These laws will ban rewards for spending money within a game for the first time, ban rewards for buying consecutive microtransactions, and ban rewards for daily log-ins.
I would’ve expected to see something like thus out of the EU rather than China, but at least somebody’s making the first move against the predatory monetisation of apps
If China’s plan is successful, other countries will follow suit.
PS: RIP my free intertwined fates in Gaming (Jiaming) Impact.
The Chinese government has started it‘s witch hunt against video games years ago and we have yet to see any of their draconic laws being enforced. It looks like they made them just so they can cherry pick and suppress whoever disagrees with them one way or another. This will be no exception. Gambling, prostitution and porn are all illegal in mainland China but it has always been a huge and open business in every part of the country.
What’s predatory about this? This seems like the least forced purchase in the world – absolutely nobody needs the things they’re selling. They are like a definition of a luxury item.
Predatory as in they literally employ psychologists to help design them to be as addictive as they can be, then they market it towards kids or at the very least don’t really do anything to prevent kids from gambling in them (yeah it’s also partially a parenting issue but can’t really expect all parents to be tech savvy enough to understand all everything about gaming).
Then there’s the other sucky, but just not sucky enough for it to be an illegal side of things: games that these mechanics suck ass and we are getting less and less objectively good games because more and more games seek to make some quick buck by making their games casinos of sorts.
It’s only as luxurious as being addicted to cocaine in hopes that the next line will hit like the first one, or in game terms, hoping that the next loot box gets you the skin/character/whatever you wanted and releases that quick dopamine rush. Rinse and repeat.
I think the comparison to cocaine is apt. Therefore I find it increasingly odd how parents purchase their children cocaine-delivery mechanisms, and how society deems all this completely legal.
Hi Tim
It’s so destructive that even China doesn’t like it
It’s so destructive that even China doesn’t like it
They probably love that it’s hurting competing nations, though.
Things like this and the screen time laws are why I foresee China as a huge threat in the future. Every other country will be mindless zombies staring at their screens and stupid. Easy to take control of.
Tencent is a Chinese company
Tencent is a Chinese company
Yes and the new rules apply to the Chinese domestic market. Tencent is free to do harm western teens.
Well they can hardly pass laws controlling other jurisdictions
deleted by creator
They can’t control their foriegn offices
They can, just the same as EU laws bind EU companies and nationals abroad.
What makes you think I ever claimed otherwise. In fact I find your replies to me rather confusing.
Very rare China W.
Seriously seeing this come from China is
Mildly confusing, very unexpected but very much a cool move.
To add onto what the others have said, the CCP isn’t shy about enforcing restrictions on digital media domestically. For instance, TikTok in China (Douyin) is quite different from the international version with strictly-enforced time limits, content restrictions, etc.
China has always been against gaming it’s the money they like.
If it was only money they wanted they would not do this. The limitations they are imposing will cut revenue to their biggest Game companies. I mean, the laws are not in effect and there was already a big crash on Netease and Tencent stock prices.
I think the CCP are just trying to do what they think is best for the welfare of their people.
China doing a better job regulating corporations than the west is nothing new.
Even this current one happened while Tencent was barely recovering from another regulation set last year. Kicking megacorps while they’re down lol as they should.
Yeah im sad China is so far ahead of curbing predative monetization than my own country is, now.
But think about the CEO’s freedom of abusing gambling addicts outside of a safe environment with virtually no regulation and that can be used by kids and teens!
I actually wouldn’t have anything against gacha games if they all were marked as Adult-only, even the most dumbass parents would think twice about buying EA FC if it had the AO rating.
And not only AO, if it included the same required gambling-warnings other gambling system have to show every time they so much as mention their name.
Probably because CCP wants other countries’ citizens to be addicted to games but not their own.
How else would they have 9-9-6 model if Chinese youth started going down the path of Japanese hikikomoris?
Well China doesn’t like companies having power so this is a way to neuter them, especially in response to trying to limit online game consumption already.
Edit: Tencent is apparently the most profitable company in china right now so this is a direct attack at their profits most likely, not just China doing good
Edit2: This video goes into it a bit https://youtu.be/uieLEIVlQgc?si=mNiOlXPn9k7V6XX-
Very common W
Didn’t China also recently introduce a limit of hours adolescents can game?
The world would be a better place without those transactions in my opinion. It might sound extreme but in my view this is the first step towards gambling addiction.
We as humanity are becoming really obsessed with everything digital instead of spending more time physically interacting with our peers. And unfortunately I am no exception.
Part of the problem is that there’s no incentive for game companies to ensure that players are of an appropriate age and are gambling responsibly. It’s a Pandora’s box of capitalism in the same way fossil fuels, cigarettes, and big pharma are. Their customers have a demand for their product which is driven by a physiological/psychological/socioeconomic need, so they aren’t subject to normal market mechanics.
Not recently, but yes.
Also, there’s regulation to disclose the probability in getting rewards from opening “chests”, which is actually gambling in nature.
If there’s a behavior psychologist/researcher involved in the creation of a product, it’s evil, simple as. Those gacha games absolutely use them.
The S$20000 ($15000) Genshin Impact buying spree incident in Singapore had indirectly contributed to proposed legislation.
The what?
A lot of games are starting to display warnings to spend wisely when purchasing premium currency.
Which part of china is Singapore in?
There’s so much addiction and gambling engineered into micro transactions, it’s crazy. I’m glad China is regulating it.
Well done, I hope other countries will follow.
Limiting micro transactions and banning predatory reward schemes in video games is genuinely a good thing. We need this to spread around the world.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Assuming it’s a clock that’s capable of being right twice a day, which isn’t every clock.
A clock whizzing backwards at 60 RPM is right 86,400 times a day!
EDIT: Bruh this ain’t funny
Good. These kinds of transactions are exploitative and prey in the weaknesses of people with addictive personalities
Do you all expect localization is tied to laws for china? I realy don’t think so. Most games are split into global and asia/chinese versions anyway. Why should they remove these mechanics when it isn’t necessary for the market they operate in?
The thought process is that for many games, the majority of their revenue comes from these mechanics and from China. The games themselves will need to change to get revenue flowing. And new games won’t be made with this revenue source in general.
This is similar to how eu regulations can lead to global changes sometimes, China is a big enough market to affect things globally.
Yep, I’m not in the EU but thanks to the GDPR I still see the cookies thing on almost every website I go, sometimes these things have a good ripple effect.
deleted by creator
Just to add to your profound insight, water is probably wet.
It’d be nice to see that come to rocket League. You know, the game where they removed crates because of the gambling, then removed trading to get kids to spend more money in the shop. So much better :/
