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EA gets a thorough ass whooping in the Dutch courts over lootboxes

Master Disaster
On 11/6/2020 at 6:58 AM, valdyrgramr said:

It's not a weak argument because parents are responsible for their child, not the rest of the world.  EA already put something in place that the parent didn't use to prevent this in the first place.  So, because the parent didn't do that it's not on EA, it's on the parent.  I am not going to change my mind on that.

 

I think you forget what happens when there is no regulation:

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/26/215761377/a-history-of-snake-oil-salesmen

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There were two major problems with Stanley's claim about his oil:

 

First, rattlesnake oil was far less effective than the original Chinese snake oil it was trying to emulate. A 1989 letter to The Western Journal of Medicine from psychiatrist and researcher Richard Kunin revealed that the Chinese oil contained almost triple the amount of a vital acid as did rattlesnake oil.

 

Secondly, Stanley's Snake Oil didn't contain any snake oil at all. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 sought to clamp down on the sale of patent medicines and it was that legislation that led to Stanley's undoing. After seizing a shipment of Stanley's Snake Oil in 1917, federal investigators found that it primarily contained mineral oil, a fatty oil believed to be beef fat, red pepper and turpentine. That's right — Stanley's signature product did not contain a drop of actual snake oil, and hundreds of consumers discovered they had been had.

 

It was probably around then that snake oil became symbolic of fraud. Snake oil salesmen and traveling doctors became stock characters in American Westerns.

 

Loot boxes today are what the alcohol, cocaine, and heroin-infused products of the 1900's were. They're addictive, make unsubstantiated claims, and were sold because they were profitable, never mind destructive to the people who consumed them. You know our current fentanyl problem in the US and Canada is also this? We regulate drugs, we should regulate games that resemble gambling. That includes virtual slot machines, scratch tickets, roulette, keno and video poker, not just gacha/lootbox mechanics regardless if there is a way to cash out.

 

You can't say EA shouldn't be responsible for behavior they encourage.

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On 11/7/2020 at 3:58 AM, valdyrgramr said:

It's not a weak argument because parents are responsible for their child, not the rest of the world.  EA already put something in place that the parent didn't use to prevent this in the first place.  So, because the parent didn't do that it's not on EA, it's on the parent.  I am not going to change my mind on that.

Wrong, corporations are responsible for/to their customers. Always have and always will be. The difference here is that corporations are necessarily held to a high standard because they are not responsible for just one person, one family, one child but rather an entire group, a very large group.

 

The way you are trying to argue is just misaligned with reality. What you should be arguing is how much responsibility they have or should have and what they should be expected to do.

 

I expect corporations to improve their processes when there are flaws identified or improvements could be made for the better and especially when the cost is low to do so. I do no expect EA/Sony/Microsoft etc to do anything you are trying to say I am, I expect them to make simple and obvious improvements because they can and would benefit all, unlike hoping parents on average start doing things better and never make mistakes or never misunderstand something.

 

You expecting, or even myself, that parents do better does not likewise mean I should not expect the very same from corporations. To use a statistical term badly, these two things are mutually exclusive. Parental responsibility is an expectation independent from corporate responsibility, and vice versa.

 

On 11/7/2020 at 3:58 AM, valdyrgramr said:

Here, I'll make some ridiculous ideas for improvement.

Nothing I suggested was ridiculous, if they were you could have argued that but since they weren't you went after parenting which in no way stops or make my suggestions not being worth while to consider.

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13 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

So, because parents aren't capable of doing their job you want the corporation to babysit for them, hence my point.   EA already put a protection in place, like they were supposed to, and the parent is the one who failed to use it.   That's on the parent.

The Corporation is the one producing the product, they are 100% responsible for any behavior the product induces in people.

 

Do keep in mind that there adults that "didn't grow up", and don't see anything wrong with letting their kids drink and smoke when they're 10 because they did.

 

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I shouldn't expect a corporation to have to babysit a child because the parent won't do their job.   The corporation already put methods in place to prevent this, and even gave instructions on how to use them, ffs they even put instructions in place on how to use them on platforms they don't even own.    You then tell them to do better because the parents are apparently ignorant.   Are you not seeing the flaw in that logic?

