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Comment by Spivak | Hacker News Reader

It's crazy that such an obvious problem ties the hands of regulators because people are making too much money on it. There is no defensible justification for incorporating a money siphon into an entertainment product.

This could be dealt with swiftly with a law that says that video games must have upfront pricing— either a one time payment or a fixed-cost subscription. It's fine to have loot boxes or random rewards but how many rolls of the dice or your odds can't be affected by IRL money, and in-game items must be purchasable by either in-game currency or money, not both. Items that affect gameplay in any way must be in-game currency.

I would just ban all in-game purchases because it's still a money siphon based on social pressure but I recognize that it's a lesser evil.

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There are some niceties from it, primarily that it keeps games affordable to virtually everyone. The price of a video game hasn’t really changed since the 90s. If anything, it’s come down given how many major games are F2P these days.

I don’t think it’s abhorrent in principle that people with expendable income bankroll the game for people without in exchange for silly skins. Somebody has to pay, and I suspect the upfront purchase price will be higher than people expect.

As somebody that plays games I would unkindly ask organizations like this to stop existing. The only thing I ever see from these organizations is them lobbying to ban something in the name of "protecting people".

Children do not make their own money. You can't trick someone that doesn't have money, let alone have a credit card to make purchases. It's nonsense.

>This could be dealt with swiftly with a law that says that video games must have upfront pricing— either a one time payment or a fixed-cost subscription.

And leave millions of people unable to play games. Free games are popular for the same reason websites are ad supported: people don't want to, can't afford to or lack the payment methods to pay for them.

People used their wallets to vote on this. And they chose the F2P microtransaction-laden P2W games. The vast majority of those players will spend nothing on that game. You make it buy to play and these games are dead on arrival.

If these systems truly were so nefariously predatory as they are portrayed then you'd think that more than a tiny percentage of players would be spending on them.

I don't like these mechanics either, but I grew up playing them (Korean F2P MMOs), because they were the only ones available to me. If this change why through then these games wouldn't suddenly change, they just wouldn't be available in Europe. If the entire world adopted the regulation then the game wouldn't have been made in the first place. Instead you would get "to play this $60 game you must buy our custom $350 hardware" or something else like that.

Or... You would just get less games.

If you don't like a game then just don't play it. Why do you feel the need to make others unable to play it too?

"People used their wallets to vote on this. And they chose the F2P microtransaction-laden P2W games. The vast majority of those players will spend nothing on that game. You make it buy to play and these games are dead on arrival.

If these systems truly were so nefariously predatory as they are portrayed then you'd think that more than a tiny percentage of players would be spending on them."

In an ideal world, this would be true. However, this is not that easy when all your friends are playing those crapware games and they don't exactly want to do anything else. No matter what you choose, you lose in some way. These games have negative externalities.

These games have negative externalities.

So does paternalism.

> People used their wallets to vote on this. And they chose the F2P microtransaction-laden P2W games.

Look, I understand where you are coming from, I've been there. Living in the rural area, not having access to even a store to buy games, let alone having the money at that age.

But the word you said there: "choose"... I don't think people have "chosen" this.

There are games out there that use 22 different in-game currencies [1]. The way these are interlinked with in game mechanics would make Machiavelli sweat.

Everything in these games is calculated to achieve maximum retention and profits. Yes, the farming, the wasted hours for free users, are backed by statistical and psychological precision. Everything is calculated so a free user is taken to its absolute patience limit, but never actually reach it.

While I would've been more inclined to agree with you say... 10 years ago, today's online purchases are made as frictionless as possible. Kids might not have money themselves and parents should be more cautious about these things, but young adults clearly have the means.

This is a very easy way to have an addiction problem. I do not consider the act of playing video games in general to promote addiction, but the money syphoning tactics these games employ are clearly meant to promote it. Without a sliver of a doubt. Otherwise these companies wouldn't make money to begin with.

[1]: Diablo Immortal

> But the word you said there: "choose"... I don't think people have "chosen" this.

I certainly did. I _love_ games that give me the option to buy things in game. Especially QOL things like removed ads. But also, I have played some gacha games where I've spend some real money; usually in the 10-30$ range, because I get enough fun out of them that I like to throw the developers some money.

> There are games out there that use 22 different in-game currencies [1]. The way these are interlinked with in game mechanics would make Machiavelli sweat.

