Microsoft will be forced to change the system of micro-transactions of Halo 5?
(Sorry for the bad writing of the title, I could not exceed the 50 characters)
Well, this is the case, Belgium has changed its laws related to the microtransaction system and have identified the random award system as ILLEGAL AZAR games, the AAA game developers such as Counter Strike, Fifa 18 and Overwatch have been warned to change their system of microtransacciones or they will be fined with fines of thousands of euros and could even give criminal charges to the developers (in some cases, if there are minors involved the fines would be duplicated).
This in the future will be propagated to other countries, currently France and the Congressman of Hawaii are considering changing their laws in this regard. This could also affect Halo 5, because your totally random system does not assure you what new items you will have, it only assures you that you could have 2 permanent and a few other oddities.
Plus the fact that they’d get fan backlash like SWBF2 did. EA -Yoinking!- up with SWBF2 so bad is actually a good thing, now other devs have to think twice about their mtx when before they would’ve thought it was a no brainer to spam them.
Not sure if this is going to change the microtransaction system overall or whether they somehow could make different sort of copies like even now some games have different kinds of censored/altered versions in places like germany and australia.
Not sure however how they could make a different sort of way to acquire stuff in an online in-game service for certain countries but when its about money then a way will be found. Its just a matter of whether finding that way could be cheap enough to find so more money could be made from microtransaction systems than is used for finding the way.
Though this is pretty much mostly about lootbox systems so we could just return to such things as DLC only which doesnt really affect the people with gambling problems as the lootbox systems though.
As long as its not day one DLC im fine with DLC in most cases.
Fingers crossed this will mean the end of the lootbox systems that include the ability to use real money.
I really hope this whole MTX trend dies out hard, im ok with stuff like Map packs because I know what im getting, but all the other stuff (even cosmetics tbh) is just annoying. Unlocking stuff via achievments is the best imo because then the unlocks actually mean something to you and arn’t just something with a price tag.
Sure, this is a major victory for those who are against MTs (I’m not taking sides since I just don’t care enough to do so), but you can bet your -Yoink- they’ll either come up with something else much more heinous or, in the case of the US, lobby against the complaints to remove them. It’s an endless cycle of “worse than the thing before it”. If it somehow manages to be broken, then a small amount of my faith in humanity will be restored. Only a small part. Don’t want to get overexcited.
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> Not sure if this is going to change the microtransaction system overall or whether they somehow could make different sort of copies like even now some games have different kinds of censored/altered versions in places like germany and australia.
>
> Not sure however how they could make a different sort of way to acquire stuff in an online in-game service for certain countries but when its about money then a way will be found. Its just a matter of whether finding that way could be cheap enough to find so more money could be made from microtransaction systems than is used for finding the way.
>
> Though this is pretty much mostly about lootbox systems so we could just return to such things as DLC only which doesnt really affect the people with gambling problems as the lootbox systems though.
> As long as its not day one DLC im fine with DLC in most cases.
>
> Fingers crossed this will mean the end of the lootbox systems that include the ability to use real money.
This is actually rather interesting, because unlike regional censorship laws, the REQ system is an integral part of the online portion of the game.
Personally, I only open REQ packs with earned REQ Points, so it’s not as much of an issue for me. The only annoying thing is how many things there are to unlock.
If this affects Halo, we’ll be back to paying for map packs and armor which isn’t going to be good. They’ll also have to redo Warzone which could be interesting.
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> If this affects Halo, we’ll be back to paying for map packs and armor which isn’t going to be good. They’ll also have to redo Warzone which could be interesting.
My thoughts the same. Paid DLC maps will rarely appear because not everyone buys the maps, which makes it frustrating to try to play them. Warzone’s selection of maps would be limited to the default three, and based on how many people are in a lobby even if one of them doesn’t have the DLC no one gets to play the new maps.
I think they will change the legislation to set standards and opacity for micro transactions, similar to china’s laws.
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> > 2727626560040591;11:
> > If this affects Halo, we’ll be back to paying for map packs and armor which isn’t going to be good. They’ll also have to redo Warzone which could be interesting.
>
> My thoughts the same. Paid DLC maps will rarely appear because not everyone buys the maps, which makes it frustrating to try to play them. Warzone’s selection of maps would be limited to the default three, and based on how many people are in a lobby even if one of them doesn’t have the DLC no one gets to play the new maps.
>
> I think they will change the legislation to set standards and opacity for micro transactions, similar to china’s laws.
Sure the player population in newer maps is one of the con sides of this alternative. The window of when to get the DLC maps and when to play them is rather limited, at least if you want adequately populated server.
Though one thing that could be done about that is to try and maintain multiple servers since Halo is still rather populated multiplayer when comparing to many other games. Like a server with the launch maps, the one with added maps from the 1st DLC pack and so on.
This could mean (assuming there will be around 3 DLC map packs as usually in bigger games) that there would be around 6 servers to choose from if each map pack could have more limited subcategories such as objectieve server and slayer type of server. This could for sure make it harder to find a specific game type with the DLC maps but this could keep the DLC maps more populated. The launch maps would still have more subcategories since likely there will be more players.
Also there could be an option to player search where you could put the owning of certain DLC(s) a preference though this might not be that well working aspect.
Also, there are other ways to make money from a game even after the launch but that is for another post.
Belgium probably isn’t a major region for Microtransaction sales. The most likely scenario would simply be not selling REQ packs in the affected area and simply leaving it as is everywhere else. Everything can be unlocked through playing the game with digital money and isn’t technically considered as gambling in the same way buying REQ packs with real money is.
Say if the UK, US or Canada were to establish similar laws, then the system would need to change to be less random and more like buying specific items; nevertheless a loophole will be inevitably found and Microtransactions will remain as they earn significantly more money than map packs ever have.
> Two bills in Hawaii’s state house and senate would prohibit sales of loot box games to consumers younger than 21 years old. The legislation defines the loot boxes as a randomized in-game reward that can be bought for real money.
> Another two bills, also before both chambers, would require video game publishers to label their games with notices that they contain loot boxes, and disclose what the rates are of receiving each reward in their system.
I should’ve been more specific. Which did you read OP? Trying to figure out which codes of the (edit: gambling) law of Belgium were cited in determining that the microtransaction systems in those three games are illegal. In addition, how is Belgium going to enforce a prison sentence against developers that have HQ in a country where the microtransaction systems were deemed legal?
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> I should’ve been more specific. Which did you read OP? Trying to figure out which codes of the law of Belgium were cited in determining that the microtransaction systems in those three games are illegal. In addition, how is Belgium going to enforce a prison sentence against developers that have HQ in a country where the microtransaction systems were deemed legal?
It violated their gambling laws. Good luck enforcing the jail time for the Devs… lol. I figure the worst they could do is ban the game in that country. I can see Bill Gates going to prison for lootcrate… hahaha.