The corporation only puts in the minimum because the law tells them to. Casinos would love to have kids gambling money away, creating addictions, but they're not allowed to because of gambling laws, and because the laws are very punitive, the security people in casinos will not let children within 50' of a gambling machines/tables, not even to wait for their parents. No, kids get left in the arcade/midway while mommy and daddy go spend their kids college funds on the casino.

 

 

 

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No, chemical addictions and behavioral obsessions are not the same thing.

They're the same. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/compulsive-gambling/symptoms-causes/syc-20355178 , they're the same to the point that the only reason a drug addict can't quit, is that they've destroyed parts of their brain that would allow them to. 

 

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 Then the corporation is the one getting yelled, not the parent.   Because apparently parents can do wrong in this thread.   It's always the corporations. 

 

Because the games Corporation is the one producing the product to be addictive. It's every page from the Big Tobacco playbook.

 

There is a difference when "The corporation produces special purpose product that only X people should use" such as specific medications, medical devices (eg hearing aids), or medical professionals to use. The people who are ultimately treated with these products are not permitted to do self-treatment with them because the potential for permanent life-altering damage to happen. Did you know that the "water flossing" devices sold to end users all carry a "do not use in ears" warnings on them? This is because it's the exact same device used to irrigate your ears to unblock ear wax, but if you do it yourself you are pretty much guaranteed to cause yourself an injury.

 

The vast majority of games are not this, and the few games that are this, are training simulators that often require hardware that most users do not have.

 

 

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 So, why is EA getting crap for this when it's the parent who isn't using the verification process that removes the gambling aspect and even gave an instruction booklet on the matter? 

 

Why do homes not come with AC outlet covers in the US but do in the UK? You're trying to shift blame from corporations who do the minimum so they can not be held liable, to parents who may not understand how the technology works. Did you know that kids back when AC power was not common, found ways to play with it?

Hell, adults still do

And this is why there are AC shock warnings on absolutely everything that can be plugged in. You can provide as many warnings and protective measures as possible, but there will always be a better idiot who either thinks you're trying to hide a great thing from them by having those road cones in the way, or you will have lawsuit seeking people who are "well you didn't say not to", and will seek to injure themselves on purpose for a payout. Past a certain point the corporation wants to protect it's own profits from people who can't read (why do you think TOS's are miles long and nobody reads them,) or won't follow the instructions. However you can't terms-of-service away your responsibility to not harm the user on purpose.

 

That is what loot boxes do. That is the core mechanic, not a side effect of using the game wrong. The game corporation wants you to keep playing that skinner box, and specifically that random-prize gambling mechanic, because it's profitable to them, and they can control the outcome and addictictiveness.

 

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Why are we limiting this to EA and loot boxes?  Is underage drinking not a problem?   

You do realize that stores (in the US and Canada) that sell alcohol get fined heavily if they sell to kids. The same with tobacco. In Asia, these controls often don't exist, and the alcohol and tobacco companies rely on this lack of oversight to get kids addicted to these things early. Most kids in Canada or the US began drinking or smoking because their peers were doing it, the ones that could buy the products (eg older brother/sister/cousin.) There was no shortage of "kids got into dads/moms hooch" stories where I once lived. Hell my dad's entire side of the family has stories of making alcohol at home and one particular story of having to bury a batch because it was explosive. 

 

It's gross that people don't see something wrong with allowing kids to drink alcohol or smoke, yet because you can't regulate people's behavior, that's where the law ends. Whatever goes on inside a private residence, is the responsibility of the person who owns the residence. So you can only control the sales point by regulation, thus the entire responsibility for lootboxes is with the corporation. The goal is to remove paid lootboxes as core mechanics from games. If game developers can't be forced to remove them, then regulations have to say exactly how they are permitted to exist.

 

Did you know the tobacco industry invented the collectable trading card game? The very thing gacha and lootboxes are? Current generations of lootboxes have just boiled it down to something that has a very tuned profit margin, with no physical product and artificial scarcity that is unchanging until the game developer decides to end the game.

 

You know what would put an end to lootboxes? If these lootboxes have cash value, then the game developer must refund the real world value of all lootbox prizes remaining in the players inventory (and anything else bought with cash) when they decide to shut the game down. Otherwise, they can not be bought with cash.

