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Web game extras get Office of Fair Trading scrutiny
pointedears
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22109188
Saw this on BBC news and thought it was very appropriate to STO. I wonder if they are under investigation ?
Certainly one of the ways you can pay for Zen is by using your mobile/smartphone through text messages etc, I wonder if anyone has fallen into this trap ? do you feel pressured into buying zen ? it does raise a lot of questions about the whole Free to play model
Saw this on BBC news and thought it was very appropriate to STO. I wonder if they are under investigation ?
Certainly one of the ways you can pay for Zen is by using your mobile/smartphone through text messages etc, I wonder if anyone has fallen into this trap ? do you feel pressured into buying zen ? it does raise a lot of questions about the whole Free to play model
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by pointedears on
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Yeah, that's right.
and im sorry but if any parent is setting up their child on any computer game with access to a credit card or bank which allows the child to buy unlimited amounts of stuff then that is solely on the the parent. why not just hand them a knife while they are at it.
Just opening up discussion. No flaming or attacking intended.
I dont understand your question. Are you asking how any of YOUR statements could be construed as a contextual "fanboi attack"? I wasnt referring to you in particular, I was referring to the garnered responses which were sure to follow your observation/thread. Wasn't directing the statement towards anyone in particular. Least of all you the OP and proprietor of said statement completely unrelated to the incoming responses to which I was referring.
Yeah, that's right.
Scary thought.
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Sorry for mis interpreting you. I understand the whole lockbox gambling issue is a very sore subject which I wont go into here. I just found the article interesting as there are similarities with STO and in game currency/virtual items.
The thing is though, its not really that dissimilar to anything on the internet. people can spend money downloading songs, films, games, go on amazon or play and buy almost anything at the click of a button.
if you give a child the opportunity through negligence and dont teach them not to us it, then they will take advantage. they're kids and often dont know any better. if you as a child could walk into a toy store and could pick anything up you like at the click of a button you probably would. its still the parents job to make sure you dont.
there are smartphone games that are aimed at kids. adults probably wont play them as they are too simplistic/childish , but they still offer the ability to spend huge amount of cash on them. now again its ultimately the parents responsibility but the question is should those games, that market themselves to kids, offer that kind of service? i dont know. thats why its being investigated.
games like STO, LorT, TOR etc are aimed at everybody. they offer things in a similar way but kids are not their target audience. should these be investigated too. maybe, maybe not.
now im not sure if the kids games are doing anything wrong or not, and I dont really believe games aimed at everyone are but if we start spreading it out to all games, then why not spread to to everything on the net? everything is at the tip of our fingers these days and children by their nature lack self control. give a child the means and they will exploit it. the solution is in the parents control.
Let the stupid suffer
Where do you get that assumption from? There are hundreds, if not thousands of examples of US companies being fined and prosecuted in Europe and vice versa. IIRC, Microsoft (a US company last time I checked), has racked up fines somewhere around 2 billion Euros in Europe, just from violating competition laws in the past 5 years alone...
I really doubt they're targeting STO. When comparing the STO way of microtransactions, the basically unlimited access players who are "true" F2Pers have and their target audience to that of a lot of other web games or mobile apps, Cryptic really seems like a lamb amongst wolves.
Agreed. if a US company is trading in foreign territories they also have to follow local law.
Though as pointed out the article refers to web and mobile games. STO is neither.
Now if the BBC were investigating gambling to underage minors, Cryptc/PWE as well as a host of other f2p games would be under scrutiny....
Also the sales of goods act here in the UK supersedes the Cryptc/PWE TOS.
Technically, anything Cryptic changes post sale, is covered by that act. Though I have not heard of anyone using it as of yet
They are not clear cut at all. that is your opinion on it, nothing more at this stage. its debatable at best. maybe the debate needs to happen but you cant guarantee how it will be viewed.
you put money in, you get something back. what comes out may or may not be what you want but you are guaranteed something.
I think this is neither likely nor particularly reasonable, as much as some people might complain bitterly over lockboxes. Almost all games (and certainly most computer games) comprise some combination of pseudo-random chance combined with skill. It's not 'gambling' to create a chance-based mechanism inside a game, even if that chance-based mechanism provides a reward. After all, nobody is arguing that drop tables are gambling, despite the fact that you perform an action and, by chance, obtain a reward.
