The good news for gamblers is that loot boxes aren't gambling

“Sometimes you’ll open a pack and get a brand new holographic card you’ve had your eye on for a while. But other times you’ll end up with a pack of cards you already have.”

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/10/11/good-news-gamblers-loot-boxes-arent-gambling/

Money wins every time in our enlightened capitalism. The ESRB exists only because the major video game publishers let it. And if the major video game publishers say that loot crates – which are clear as fucking day gambling skinner boxes – aren’t Real Gambling and therefore aren’t AO, well then, just shut your fucking mouths and get in the car!

Loot crates are toootttally gambling.

I get their point though. Do you have to be 18 or over to buy Magic the Gathering cards, or hockey cards, or any other pack of cards of the kind?

It could have been an interesting way to stop the lootcrate madness, but it’s not going to work.

They should still share the percentage chances, though, per China’s rule?

Loopholes are loopholes. The whole “well, at least you’re getting something” argument is so ticky-tack and specious that only dedicated Trump supporters can’t see it for what it is. I mean, why can’t casinos just put a sticker on their slot machines that reads:

"Guaranteed win!*

*If machine doesn’t pay out, we will provide a FREE bag of dog feces to you upon your exit!"

Not gambling, right?

(Note: not targeting other posters in this thread. Just that I hate semantics and loopholes just about more than anything.)

Of course not, just like tax avoidance isn’t tax evasion: those who write the rules get to decide what the words mean, but the consequences are exactly the same.

This would be a great thing everywhere. I was always impressed that Path of Exile did it openly.

In the interest of being transparent, we’re revealing the odds of each microtransaction in the box. They’re grouped into three rarities: Common, Uncommon and Rare. The microtransactions within each rarity are equally likely. Here are the odds of receiving a microtransaction from each rarity:

Rare: 20%
Uncommon: 35%
Common: 45%

We’re also sharing the prices of each microtransaction in the box to make it easier to decide whether or not you’d like to wait to purchase your desired microtransaction in the store later, or try your luck at getting it now from the mystery box!

The economist I linked to, Vili Lehdonvirta, has talked about how just printing the odds rates for Skinner boxes results in less openings.

I know it’s pointless since no one will ever do anything about it (at least in the USA) but IMO Magic and other TCGs became gambling when they switched to having rarities that don’t show up in every pack. In the old days when it was just X commons, Y uncommons, Z rares in every pack with no exceptions you could very reasonably argue that every pack is worth the same amount and any price variation in the secondary market is made up value that has nothing to do with the creator. Nowadays with all the “mythic rare”, foil and other crap they pull that is no longer true.

That’s actually the part that annoys me most. Free to play games are especially guilty of plastering their loot box advertisements with images of Cool Stuff with misleading wording implying it’s nearly a sure thing when you actually have more chance of winning the lottery.

Oh I know, all these random chance thingies are very predatory, especially when aimed at children. The other day I saw Mario keychains near the cash register with one of 6 models randomly in the pouch and an exhortation to “Collect them all!” The catch is that golden mario has a 1/50 chance of showing up, meaning that at 6 dollars plus tax, you’ll probably have to spend hundreds of dollars to actually complete the set.

Oh, and if you think the EU will fix this for us all:

I can buy that approach if there is no secondary market. However, when your platform allows you to sell your item to another player for real world money, and the creator takes a cut, I think the case becomes much easier to make.

Even if existing legislation does not cover loot boxes as gambling, there is no reason why legislatures can’t pass new laws controlling this. Bringing together politicians who think gambling is a sin, with politicians who want to stop a skeevy corporate practice which makes money off of often vulnerable individuals, and with politicians who represent Nevada and do not want competition should be a legislative slam dunk.

Can anyone here think of a gaming experience enhanced by them?

I loathe the lottery since many years ago I worked at a gas station. Biggest waste of my time when I could have been doing other stuff like cleaning or stocking. Some of the poor fuckers would buy one scratch off, take it outside to scratch it off, come back in to buy another, take it outside, come in again for a third, take it outside, buy a fourth, etc. etc. leaving a pile of worthless tickets outside the store that I’d have to clean up. Like rodents.

