the parents are allowed to nullify said purchase, regardless of whose credit card was used.
As such, since children are deemed handelingsonbekwaam, the burden would, indeed, be on PWE to ensure children can't make credit card purchases with them (as children don't normally have credit cards); especially not for the purpose of gambling -- as the law simply forbids facilitating minors to gamble where RL money is involved. That it is why PWE would be required to put reasonable safeguards in place to prevent this. And even if a child slipped thru, so to speak, parents could still nullify the transaction. And that's simply because handelingsonbekwaamheid is a statutory thing -- and has nothing to do, whatsoever, with raising your children properly or not.
Well if we're talking lawyerese, the Terms of Service specify Zen has no monetary value, either.
It doesn't matter whether Zen has an innate monetary value or not: the moment you have to pay RL money for it, our law would consider it 'gambling where RL money is involved.'
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@baddmoonrizin can a post be 'MVP' if it completely misses the ongoing debate?
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Intangibles like non-transferable licenses or service contracts may have no monetary value, but that certainly doesn't mean they have no value.
Wrong. And very wrong, at that.
For something to be considered to be called 'gambling,' real life money has to be involved. Nothing more.
Your entire argument is basically like that: "It's just pixels, therefore it isn't gambling." Yeah, no. That university in Germany (statistically) related PWE's revenue stream to the sale of the chance-based lock boxes. THAT makes it gambling. Saying "A T6 Connie isn't even worth a single penny." is utterly irrelevant, as your whole notion that the item you gained needs to have some cash value, for the process to be called gambling, is not applicable.
Also wholly irrelevant is your argument that ppl can potentially grind for Dilithium, and get Zen for lock boxes that way. Like I said, a very 'clear & present' statistical relationship has been established -- by a scientific institution -- between the way PWE makes money, and lock boxes. Period.
And that, manfriend, is the very definition of gambling.
To which I'd like to add, that I found the 'MVP' thing a mite weird. I feel a moderator should intervene when possible rule infractions are involved, and not use moderator badges to show his or her personal bias in a discussion. Something about keeping up (at least the semblance of) impartiality when he or she puts on their official moderator hat.
My character Tsin'xing
By comparison, at least the things found in those plastic balls, or in a Kinder Egg, can at least have collector value - and if nothing else, they have physical existence and can be used in ways their creators never intended. A STO lockbox prize, on the other hand, can be nothing except what it is - a virtual toy to be played with in a game, and one which confers no special benefit on the possessor.
To second meimeitoo here, I'd like to quote the German legal definition of gambling ("Glücksspiel"). I already did so in my removed post above but I had too much going on.
My rough translation, feel free to improve on it: "Gambling is, if during a game, for having a shot at winning something, money has to be paid, and the decision on whether or not you win depends wholly or predominantly on luck."
(Added a couple of gramatically awkward commas to separate the parts of the sentence better. The definition continues with a definition of wagers on future events like betting on sports which are not relevant to this case, but by definition they are considered gambling, if you're interested.)
There is no need at all in German law for the price to have any monetary value whatsoever to call it "gambling". Of course, not all gambling is illegal, so meeting the criteria alone isn't a problem.
"It is considered gambling, if money is charged for a chance to win a prize and the decision about the prize depends wholly or predominantly on luck."
Reading the German text, I would even go so far as that it's not only the question whether you win something or not, but it depends on the nature of the prizes involved. Specifically: If you can win 3 Lobi and a 1000 XP Skill boost token vs 3 Lobi and a T6 ship, and if one is considerably more valuable in game-terms (!) than the other, then it may very well meet the German definition of gambling if Cryptic charges money for opening lockboxes - which they do, even if there are alternative ways to obtain keys.
Of course, things may be totally different in US law - talking about cultural differences. But then a company has to obey the local rules, if they want to make business; which is one reason why international companies have large legal departments...
I would change "during a game" to "within the framework of [the legal definition of] a game," but that's just me nitpicking, really.
Essentially, what the Hamburg university determined, is that companies like PWE are primarily carried by whales. Whales don't buy up huge amounts of C-Store ships (for one, because you can possess only 1 of each, and they're non-transferable). Instead, they predominantly buy lock boxes -- in large numbers -- to either get the Grand Prize for themselves, or to sell them. And since lock boxes are undeniably chance-based, they concluded that the revenue stream from companies like PWE primarily hinges on gambling. A very lucid line of reasoning, IMHO.