There exist games that use a predatory pattern when it comes to in-game purchases, and we should find a way to stop them. I don't think anyone disagrees with that. But I don't think it's fair to say that all in-game purchase ability is bad, or that nobody would choose such a thing; the former being an opinion, the later being a definite falsehood.

So I think the nuance you're trying highlight is that there are things players can buy in games that they simply wouldn't have gotten if it weren't for in-game purchases (to use your example, if players couldn't pay to remove ads they simply would have the ads all the time)... but still I take issue with:

> to say [...] nobody would choose [in-game purchases is] a definite falsehood.

If the choice were between paying to remove ads and not having ads in the game in the first place, I posit that near enough nobody would choose the first option.

The ads (and in-game purchases, obviously) are what pay the developer for the games I play.

You love games that give you the option like other people love drugs or gambling.

So, the ever popular "because _some_ people are unable to control themselves, that means _nobody_ is allowed to have the option" camp? I'm not a fan of that opinion.

What do you mean by "nbobody is allowed"? I see people every day smoking, gambling, drinking. Is called regulation. I am not a fan fearmongering.

Well, there are certainly good uses. I do not think every microtransaction is bad, I wasn't clear enough above.

But back to the rest of your reply, regarding the QoL options, don't you think they impose an insidious incentive for companies to not strive for a well paced game but one that has enough filler to make people pay to not go through it?

I'd be more than happy with fewer games. These F2P games are deliberately designed to prey on people's weaknesses because, as much as we'd like to pretend otherwise, humans are not entirely rational. Moreover, humans are not uniform, which is why it disproportionately affects a smaller percentage of the population. It's not unlike gambling. It's also why expecting the market to shift this isn't going to work -- that same small percentage is what's driving much of the profitability.

Besides the exploitation, it's just flat out ruining gaming. The top games on iOS and Android are just IAP-laden garbage designed to manipulate people into making progress and then locking them out. But, since every company is supposed to maximize profitability, they all end up gradually adding similar mechanisms. The market can't push back in any meaningful way. Sure, you'll see some games have to backtrack (Battlefront II) or some flat out fail (Concord), but mobile is a different beast than console (for the time being, at least). And I think this is an area where regulation is the only thing that can make a level playing field.

Not to mention the F2P games arguably engage in price dumping. Consumers in all markets will gravitate towards the lowest cost option. Here, a game doesn't have to be particularly good or even good for the player, it just has to be cheaper than other games. It's making it harder for there to be a legitimate video game market. I really think Apple did the world a disservice with iOS purchase policies. IAP makes it way too easy to hide the true price and for years you couldn't even find the price until you used the app (now it's hidden away, but accessible, on the store page). It predictably led to a deluge of free apps and games that made it much harder to engage in what I'd consider more ethical commerce. Hell, I've purchased apps and still had functionality very unexpectedly locked behind IAP.

If F2P games can't find a way to profitability that doesn't rely on exploiting people, then so be it. I don't think anything is truly lost. Societal productivity would very likely increase because people wouldn't be grinding for hours just to get to that next level.

Slot machine mechanics are very good at extracting money and time from people who would likely become addicted to slot machines if they were legal and available on their phones. But the f2p games have carefully programmed reward/spend paths that casinos only dream of.

What I want is for gacha/slot machine-like mobile games to be required to disclose the odds, as well as the expected cost/time, for various rewards, much as casinos are required to disclose the odds and expected loss per hour.

I actually don't care about "protecting people." I just think this is a market failure in the same vein as hidden fees. It obscures the real price of the game— a particularly egregious example is that For Honor actually costs $700+, and it creates a race to the bottom where now everyone tries to offer a low cost buy-in while the game is secretly expensive. If you make it so that avenue is closed to everyone then it keeps the playing field level.

I have no desire to prevent anyone from playing those kinds of games except as a collective action to change what the market rewards and that's what government is good at. I don't care if you want to spend your money on Genshin, but I do want a games market that fixes the "people say that micro transactions make games worse but they make more money for the company" problem.

> There is no defensible justification for incorporating a money siphon into an entertainment product.

What do you mean? Society would obviously collapse if we did literally anything else—the Free Market is all that keeps people from murdering each other. By endorsing regulation you're just endorsing murder.

Sounds like we need to be preemptively taking out all the Product Monetization executives if they're so ready to start murdering people.

Oh no, that would also make society collapse. Amy change to society would make it collapse. We live in a very delicate ecosystem and the only way for anything to work is to beg the beautiful people for favor, as it should be.

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