RNG boxes, anybody know what will happen in de EU after this news ???

[henrpe]

Any thoughts on the future of RNG boxes and what maybe changing in B&S EU???

https://gizmodo.com/belgian-gaming-commission-decides-battlefront-ii-style-1820663366

[Cauli]

That depends on a couple of things:

1. How this law will be formulated and what the consequences will be. Gambling can be a very wide definition and there are more games which would fall under the definition than games that don't. BNS (rng box), Wulin/Wushu (weapon skins) and BDO (dye box, pets, most of the actual game)  - to name a few - all have some kind of "gambling" involved in them. Even LoL, which is notoriously non-P2W has the Hextech Chest, which is basically an RNG box. 

 

2. Whether the law will be restricted to Belgium only or the entire EU. Belgium is a relatively small market which publishers can afford to lose (by IP banning Belgium for example). Any user that uses a VPN to get access to the game should then be liable for any damages caused by their own gambling habits. If this law spreads to the entire EU though, publishers will probably first try to find a loophole in the law which allows them to sell their RNG boxes unaltered or slightly altered. If they can't, they'll look at their profit numbers and based on that will consider the removal of the RNG box, the exclusion of the region where this law applies (IP banning the entirety of Europe is a giant loss of profit though), or an altered version of the game with a different type of microtransaction to make up for the lost profits of the RNG box in that specific region. 

 

3. Whether this applies to games of all age ratings, or just <18 games.  “Mixing gambling and gaming, especially at a young age, is dangerous for the mental health of the child.” This quote mainly suggests they want to protect children from gambling habits introduced to them by a fun activity (gaming). Publishers then have to consider to raise the age rating of their game, or remove the RNG box for maximum profit. 

[paingwar]

I came here just to ask the same question, here another article

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/belgium-says-loot-boxes-are-gambling-wants-them-banned-in-europe/

 

It seems that Belgium wanted to extend this to the Whole EU. 

 

And to answer to Cauli

 

1. In this case gambling seems not related only to the P2W systems, Overwatch in fact give you only cosmetics things

 

2. They want to discuss this for the entire EU.

 

3. This is a good point 

 

Anyway this will be interesting for the future because it will touch an entire and well oiled business systems.

 

 

 

[Grimoir]

There are 2 forms of gambling: legal and illegal. Legal are the ones you see in games example the rng boxes.

Now the main concern they have is that children get exposed to these practises which can cause addiction.

 

They will never prohibit this by law, even tho they make such big declaration this will never pass by the EU board.

That being said they will have the below options left:

 

1. A new mechanism in place to prevent minors from purchasing the gamble boxes (this may even be a change of the game rating to be 18/21+ and required parental approval in case their kid decides to play)

2. If they remove the rng boxes then you can be 100000% sure that any costume price will go up at least 100-150% in price, so you would end up instead of paying 1299 NC for a costume, it would cost 3500/4000 Coins which would be over 40$.

 

What you also need to consider is they are clearly and properly informing you of what is guaranteed and what not in the rng boxes, and everybody knows that its all luck based.

If you decide on your own to purchase these, you agree to the terms and to the potential loss you may encounter, not to mention  taxes are being deducted for each purchase made.

So if you buy 200 boxes but dont get any wings from it, its on you its not ncsofts fault its your own because you know exactly wht you get and what you can "hope" to get.

every rng box provides you with a minimum of value in items that you used to pay for the box.

 

 

[ombremq]

Thanks god, i hope they gonna apply it to B&S asap, i came here to relax and play a video game not to play stressfull Casino !

[Saksoy]

Just put age rating as 18+ and its all good. 

[henrpe]

10 minutes ago, Saksoy said:

Just put age rating as 18+ and its all good. 

i dont think that it is that simple.

there are people that  are under the age of 18 playing this game, if they make the game  18+ they would have to terminate all those accounts that are not registered as  18+ or at least be blocked until the holder of the account becomes 18. i dont know how this would workout but i dont think that they wou do this, if they do then they would lose a lot of costumers. on the other hand Zulia would get unnerfed  :P

[Laosduude]

inb4ncsoftNA shuts down EU servers if loot box dilemma becomes a serious threat to companies Kappa

[fruiteaterz]

38 minutes ago, Saksoy said:

Just put age rating as 18+ and its all good. 

but its already there indicated with crystal clear letters. rated for adults only, bns is a game full of blood and violence. not for family-friendly advocates so we shouldn't worry too much about what belgians do.