Again, it doesn't matter that opening a lock box, which doesn't carry the Grand Prize, isn't a total loss per se. Nor does it, in the strictest sense, matter whether a whale were opening a zillion boxes just for the Lobi, and not for the Grand Prize, as even the Lobi amount is chance-based (the guaranteed minimum pay-out despite).
And that German judge who ruled that something can have value, even when you can't sell it for cash, it dead-on right too. If someone paid $250 to get his or her T6 Connie, then said ship has value -- even a monetary one -- if for nothing else, because $250 was paid to obtain it. Like thieves stealing a famous painting from a museum: chances are they can never sell it, but it has great monetary value nonetheless.
Earlier I was thinking along the same lines, like 'Why not just do away with the lock box, and just sell the Grand Prize ship for 10,000 Zen outright?!' Then it occured to me, that I just stumbled upon one of the very pillars of gambling: Cryptic has never done so before, because the very nature of a (compulsive) gambler makes it so that they won't stop at 100 boxes, but keep opening more, because they feel they're now surely 'near winning' (and they feel they already invested so much, quitting now would mean a total loss). So, per saldo Cryptic makes more money exploiting the chance-based nature of the lock box. That mechanism alone is prima facie evidence that lock boxes are gambling.
Genau! Please, accept my personal MVP award! *g*
In Germany, lottery booths at a fair that tickets for a buck to win plushy animals are, in fact, classified as gambling by law. It is just that the value of ticket and prize are low enough to not require regulation of the game as long as it's a legitimate business.
German gambling legislation, as stated before, primarily nakes sure taxes are paid and organized crime can't use it as a front. The main reason it's prohibited for minors is to make the whole thing not public - in Germany all establishments offering gambling need to have opaque windows so the gambling is not publically visible and a bouncer can restrict entrance to minors. This is very important as the law explicitly mentions public access in the paragraph setting up the definition of illegal gambling. Protection of minors from gambling is not regulated via these laws, but a different youth protection one.
Anyway, that means that even if STO boxesvare gambling, the 'value' involved can still be jugded to be below that threshold mentioned initially.
The decision is pretty open and I'm no lawyer. I'm an ecologist with a degree in nature conservation so I can navigate German and EU environmental laws and my legalese is good enough to interprete things relevant to this but I concede if someone with better knowledge comes in. However it reminds me that somewhere in here somebody stated that German law is impartial since this isn't the US. That's of course nonsense. German law and *especially* EU law are strongly influenced by lobbyists. EU regulations are toba large part directly written by and for lobby groups - for the simple reason hardly anyone cares, European election turn out is embarassingly low in Europe, thus "we" let this happen.
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A good summation of the options, really.
I foresee one semi-humerous conundrum with the fixed prices, though. If Cryptic were to sell lock box ships for too little, then obviously they'd lose money; but if they started selling them for what they actually make per lock box, on average, say, 20,000 Zen, people would be outraged at how they've been taken advantage of for years.
Nonetheless, I think your top 2 options are the best: the best way to survive this, is to do away with the chance-based boxes altogether -- even if that means fixed (and much higher) base prices.
It's really just the click of a button to get yourself some keys. (And remember, you don't have to wait for lockboxes to drop - you can just buy them on the Dilithium Store for a tiny amount of Dilithium).
Getting plushy animals on a fare with lottery tickets will quickly run into physical limitations - how many tickets are there, how long does it take to get one and to check whether you won or not. How often do you even have the opportunity to play there?
But PWE has a limit on how much Zen you can buy over a time period. At least they used to.
I am not sure how much that is an anti-fraud measure and how much that is an anti-gambling-law-protection for them, but it might help.
Yes, that is a bit idealistic and naive assumption. What is true that currently it's about interpreting existing law, which is not so strongly influenced by lobbyists.
And it also often seemed to be that the gaming industry doesn't have really a strong lobby in Germany, and it's kinda popular to blame video games for stuff. On the other hand, very little hapens about it. The USK and BPjS have existed for decades...