 

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2 hours ago, Kisai said:

The Corporation is the one producing the product, they are 100% responsible for any behavior the product induces in people.

So in a fit of road rage I run someone over. So by the fact I drive a Nissan Rouge that would mean Nissan is responsible? OR if some one buys a Glock and shoots someone in the face the Gun company is responsible? If I download Starwars A New Hope thru my Comcast connection, Comcast gets the lawsuit? 

 

The answer to all 3 is NO. For the first two I would go to prison. For the 3rd Comcast would issue a warning or provide my info to Disney for a lawsuit. Corporations can not be held responsible for however and IDIOT uses their product. 

 

The problem in the case of EA is that the GOVERNMENT doesn't know how to treat loot boxes yet. This is an issue that has to go thru the legislative process and new laws need to be drafted. Now could EA maybe do a better job with maybe show casing that Loot boxes are part of their product? Sure. Could the ESRB make sure that labels are in BIG BOLD letters put on games with loot boxes, yeah most defiantly. But legally speaking EA is within the letter of the law until the legislature or the courts decide otherwise. 

I just want to sit back and watch the world burn. 

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19 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

So, because parents aren't capable of doing their job you want the corporation to babysit for them, hence my point. 

No because it's never been a situation of one or the other, something you seem to be incapable understanding. So this is the very last time I'll say it, bad parenting existing does not change anything I said or mean they don't or shouldn't have to do it ever. This just is not a thing. So continually trying to raise it over and over and over is going to have the same result, me telling you it has no baring at all on a corporation being able and capable of doing better. It is only a factor for how necessary making changes are, and the more it exists the more necessary it is (not saying it makes it required to, just increases that weighted need evaluation).

 

19 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

What I am arguing is that a parent is responsible for the safety and well being of their child

Show me where I have said this is not the case, because at no point have I said this is not true. Neither do I disagree or have disagreed with this.

 

19 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

See, that's my point you're shifting blame off the parent and putting it on the corporation.

No I am not, I was and am talking about what corporations could do. See this is a flaw in your conversational interpretation and it seems very common thing in certain cultures and regions lately. I am completely free to talk about an entity, group, person, corporation without having to talking about another entity, group, person, corporation and not also talking about them does not mean they have no involvement in what ever situation is being discussed. All it means is I am choosing to talk about which ever thing I am choosing to talk about.

 

So far you're the only one trying to shift all the blame to parenting or have raised argumentative points that corporations are not responsible, which they are. Not once have I said parents are not responsible, I am simply not talking about that. I would have been more willing to include parenting in the discussion or talk about it if you hadn't tried to lay all the blame on parenting unjustly and argue that corporations have no responsibility. 

 

And I do find it completely ridiculous that you think what I said is somehow an argument or requires corporations to "babysit" children. Basic UI changes and process/behavior changes isn't even close to what you are insinuating and deeply flawed logic. I do not apricate hyperbolic bluster if you have not noticed, You'll get better results without jumping off the deep end in to illogical and irrelevant hyperbole.

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50 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

So in a fit of road rage I run someone over.

Now you're being silly.

50 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

So by the fact I drive a Nissan Rouge that would mean Nissan is responsible?

The car does not induce road rage, something external induces road rage, like another driver cutting you off. That's not the car, that's the other driver. The only thing Nissan can do here to keep you from acting like yeti would be for the car to have automatic driving features that do not yet exist in any vehicle, and prevent you from speeding or driving the vehicle into another one on purpose. Once those features exist (like seat belts and airbags) and are proven to be save more lives than they cost, then the car company can be considered responsible for not doing anything. 

 

Just like Automated rail. Automated rail systems are proven to be be far more reliable than any human driven rail system, and the entire responsibility for picking accident-prone systems is due to the city government not caring about saving lives, only cutting costs. You put a trainee in a skytrain (Vancouver) car, and a whole lot has to go wrong to derail it, because it's rarely put into manual. Put a train driver who is sleepy or had a bad day on a train that is manually driven, and eventually, someone is going to make a mistake and hurt themselves or passengers, and 81% of deaths on rail are by suicide/trespassing, not the train operator. There is very little that can be done to prevent suicides and trespassing on a rail system except grade separating the entire system so that trespassing is difficult in the first place.

