In the case of seatbelts I think the case is quite strong. Even beyond consumer preference, there's a burden on public healthcare, and a cost in safety to others (if you get knocked out of your seat you could lose control of the vehicle, belt keeps you by the wheel). Parents can injure their kids by not using seatbelts.
I don't see any of that in games. As a consumer and as a bystander I don't really know whether I want the marginal dollar of game development spent on long term support or on performance improvements or something else. It certainly varies game to game. For big AAA games that depend on mtx, but could be played entirely offline, the studios have a legitimate interest in making playing them offline hard!
I'd also note that having any laws at all about how games work is going to make it more expensive to develop games, purely because you'll make people check if they're following the laws. Imagine a teenager shipping their first game, or a small studio deciding whether to release a hackathon project, or a small team at a big company spinning out a mini game into a standalone. I dread "no, don't launch that, I don't know if breaking the mid battle save system counts as reasonably playable"
As far as how regulations work, I am generally in favor of reworking incentive structures to make companies want to behave in a prescribed manner rather than just outright banning deviant behavior. If something is illegal but still beneficial, they will find ways to dodge regulations and factor fines into cost projections. You have to make it worth their while to do as you want.
I'd rather at least test content awareness before we go to bans (e.g. explicitly list that a game has MTX on the front of the box).
>If we made seatbelts and airbags optional they probably wouldn't have caught on either.
Why are we comparing a life savinng hardware device for a multi thousand Kg car moving 100+ km/hr to a video game server not shutting down in 6 months? Despite the initiative name, games haven't directly killed anyone.
The funny thing is, I agree with you, but in a narrow scope. I am adult. I can and do make decisions that are not fun long term, but could be considered stances on issues ( Doom whatever refund after DRM update ). I am not entirely certain 13-year old demographic playing current crop of always on games have the same perspective. There is a reason we try to protect kids from predatory behavior. They tend to not know any better.
But then, it unfortunately starts being about parents not doing their jobs.
<< People shouldn't be punished for being imperfect and businesses shouldn't be able to weaponize human psychology to take advantage of people.
tldr, i agree in general, but i hesitate on specifics
[1]https://mccaul.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/mccaul-... [2]https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/24/california-car-spee...