Or people could not buy microtransactions or support games and studios that use them. Seems like something the free market could regulate without legislation.
That's about as helpful as telling people to solve their gambling issue by not gambling. The problem is that many of these microtransaction-based games use the same mechanics as gambling to make them addictive _and_ they're targeting minors with it.
Given that this is not occurring, it does not "seem like" this.
With gambling people may be driven to gamble to get out of debt. With gacha games, you can't.
Microtransaction games are based around exploiting an inherent flaw in human reasoning; predatory behaviors that exploit our weaknesses as humans should be regulated against.
edit: to back this up: The wordpress blog linked below references 19 clinical studies and explains in detail much better than I care to write up.
https://platinumparagon.wordpress.com/2017/11/16/the-psychol...
When people start killing each other, or letting their lives fall apart around them, just so they can spend more money on another cute girl in Fate GO, then I'll let you make that analogy.
Gambling, video game, and internet addictions are real and do ruin lives.
While I don't want to dive into hyperbole territory and don't blame video games for this instance of violence, just this week someone punched and killed their 1 year old child because they lost at a video game[1].
Brains are weird and are easily highjacked by dopamine hits, whether they're obtained from drugs or external stimuli.
[1] https://people.com/crime/dad-allegedly-kills-baby-son-punch-...
But that does not make it harmful or predatory. People are allowed to spend money on whatever they want, just because you don't agree with their choices doesn't mean you should make it illegal.
In China these days, parents pretty much do treat smartphone games "as bad as drugs" for kids.
Rooting phones to prevent game installation and removing/breaking/locking payment APIs is one of most popular services in phone repair shops.
> With gambling people may be driven to gamble to get out of debt.
This is not really the problem with gambling.
>This is not really the problem with gambling.
Yea it is? People lose money gambling, people bet more money to try and make back what they lost. But you'll always eventually lose money gambling in the long run. It's the most common fallacy that gets brought up in gambling.
1: https://www.pokernews.com/news/2016/04/black-friday-five-yea...
If you want to argue that this could be fixed in libertarian-topia without government intervention, you might argue that I dunno, there could be a class action suit showing that the gaming companies knew that such and such mechanics were resulting in many people becoming addicted/going bankrupt and did it anyway, and maybe that's right.
And if you wanna argue that who is so-and-so to argue that X really didn't want to spend all her money on virtual farm upgrades then that's an argument too I suppose.
But if the problem is people are buying something they don't want to because of a dopamine hook, then arguing that the solution is to stop buying it isn't satisfactory.
But in Clash of Clans, for example, you can be very 'good' (idk what word to use with these kinds of games) without having spent money. You will of course, have spent your time instead.
Theoretically maybe, realistically many of those types of games would require about as much time devoted as a full time job to be winnable, if not playable, without microtransactions.
You can play F2P. If you want to save 3 hours of grinding buy spending $5, why do you want to stop them? It's their money, if people enjoy these games, why stop them? You don't need to control every aspect of peoples lives.
Just check how the cigarette industry moved public attention from addictive substances they deliberately put into cigarettes to "personal responsibility of smokers".