 

So, who's responsible?

1. The city for cutting costs and picking unreliable and unsafe technology

2. The metro operator for not investing in automation technology (All forms of rail can have PTC at the minimum, and yet, few do), platform side doors, and training simulators. 

3. The trespassers and passengers for ignoring signs to stay out of the tracks.

 

Games, by having skinner box mechanics, induce a behavior in the player that is desired by the game developer. Tying those mechanics to the game's core mechanics means the game developer isn't just randomly giving prizes that everyone has an equal chance of getting, they are relying on users to spend money and trickle out the prizes without any guarantee that the prize exists.

 

 

50 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

OR if some one buys a Glock and shoots someone in the face the Gun company is responsible? If I download Starwars A New Hope thru my Comcast connection, Comcast gets the lawsuit? 

This is the kind of argument presented when people know they are in the wrong. Guns kill people, but they more often kill a family member who sees it as a toy. Gun manufacturers could very well make it so guns can only be unlocked or fired by their owner, but they choose not to, because there is no regulation requiring it. A gang member already operates outside the law, and gun manufacturers know their guns are going to wind up in gang members hands, and do nothing to prevent it, because laws tend to assume innocent until proven guilty, thus you can not assume all gun owners are potential criminals.

 

You can't apply this to games, because people want to play games, and are thus all potential lootbox addicts, you can play most games that have this mechanic without spending any money on it, but you'll usually end up with only a tiny window to play the game fairly, while everyone who spends money on the game has an advantage. You are literately expected to spend money on the lootbox mechanics. Thus it would be like if gun manufacturers sold you a gun, but expect you to pay them every time you want to fire it, and relying on RNG if the bullet will actually be fired. 

 

It's so silly that you'd go "nobody would do that", yet that's exactly what lootboxes are in games. They are a mechanic designed to squeeze money out of the player, post-sale, for a core mechanic.

 

50 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

The answer to all 3 is NO. For the first two I would go to prison. For the 3rd Comcast would issue a warning or provide my info to Disney for a lawsuit. Corporations can not be held responsible for however and IDIOT uses their product. 

That's because you can't put a company in jail. You can only put a person in jail, and the people who make decisions at a company rarely have any hands-on decisions that affect how a product is made or designed, only how to make it make money. So if a decision they make, like the Ford Pinto was made by accountants, who decided to sell a product known to be dangerous because they decided the likeliness that the driver would have an accident "that way" was low.

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Fighting strong competition from Volkswagen for the lucrative small-car market, the Ford Motor Company rushed the Pinto into production in much less than the usual time.

 

Ford engineers discovered in pre-production crash tests that rear-end collisions would rupture the Pinto’s fuel system extremely easily. 

 

Because assembly-line machinery was already tooled when engineers found this defect, top Ford officials decided to manufacture the car anyway—exploding gas tank and all—even though Ford owned the patent on a much safer gas tank.

 

For more than eight years afterwards, Ford successfully lobbied, with extraordinary vigor and some blatant lies, against a key government safety standard that would have forced the company to change the Pinto’s fire-prone gas tank.

 

By your logic, Ford should have kept selling Ford Pinto knowing the defects, and that drivers should just drive safely.

 

50 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

The problem in the case of EA is that the GOVERNMENT doesn't know how to treat loot boxes yet. This is an issue that has to go thru the legislative process and new laws need to be drafted. Now could EA maybe do a better job with maybe show casing that Loot boxes are part of their product? Sure. Could the ESRB make sure that labels are in BIG BOLD letters put on games with loot boxes, yeah most defiantly. But legally speaking EA is within the letter of the law until the legislature or the courts decide otherwise. 

 

The ESRB is not a government agency, it's like the RIAA with their film ratings. It's something they decided on to inform customers and it's "voluntary". By which I mean you don't have to rate your games, but stores like Walmart won't carry unrated games, and platforms like Steam and Epic game store, will not promote games that are not rated. 

