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Comment by phone8675309 | Hacker News Reader

> Gamers eight to 16 years old can spend up to 200 yuan (£22, $29) per month, while those between 16 and 18 years can spend up to 400 yuan on their gaming accounts.

Nice to see someone is doing something to curb video game companies slipping gambling into their all-ages games.

Now if only there were some way to force companies to require them to disclose their odds and require an affirmative opt in for all games that require gambleboxes and prevent them from being introduced into existing games without requiring a ratings board re-rating…

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Correct Statement: Nice to see someone pretending to do something to curb video game companies slipping gambling into their all-ages games.

This is another big announcement, followed by temporary raids with nice photos, while the reality of gaming in china will slip back to what it always was. A home for the homeless, friends for the friendless, fake hope for the hopeless. Big announcements in bejing change nothing - unless the boss visits and only then for the time of the visit and on the surface.

China is a more complex society behind what the propaganda claims it to be. Why was stalins propaganda questioned and ccp propaganda is just accepted as fact?

But why has the government to do it?

This is what parents are for. We can't expect government to rule every aspect of our lives.

Also the money argument is not really meaningful. I'm against loot boxes because they are purely gambling and should be regulated as such, but spending that money on games, cosmetics, etc, is not that much. That's what you spend by going twice to the cinema and only enjoy it for a couple hours.

Given that a good chunk of parents out there are completely inept (see: antivax parents), I'm personally up for governments having control over matters of public health.

The only problem is that the government is not always right, actually is wrong very frequently. And almost any aspect of our lives can be regulated for "safety" reasons.

Do you share the viewpoint that parents are inept and children should be raised by the state by trained professionals who have passed a standard set by the government?

Wouldn't that create more a equal playing field where all kids are raised using the same methods? Social economic differences between families would be elimated through this model.

Men/women would not have to raise children. They would have more time to work and more money/time to spend on themselves. This would create a more level playing field allowing women to stay in the workforce allowing for more wage equalization levels between the sexes.

One could say parenting is the greatest public health matter.

Reductio ad absurdum.

Taking things to their logical extremes to dictate a point is disingenuous and ultimately unhelpful.

China identifies a problem; they introduce policy to try to solve the problem.

Remember the original comment.

Government should make all health decisions for children.

My comment is a natural outcome of allowing that. No one is saying China is doing that currently because of this policy. No one is talking about China at all.

Well where droptablemain thinks you're being ridiculous, I would argue the opposite: that's what we already have. We call these state trained professionals "teachers" and pretend they're just educating the children, but I think lockdown has revealed just how many people are dependent on the child minding aspect of schools.

Why not advertise and sell cigarettes to minors, after all parents should be able to restrict smoking.

Gambling is highly addictive, in-game gambling dark patterns are iterated on and weaponized by teams of designers.

Do you believe individual parents are a match for these million pound gorilla companies pushing gambling to their kids, in their own homes and everywhere, 24/7?

As I said, I'm not against regulating gambling systems in games just as we regulate gambling everywhere else.

Gambling is gambling and is bad, especially if you're vulnerable like a kid.

What I don't think it's right is the government telling you how much time you have to spend doing X.

We're talking about gaming hours now. But what about food? Don't eat more than 2000k calories a day or we'll punish you somehow. Don't smoke, don't drink alcohol or take any kind of drugs because it costs money to give you medical attention. Don't practice that sport because it's dangerous. Don't watch more than 2 hours a day of Netflix. And I could go on and on.

I agree that the time restriction is a blunt instrument.

Is there regulation of gambling / addiction-inducing practices in video games? At all?

Same reason the government mandates an age of consent, and minimum smoking/drinking laws.

The ESRB should have a stronger stance on the issue, but they've been pretty lax. The most recent thing I found was them stating loot boxes would be specifically listed under in game purchases, backing April 2020. If the general consensus is that more restrictions are needed and the ESRB doesn't act, federal government is likely to step in. For example games that allow for gambling with real currency should be rated AO according to their guidleines. At best they could be no lower than T.

Game companies also game the system. They add these mechanics after the game goes to reviewers, so it’s not mentioned in day-one reviews and the ESRB doesn’t require re-rating when they are added.

Further, even if they did, that doesn’t change the rating on the box at point of purchase or after purchase.

Realistically, the only way to allow this is either for video game platform holders (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Google for Android, Apple for iOS, etc) to have a standard way for these sorts of gambleboxes to be purchased such that parental controls can be used console wide to either set spending limits or disable the ability to spend at all or for the government to make the publishers accountable for it.

Some platforms have already moved here, but the response industry-wide had been anemic at best.

Anecdotally, there's at least one instance of a ratings change altering the label on the box, Halo 2. A dev buried a photo of him mooning Steve Ballmer in the source code, and the ESRB changed the rating to reflect the newly found nudity. This caused a recall and the game box had to be updated with the new rating.

https://www.polygon.com/2015/4/14/8382089/bungie-butt-micros...

Fair, but how does that fix the issue for people post-purchase?

When industry won’t act to regulate abuse on its own then the only body that can (and should) is the government.

Gambleboxes target whales and children, people who lack impulse control in purchasing these gambleboxes. There are multiple stories of children draining their parents bank accounts and gambling addicts draining their savings into these games. The game companies target them, calling them whales, and these strategies work because they make billions in these gamble box purchases.

Saying "it’s only cosmetics" or "most people don’t do this" doesn’t matter - there are people exploited by this type of monetization, and industry does nothing about it.

Further, it goes into targeting children by placing these mechanisms in all ages games. Sure, you can argue all you want that parents should control what their kids do, but that’s what the rating is for. If the game makers don’t flag this as something for parents to keep their eyes on, if ratings boards can be gamed by developers adding these gamblebox implementations after the rating has been issued, then the only place left to act is the government.

Exploitative behaviors make video game producers massive amounts of money - it’s against their interests to regulate it.

Most games, and specifically games that want to sell in China, do disclose the odds of any specific item being gotten by random chance.

It’s actually another Chinese law that requires disclosing odds on loot boxes.

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