In the case of a lockbox, it is not like a lottery, where you purchase (with real money) a chance to obtain a prize based on the outcome of random chance. The causal outcome is disconnected. (In fact, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act would seem to explicitly exclude things like PWE's lockboxes from the ambit of 'online gambling' under US law.)
In the case of a lockbox, you must obtain zen- whether by real money or by effort- and then turn that into an in-game key, which you can then use to open an in-game box. But you do not need to pay real money for the key. It is only the "personal efforts of the participants in playing the game" which are really at stake here.
Moreover, gambling requires the exchange of something for value, and game developers have consistently argued that these are "merely games, and that people who invest in them lose nothing of real value". How can it be gambling, if whether or not you win or lose you have nothing of value?
In Korea, at any rate, where I imagine issues like PWE have larger play, the prosecutor suggested that the internet game is "not just a simple game anymore" when you can translate in-game currency and real-world currency simply and effectively. Easy in on-line poker; not so easy in STO.
There's a fascinating article on the topic by Daniela Rosette in the University of Miami Business Law Review: The Application of Real World Rules to Banks in Online Games and Virtual Worlds, 16 U. Miami Bus. L. Rev. 279.
So you think TOR is going to be investigated? :P
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Part of the problem is the ease of purchases with in-app purchasing on smartphones. The parent may have had few qualms about providing the credit card info to the Apple Store or Google Play without really realizing that cc info is now accessible to PURCHASE NOW to some games.
It sucks, and it's the conflict of ease of purchase versus making sure the customer knows they're purchasing something.
Sorry, let me put it another way.
They are a clear cut gambling device for anyone who isn't a moron. Nobody buys lockboxes for the trash loot they hand out as consolation prizes.
A slot machine does the same thing when its pays out less than the pull price.
You don't have to directly pay real money to gamble either. They give away "credit" on all sorts of stuff.
I got a $25 credit from some online sports betting place just last week in the email. Didn't drop a dime.
I see, so you insult people who dont agree with your view as nothing more than morons? classy.
and you are right, out of the countless thousands, not one single person has any interest in the other items because you dont like them.
A slot machine does not guarantee you something every time, and the only thing you can win is money. its not the same thing as a lockbox no matter how much you think it is.
It doesn't matter if you think most of what you get from Lockboxes isn't worth it (which is debatable since the most common loot is a Half Doff Pack + min of 4 Lobi Crystals), you're not gambling.
We KNOW, that you're going to get a lot of Doffs and 5 Lobi per box on average. There's a chance to get better stuff out of it, but the guaranteed minimum means you're trading value for value. Not betting value against more value or loss of value.
Contrast that to the model many other games are taking where full content and features are restricted to paying players (cough, cough, OR).
Mobile games appear to be especially egregious, such as the "Collectible Card Games" that are spreading in popularity. With those, you expend "energy" or "resources" each move you make, and after about 5 minutes of gameplay, you've exhausted your energy. Your only choice is to fork over $3-$5 to instantly recharge your energy or wait 2 hrs for it to recharge on its own.
And our lockboxes have nothing on their "card packs." To get the best cards, you have to collect multiple versions of a rare card to "fuse" into the more powerful version of the card. It's tough enough getting one of these cards, but multiples? Also, they use "step" card paths; think of them as card packs within card packs. Each purchased step increases your chance of the rarest cards and decreases the chance at lower level cards. The whole thing reeks of a ponzi scheme.
Not adult enough to have a mature conversation like everyone else in this thread ?
Just to make it clear I did not say STO was being investigated I was merely asking if they had been approached by the OFT.
After all zen is all too easy to buy from charging zen, heck you can even do it with a mobile.
Whilst no pressure Is put on anyone to but zen, the in game announcements (which I know you can turn off) sure do throw it in your face no ?
Are in game app purchases even lega;l when the game is advertised as FREE to play. Surely it should be Free to enter or free to open ?
Note im not just talking about STO here. Yes the article is maybe more towards phone or ipad games, but whats the difference ?
That's the funny part. If someone makes a grab bag with a single prize of $1,000 and 999,999 prizes of a small pebble (valued $10 because they also sell them directly) they can claim that the average value of the definitely-not-lottery ticket is over $10 and that it's not gambling?
Lockboxes are like crackerjacks: You're going to get something desirable everytime, but there might also be something really cool in there.