Belgian gambling commission goes to war on lootboxes, prison sentences possible

[SpaceGhostC2C]

3 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

10 yrs for a lootbox? I don't like them either but that's a bit harsh

Well, It all depends on which law they are breaking. I wouldn't give people 20 years for throwing a bottle, but if they are throwing bottles at other people's heads then they'll probably get around that.

A lootbox in itself isn't much, but if you break underage gambling laws, you are going to get underage gambling penalties.

[Jtalk4456]

50 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Well, It all depends on which law they are breaking. I wouldn't give people 20 years for throwing a bottle, but if they are throwing bottles at other people's heads then they'll probably get around that.

A lootbox in itself isn't much, but if you break underage gambling laws, you are going to get underage gambling penalties.

I get what you mean, but this is a personal choice. Underage teens don't HAVE to play, parent's don't HAVE to buy the game for their kids, so is it really the dev's fault?

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

Poor overwatch, the only game that does it properly gets dragged down by the others 

[PocketNerd]

15 minutes ago, Pohernori said:

Poor overwatch, the only game that does it properly gets dragged down by the others 

Define "Properly" for the class, please.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

3 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

Define "Properly" for the class, please.

 

You play the game

They give you lootbox 

 

Doesn't that sound fair?

[PocketNerd]

4 minutes ago, Pohernori said:

 

You play the game

They give you lootbox 

 

Doesn't that sound fair?

But you can also purchase them  which is what they're mad about.

Otherwise, I totally agree.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

12 minutes ago, Pohernori said:

You play the game

They give you lootbox 

 

Doesn't that sound fair?

They also SELL the lootboxes.

 

Overwatch also didn't get dragged down "due to the bad behavior of others".  The game was looked into and was found to be in violation of pre-existing gambling laws.  They broke those laws themselves, no point in blaming EA or Valve for that.

[Jito463]

5 hours ago, samcool55 said:

It's up to the government to take care of its people, not the people itself because that would just end in disaster

*sigh*

The argument of the left in a nutshell.  Personally, I prefer to err on the side of freedom and independence.  If someone needs to be taken care of (because they truly can't help themselves), then I'd rather see charities take over than government.

 

Personally, I can take care of myself and don't need some bureaucrat dictating what I do and don't "need".  There's a reason in America that the government is made of, by and for the people.  We're meant to be represented by our government, not dictated to by them.

[Drak3]

4 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

I can take care of myself and don't need some bureaucrat dictating what I do and don't "need".

According to those that support this, you need to be told to eat your veggies and when to go potty.

 

 

Next they'll have us all wearing diapers because some dipshit shits his pants all the time.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

3 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

I get what you mean, but this is a personal choice. Underage teens don't HAVE to play, parent's don't HAVE to buy the game for their kids, so is it really the dev's fault?

I don't understand your line of reasoning. Underage teens don't HAVE to smoke, parents don't HAVE to buy cigarettes for the kids, but if you sell cigarettes to kids, you go to jail.

No one is going to be punished because 35 years old people play virtual slot machine, as long as said slot machines abide by gambling regulations (just because you can have a restaurant it doesn't mean that you can run it in disregard of health regulations, for example). But if you provide a product or service that qualifies as gambling, it has to comply with gambling regulations, including effective age checks if necessary. Think of Amazon Go stores having people to check for IDs at the alcohol section. They can't just say "sorry, this is a personnel-less type of store, but don't worry, teens don't HAVE to buy alcohol". If a teen leaves the store with booze and Amazon charges them for it, they're in big trouble.

 

So, yes, it is really their fault (except it's not "the devs", since it's a distribution problem. Saying "the devs" is like saying that the guy manufacturing cigarettes will go to jail because your corner store sold them to kids. That's not how it works. Think more of publishers, and especially their management).

[Canada EH]

8 hours ago, The Viking said:

go ahead please, lock them up for 10 years.

That will never ever happen.

[Mooshi]

Alternatively, Belgian gamers will no longer be able to connect to EU servers thanks to their government making game companies not want to deal with that mess.

 

This is really dumb either way. Government handholding because adults suck at adulting.

[Master Disaster]

14 hours ago, Drak3 said:

That's a rather disturbing reliance on government for a personally non issue that is extremely easily avoided.

Tell that to the person with a gambling addiction or the children playing these games.