[Saksoy]

24 minutes ago, henrpe said:

i dont think that it is that simple.

there are people that  are under the age of 18 playing this game, if they make the game  18+ they would have to terminate all those accounts that are not registered as  18+ or at least be blocked until the holder of the account becomes 18. i dont know how this would workout but i dont think that they wou do this, if they do then they would lose a lot of costumers. on the other hand Zulia would get unnerfed  :P

How you ever been under 18 on the internet? Because I haven’t.

[Laosduude]

 

[Grimoir]

1 hour ago, henrpe said:

i dont think that it is that simple.

there are people that  are under the age of 18 playing this game, if they make the game  18+ they would have to terminate all those accounts that are not registered as  18+ or at least be blocked until the holder of the account becomes 18. i dont know how this would workout but i dont think that they wou do this, if they do then they would lose a lot of costumers. on the other hand Zulia would get unnerfed  :P

I know another game where minors can make an account under their parents consent and that is also included in the ToS. So whenever something happens there because of a minor, its clearly stated they are only allowed to play with their parents consent, if there was no consent its their parents faulkt and not the publishers so this would work.

 

1 hour ago, fruiteaterz said:

but its already there indicated with crystal clear letters. rated for adults only, bns is a game full of blood and violence. not for family-friendly advocates so we shouldn't worry too much about what belgians do.

Actually no, BnS is rated M for mature and thats ages of 17+ so dont mix those up, M for mature is not adults only.

[Kyrrua]

Well we're already in this situation with most of ncsoft games in west hiding behind their huge rng p2w wall.

 

But the thing is, all those p2w game we had weren't as big and well known than Star wars which is a triple A & the most well known franchise of the world.

Now it is Dysney themselves who warned EA than such behaviors of greed are a threat to their beloved franchise.

Which now led to this. Electronic arts was too greedy, and all those hidden greedy publishers like ncsost have started to realize that this big uproar has put the light on their actions.

 

Its getting pretty huge now that governments are involved, even in the US now.

Dysney is like the personification of star wars fans, they don't want to be associated with this rng pay 2 win problem that could harm their baby, especially when the next movie will be out in 1 months.

[Cauli]

4 hours ago, paingwar said:

I came here just to ask the same question, here another article

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/belgium-says-loot-boxes-are-gambling-wants-them-banned-in-europe/

 

It seems that Belgium wanted to extend this to the Whole EU. 

 

And to answer to Cauli

 

1. In this case gambling seems not related only to the P2W systems, Overwatch in fact give you only cosmetics things

 

2. They want to discuss this for the entire EU.

 

3. This is a good point 

 

Anyway this will be interesting for the future because it will touch an entire and well oiled business systems.

 

 

 

1. I should've been a bit more clear there. RNG =/= P2W, but in a lot of cases RNG boxes ARE used for the purpose of squeezing extra money out of people that they normally wouldn't spend and contain exclusive items that are available in no other way. In some of the worse cases, the rate of the most wanted item is so low that the average person would have to spend absurds amount of money on that RNG box to get the item they want. However, like you said, Overwatch and LoL RNG boxes don't contain this P2W element as the rewards are either purely cosmetic and/or obtainable ingame from other methods. Where I was going with this is that gamers are not protesting against this law because they're rightfully sick of being cashcows, but this law will probably still hit those non-P2W RNG boxes. It all depends on how the law will be formulated. 

 

2. Yes they want to discuss it for the entire EU, but that doesn't mean it will pass for the entire EU. If other member states vote against this law, it may only pass for Belgium and potentially a few other member states who think it's a good idea. If the EU commission decides to make it an EU-wide law, it'll be much more impactful. 

 

It will definitely be interesting. Part of me hopes they make it EU-wide to give off a signal, part of me fears that it will make some great games inaccessible to EU and part of me wonders whether Trove will be considered gambling since it's random what you get in Trove, but you still choose what item you buy from the list. If the law is formulated in a way that Trove can get around it, expect to see a lot more Trove-like structures in games in the future. 

[Kyrrua]

Let's stop being stupid for 2sec.

Rng boxes are clearly gambling.

So is trove.

[Fufia]

It seems that start to get interesting for gamers. Not for you NCS