This won’t solve the problem and makes everything worse:
- People need to learn that gambling is bad. It’s a good idea to teach that as soon as possible. A 12 year old kid can maybe gamble $50 down the drain until a functional parent notices. Self-sustaining people that work can gamble their ENTIRE life away.
- Once again (as with chat contol, social media age verification and all the other crap): It’s the kids parents problem. Don’t buy your 5 year old kid a smartphone, let it un-supervised and add your credit card to it. NO ONE can and will ever able to fix that unless you take the kids away from their parents. Stop that shit and get your kids agency together…
People need to learn that drinking is bad. It’s a good idea to teach that as soon as possible. If a 12 year old kid can maybe drink $50 down the drain until a functional parent notices.
On a more serious note, in your world, what are kids with shitty parents supposed to do? Isn’t it a little bit of society’s responsibility to ensure that it isn’t easy for kids aren’t chasing the next big win?
On a more serious note, in your world, what are kids with shitty parents supposed to do?
They are not supposed to do anything and I never said that. That is part of kid agencies to individually detect and combat these things.
Isn’t it a little bit of society’s responsibility to ensure that it isn’t easy for kids aren’t chasing the next big win?
Oh Mr Politican don’t give me the “Think about the children” talk with no other practical solution then introducing a surveilance state.
Totally stupid idea that the Netherlands implemented a decade ago: (paid) Lootboxes are illegal in the first place. Problem magically solved because guess what: No “gambling” in the first place.
Loot boxes showing up in games normalizes gambling even if you don’t let your kids buy them. Their peers might do it anyway and share that interest with them. Then they’ll ask for digital currency for $GAME for Christmas.
Random loot boxes should be removed from games IMHO. Let games be games.
Only 16? Can 16 year olds go into casinos?
What about pokemon cards and MtG?
Ban that for kids too then. They are pretty egregious.
honestly though: when has ratings stopped mom from buying something for a kid? that’s how i got Bonestorm. “Buy me Bonestorm or go to hell!” is what I said.
Honestly I doubt it will do much as we already ignore ratings for games. But I do like that it has happened.
Yah, I have doubts as well but maybe it will do something
Yeah. Good that it happened, let’s hope for more.
I think games like this having an increased rating is a step in the right direction.
20 or more years ago, when my step son was 12/13 he wanted to play GTA San Andreas, and Halo. At the time, they were both had an ESRB Rating of Mature 17+. My gut didn’t want to let him play either game. I bought them both. I spent about 3 hours playing GTA and decided it wasn’t something I was going to let my kid play. I played the entire Halo campaign because it was actually really fun, and the entire plot was space marines shooting aliens. I let my kid play Halo, because aside from alien guts and shooting, there wasn’t much there that really warranted a mature rating. GTA on the other hand let me pick up prostitutes, had themes involving gangs, organized crime, and sex. It was also a really fun game, but not something a 12 or 13 year old should be playing.
Ultimately, it’s up to parent’s to police what their kids are doing and being exposed to. The ESRB rating system here gave me pause about letting my kid play a game, forcing me to review them on a case by case basis.
Any game with loot boxes giving a random item or content should have a rating that reflects age restrictions for real life gambling.
Short form content, engagement-oriented algorithms, and loot boxes are basically going to be our leaded gasoline
Going to be?
Good.
Next they should ban blind box toys and other rarity based gambling like Pokémon cards or those lol dolls and similar.
I get kids like Pokémon, they like surprise boxes, but it’s gambling. Variable reward systems are gambling. I worked in the collectables industry for a very short time, I saw how much money people spend on this, it’s abusive.
If they sold only deterministic boosters and externally numbered packs the kids would have just as much fun and it would ruin the gambling aspects that lead to scalping and addiction.
There’s no scalping if a pack says “Pack No. 232” and you can look up the contents online, and cards are only allowed a maximum rarity (I.e. if the average number of packs to open to get any card is a multiple higher than the twice or triple the average number of cards, then you’re gambling — that is determined by the geometric distribution and the math is simple).
This is even verifiable without opening packs, because you can use the numbers to assess relative frequencies.
How will they control this without age verification? As long as the games are not for adults only (18+), they can be downloaded and played by anyone from Android Playstore.
Ratings like this are for parents. A decent parent would investigate the stuff they’re buying their kids, and know how to lock down their kids’ phones to keep them from grabbing any old app.
Of course, that means the parent is responsible, but this change has come about due to irresponsible parenting anyway sooooo not sure how much it’ll help, really. But I like the direction.
If we pass the responsibility to parents, then it’s a lost cause. Especially if the parents grew up with lootboxes themselves…
I really miss the Cs custom.skin modding community. Will counter strike 2 allow custom skins?
My deagle was vashs gun in 1.5