Of course it can if it suits Bads take on the topic
On a different note, mvping stuff @badmoonrizin is a bad idea unless its a personal award - as it is, you are more or less implying this is the viewpoint of PWE/Cryptic which is shaky ground for a mere community moderator
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Perhaps someone purchased keys with the expectation of getting a particular ship out of a lockbox - I cannot read minds, I cannot ascertain the original purpose. However, as multiple threads in this forum have demonstrated, if someone did this, they were foolish. It would be easier and more certain to simply sell those keys on the Exchange, reap the reward in EC, then spend the EC to purchase the desired ship (which is generally available at some EC price in there). Either way, transferring the responsibility to Cryptic rather than the owner of the keys (and the credit card - you can't use cash to buy Zen, it's strictly an online transaction) would involve some of the most bizarre legal theory I've yet heard.
Even in German law, there must come a point somewhere at which the owner of a credit card is held responsible for purchases made in good faith when the card has not been stolen. If you're silly enough to simply hand your CC information over to a child, it is not and should not be an online company's responsibility to ensure you meant to do that.
The Hook Up: Buying the keys.
The High: Playing the lock box game.
The Fall: Not getting the shiny T6 carrot ship you were hoping for.
It creates an cycle of addiction because your playing with odds that aren't in your favor and some people can't resist that.
Side Note: It would be kinda funny seeing a giant space carrot in sector space.
Maybe the duty officer pack for this could have a tactical boff of...
and a science boff of...
-Facts-
A lockbox key on the exchange is 4.309m ec (as of just looking at the exchange)
A key costs 125z
1z =/= 278dilithium ( as of just looking at the dx)
Thus
1key (125z) =/= 34,740 dilithium
1 keys worth of dilithium =/= exchange key cost, therefore 1 dilithium = 124.1 ec
thus 1z =/= 278 dilithium =/= 34,517.69 ec
1200z = £7.99 (arc billing)
1z = (roughly) 67p, or 34,517 ec (as above)
on the exchange the connie [Special Requisition Pack - 23rd Century Tier 6 Undiscovered Dreadnought] is 381m ec
this means at current exchange prices the connie is worth 11,038z
or £73.95
So, yes you can put a monetary value on 'funny money' items
(you can even calculate the cost of rep marks if you consider their 'cashing out' value ..rep items are painful to buy if you do so...)
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I'd argue though thats the same as realworld economics, money and resources only have a value to the 'players' so its as valid as anything - all economic are created by consensus; there is nothing naturally occuring.
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Pretending that one isn't aware of (and constantly blocking) gold sellers is disingenuous. We all get spammed about it, it's complained about on the forums, we all block the annoying gold sellers-except for those actually buying things from them.
If the stuff wasn't worth real-world money, there would be no such thing as these spammers. A 5 second internet search yields numerous examples of this, as everyone here likely already knows.
I'm glad you know this with such certainty. Me? I'm equally certain many people have.
I don't know German law well enough to contend you on this; but in Dutch law, when a child is handelingsonbekwaam (often translated as 'legally incapacitated', which, IMHO, hardly covers the term properly, as you can't be incapacitated when you never had the capacity to begin with; it's much closer to 'legally unable to enter into legal obligations/contracts'), covered by Article 1:234 BW, a parent can nullify whatever purchases said child made (ex Article 3:32 BW), unless permission is presumed to have been given. Like you can send your kid to the store to get some bread and milk, and such purchase would be legally binding. But if your 14-year-old buys himself a scooter or something, the parents are allowed to nullify said purchase, regardless of whose credit card was used.
As such, since children are deemed handelingsonbekwaam, the burden would, indeed, be on PWE to ensure children can't make credit card purchases with them (as children don't normally have credit cards); especially not for the purpose of gambling -- as the law simply forbids facilitating minors to gamble where RL money is involved. That it is why PWE would be required to put reasonable safeguards in place to prevent this. And even if a child slipped thru, so to speak, parents could still nullify the transaction. And that's simply because handelingsonbekwaamheid is a statutory thing -- and has nothing to do, whatsoever, with raising your children properly or not.
It doesn't matter whether Zen has an innate monetary value or not: the moment you have to pay RL money for it, our law would consider it 'gambling where RL money is involved.'