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Comment by showsover | Hacker News Reader

That is not misleading because the player does not need to spend money.

Which is the definition of 'free' that is used.

The player does not need to spend money for the majority of freemium games either.

'Need' is tricky to define in this case. Many 'freemium' games are very different experiences based on whether or not you pay via additional IAP. From what I gather, not having actually played it, Dungeon Keeper is about the most extreme example of this. It sounds like you really do need to pay in order to play the actual game, as opposed to playing something which many would describe as not really being the game.

Do you really want EU bureaucrats examining each game and deciding how playable it is with or without certain item? If the game is that bad - uninstall it, write one-star review for it and be done with it.

>Do you really want EU bureaucrats examining each game and deciding how playable it is with or without certain item? //

No. If a player has to at any time in the game spend in order to unlock, extend or access an area or feature then the game is not "free to play" it's "maybe free to play".

It's deceptive to label it as free.

To me this is a natural supplement to the EU unfair business practices legislation.

This is what worries me. I absolutely do not want the government involved in, of all things, classifying the genre of a video game.

Sure we all know the type of game this is targeted at. The time-sink freemium farmville clone that makes it just a little too easy to buy those gems/coins/cash/whatever that makes the timer tick down faster.

What if the IAP in my game is just to remove ads? What if it's solely cosmetic?

Governments do not have the best track record when it comes to comprehension of nuance and basic reality.

I'd like to think that a person is smart enough to tell when their OS pops up the payment dialog that they are under no obligation to click "yes".

First, the whole document concerns itself with what is called "free". If you do not label your game as free and do not market your game for children, then you are out of document scope. Do what you want.

More nuanced, according to their first position, you should be able to market game with removable ads as free (unless they cover whole screen or make game unplayable). You would be able call the game free with cosmetic in app purchases too, but you probably would have to make it clear to customer prior downloading eg. "you have to use default avatar unless you pay 1$" somewhere in description.

You could even lock content unless money are paid and still call it free, as long as customer was clearly told what parts are available and what parts are not available. (Hard to understand one liner in the middle of 20 pages long terms of services does not count).

Uh, who said that legislation would mean that every game would first go to a govt dept to verify genre? I thought the whole point of such legislation is to be a deterrent. So that WHEN someone violates it and is deceptive in their marketing, you can take them to court for it.

Yes, I also first read reviews to know if the game requires regular payments etc, and it is reasonable to expect this from consumers. But the law should be there to protect those who do not.

"If you don't want to be mugged, don't go down dark alleys" is sound advice, but that doesn't mean that mugging doesn't need to be labelled "illegal"

Why you need to take them to court? If the game is bad, uninstall it. Nobody forced you to install it with the gun to your head and the knife to your liver, did they? This newfound refusal of all personal responsibility for any action is just disgusting. Oh, I spent $100 on Candy Crash because my life is pathetic and I don't have anything better to spend it on, so let me now go and sue the game maker because they must have tricked me - it can't be that I'm so stupid to spend $100 on imaginary digital goods that let me spend extra minute in a nonsense game! Of course it's a dark plot by evil capitalists and not just my personal fault for not thinking before clicking the "pay" button! Of course the law should be there to protect me from my own voluntary personal decisions if it turns out they weren't as smart as I see myself!

Agreed, the recent Dungeon Keeper release was effectively unplayable without buying the IAP items.

People said that about PvZ2, so yeah. People aren't a good barometer for these sorts of things. No wonder they fool themselves into ignoring price tags on things.

The player does not need to pay, but at the same time is subjected to game theory driven psychological trickery that's been developed over decades. Think of it like gambling, but more subtle, yet gambling is heavily regulated.

In a normal free program with ads, the user has no way of spending money. In a freemium, you decide whether the game is free or not for you.

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