Or people would forget to fill out the lotto number sheets and want to dictate all the multiple numbers out loud with a line of people growing behind them.

I worked there for ~4 years, and there were two days when we had an insane number of people at the store trying to buy stuff: One was when the powerball reached like 300 million for the first time ever, and the other was 9/11. The latter was mostly people panicking and trying to buy gas, so was actually not much work which was bizarre.

A study from monetisation service company Digital River found that games as a service has tripled the industry’s value.

The report, Defend Your Kingdom: What Game Publishers Need to Know About Monetization & Fraud, noted that developers of all sizes are benefiting from the “steady stream of in-game content that both serves player expectations and increases their revenue per user.”

The report continued: “This does not just apply to free-to-play titles: In 2016, a quarter of all digital revenue from PC games with an upfront cost came from additional content.”

Here’s something I’ve been wondering: If loot crates and blind boxes aren’t gambling, I assume they don’t have to follow any of the laws around gambling. How do you know a particular loot crate system isn’t being adjusted behind the scenes to mess with your odds? Is there a legal reason that a loot system need to be fair and consistent? I understand why blind boxes can’t really do this. They’re physical items that need to be packed and distributed and there’s not a good way to track who is buying what. But virtual loot crates? It’s all software. Why not mess with the odds?

For example, we know that there is code in some games that goes beyond “pick a random item from this list” when it’s supposed to generate some in-game treasure. This is done to alleviate frustration because humans tend to create patterns in their minds when a system is random. Diablo 3 adjusts drops based on the character you’re playing, so you have a better chance of getting something you can use versus “always” being stuck with an item for another class.

But imagine it adjusted another way. What if a game fiddled with loot crate odds to give you exactly what was needed to keep you hooked? If player X spends $20 on loot crates, make sure he gets (or doesn’t get) a rare item at the optimal rate to tickle his gambling impulse. Is there anything actually stopping anyone from doing this?

It is.

At least in the UK/Europe, there are rules around how IAP are sold. If a loot system explicitly promises something it needs to offer that. But if it just says “a chance for a rare hat”, then they can pretty much do what they like, as long as there is a chance.

Not only is there nothing stopping this, I guarantee lots of games do this. People have given GDC talks about it.

You’re a optimist if you actually think there’s a “chance” companies are doing this. Companies are doing this, hell, companies have people on payroll, psychologists and behavioral scientists dedicated to figuring out how to hook people, why would they balk at fiddling with statistics?

Unless it’s illegal (I doubt it, highly technical, very niche, it’ll take years until legislation advances to catch it), and even if it’s illegal it’s not terribly easy to prove without access to the code…

It’s what I’ve always suspected, but I’ve never seen any hard evidence of it.

I’ve watched and read a number of articles and talks about adjusted drops and the psychology behind loot crate/microtransaction systems, but I’ve never seen one that openly admitted to messing with real-money loot crate systems.

@DarthMasta See above. I’m well aware that companies spend a lot of money researching this stuff. Again, I’ve never seen hard evidence that anyone was dynamically adjusting real-money loot crate drops.

The thing is, other than anti-gambling rules, why would it be illegal? If they’re not specifying odds, or otherwise tying payments to specific payout rates, then they’re not “cheating” you by changing the numbers, any more than a slot machine is when it adjusts its payout probability.

This is why probabilities should be disclosed. If we want to discourage this behaviour, tie it to legally binding representations.

Sure! That’s my point. If it’s not legally gambling, and even the ESRB says they don’t care as long as you get something for your loot crate money, then why not cheat if you control the software?

People just assume the publishers will “play fair” with their loot crates, but they have all the economic incentive in the world and no legal penalty to do the opposite. In my experience, that means a business will do it.

I guess my point is that I don’t see anyone talking about this at all. Every article I’ve seen about the current crop of AAA lott crate games is about the addictive quality of Skinner Box systems, or the gameplay implications, but no one is asking about the code behind these drops and whether or not they’re being manipulated.