 

It doesn't matter of a corporation is doing the minimum to be within the letter of the law, if the law is clearly deficient in some matter that doesn't mean you take advantage of those loop hopes, which is what EA, and most companies that have lootbox mechanics are doing.

 

There will be a reckoning when it comes to "surprise mechanics", and it be the final straw on the back of many companies who know they've been feeding their customers snake oil.

 

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18 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Now you're being silly.

You implied that company's are responsible for improper use of their products or services. So who's the silly guy now. 

I just want to sit back and watch the world burn. 

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36 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

You implied that company's are responsible for improper use of their products or services. So who's the silly guy now. 

No, I said a company is responsible for behaviors they induce in their products or services by design. A car company doesn't induce you to play demolition derby, that's absent from their marketing. No they often show people driving cars outside the cities with the "driving can be fun and relaxing" message. Even the ones that show people camping, still feature the vehicle. 

 

Weapons, Alcohol and Tobacco marketing, at least from time periods where they were permitted, are marketed different ways. Alcohol is still advertised on TV as "party" activity. Tobacco was often marketed with medical benefits before Surgeon's General warning messages were required on Tobacco advertisements, and then were later marketed in magazines as relaxing activities. Vape products are following every page from Tobacco, starting by pushing ads since they're not regulated as smoking, and the crackdown on that is a rerun of smoking.

 

Present day Weapons are marketed as defense products for law enforcement.

 

Contrast to how guns were marketed towards kids

 

Yeah, toy guns were always about making "guns are fun", "Looks and Sounds Real" , today that would be a liability and likely even get you killed.

 

Old cap guns made the exact same sound as guns, and kids often noticed you could make it fire two strips of caps at the same time and it would make much louder noises.

 

Guns kill people, but they are not marketed for their ability to proactively take out defenseless civilians, they are marketed for self-defence outside of law enforcement.

 

In countries like Canada, the regulations are very high, it's easier to get a hunting weapon than it is a law-enforcement type of weapon, and most other weapons are not available. 

 

And just to cover all the bases of stupidity, people have been making bombs for centuries and home-made taser's for decades. You're not going to walk into a 7-11 and find a stick of dynamite to buy.  Poor storage of chemicals and batteries is just as likely to kill you as it will anything else. Every so often you see items on the news about a rented home being a drug lab, or a drug lab going up in flames and the the EMT's letting it burn because they don't want to put their lives at risk. 

 

Anyway, you're the only one in the thread who seems to believe that companies should be absolved of any behavior induced in their customers as long as it's unregulated. This same kind of mindset how dangerous products continue to be sold even once they are proven to be unsafe. Just look at eBay. Keep in mind that many of those substances are prohibited from sale because they can not be handled safely.

 

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1 hour ago, Kisai said:

 

 

"Video games instigate violence"

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9 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

I was simply arguing towards the thread that they shouldn't be obligated

Fair enough, I did get the impression/feeling you were more arguing against the thread itself and the general attitude towards EA etc. It's not like their isn't some rather... "out there" points being thrown around, if you know what I mean.

 

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19 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

 

 

Yes guns can be used to kill people, but your marketing a toy as fun and having real sounds or whatever is a bad argument.   Should we ban kids from having realistic toy cars too or any other realistic looking toy?  Or, ones that have some form of realism to them?

There is a reason why even props for films don't look like real guns. Police are less likely to shoot someone if the gun is painted pink or orange. Heck the entire reason the NES zapper is orange in some models is because of these things.

 

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Why are you starting a gun control political argument?

You did. You brought it up.

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Actually, you can technically get dynamite from 711s in the US as ones in certain states, like SC, has certain types of explosive fireworks+a certain other item I won't mention due to what could possibly be a forum rule violation.

 

Fireworks/firecrackers are deadly, and if you've ever seen a film about the kinds of burns that happen to people who have been injured/killed from it, you wouldn't touch explosives. Never the less some places still permit fireworks, and there is an ongoing joke in media that illegal fireworks have to be bought from other states/countries. Stores that sell these things are still not supposed to sell them to those under 18 because they will lose their business license if they do. 

 

You can't however punish a company like EA enough for lootboxes being peddled to children. They are intentionally pushed towards kids in games that have these mechanics. So the tobacco and gambling analogies are completely on the nose.

 

 

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