[samcool55]

7 hours ago, Jito463 said:

*sigh*

The argument of the left in a nutshell.  Personally, I prefer to err on the side of freedom and independence.  If someone needs to be taken care of (because they truly can't help themselves), then I'd rather see charities take over than government.

 

Personally, I can take care of myself and don't need some bureaucrat dictating what I do and don't "need".  There's a reason in America that the government is made of, by and for the people.  We're meant to be represented by our government, not dictated to by them.

Apart from discussing politics not exactly being allowed here. I do want to say that the gov shouldn't ONLY take care of people. They should also take care of companies, financial, economical, ecological and whatever else they should take care of.

 

Charities are important but in Belgium there are a lot of charities that get funding from the government or allow/support events where people can give donations to charities. It's not like they don't exist over here...

 

I also want freedom and for the gov to not decide everything about me, i can decide things for myself, but not everything because it's impossible to know enough of everything to make decisions.

 

Just so you know Belgium is one of the few countries where compulsory voting is still a thing and it's an enforced law.

[Guest The Viking]

6 hours ago, Mooshi said:

Government handholding because adults suck at adulting.

No, more because corporations suck at milking their customers. Government intervention is needed to regulate the hell out of some industries who've proven to just want to milk every single consumer out there as much as possible until they drop dead.

 

If that means we won't be able to play 3 boring games anyway, good for us. Some other country (netherlands I hope) will join, then some other, and in a few years it may be the entire union outlawing these garbage lootboxes.

[Guest The Viking]

1 hour ago, samcool55 said:

Just so you know Belgium is one of the few countries where compulsory voting is still a thing and it's an enforced law.

there's a reason behind this, the country is cut in 3 regions, french, flemish & german, each with a local government, +Brussels region that has its own government too+a national government. It's a small country so if you don't force people to vote you may end up with a minority deciding for a majority. With larger populations you don't really have this issue.

 

maybe you knew this anyway

[samcool55]

19 minutes ago, The Viking said:

there's a reason behind this, the country is cut in 3 regions, french, flemish & german, each with a local government, +Brussels region that has its own government too+a national government. It's a small country so if you don't force people to vote you may end up with a minority deciding for a majority. With larger populations you don't really have this issue.

 

maybe you knew this anyway

Yea i know this because brussels is less than an hour drive away from where i'm sitting

If you start to look at how the gov works it's actually quite interesting because we have an extra layer most countries don't have because we are so diverse. I mean that's the main reason why everything kept going when the federal gov was a mess for more than a year year a few years ago.

 

Also if they change the law and no longer force us to vote, the first time you are no longer required to go barely anybody is going to vote because many of us will probably think "our vote doesn't matter" and "the gov can f*ck off".

[Sauron]

20 hours ago, Some Random Member said:

Well the only people who buy lootcrates are 1. extremely rich people, or more alarmingly 2. little kids with their moms credit cards.

That's not true at all, a lot of perfectly normal adults also buy loot boxes. If they didn't, it wouldn't be the cash cow that it is. Just like "classic" gambling, it plays with your perception of potential gains compared to losses to get you to spend more. And to be clear, a grown adult can do with their money as they please, although if it becomes pathological they must be provided with help - the problem here is that there has been no regulation whatsoever on loot boxes until just recently, which exposed children and recovering addicts to gambling.

 

And of course, when games are deliberately made worse to shove in loot boxes there is a quality problem too.

[Jtalk4456]

13 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

I don't understand your line of reasoning. Underage teens don't HAVE to smoke, parents don't HAVE to buy cigarettes for the kids, but if you sell cigarettes to kids, you go to jail.

No one is going to be punished because 35 years old people play virtual slot machine, as long as said slot machines abide by gambling regulations (just because you can have a restaurant it doesn't mean that you can run it in disregard of health regulations, for example). But if you provide a product or service that qualifies as gambling, it has to comply with gambling regulations, including effective age checks if necessary. Think of Amazon Go stores having people to check for IDs at the alcohol section. They can't just say "sorry, this is a personnel-less type of store, but don't worry, teens don't HAVE to buy alcohol". If a teen leaves the store with booze and Amazon charges them for it, they're in big trouble.

 

So, yes, it is really their fault (except it's not "the devs", since it's a distribution problem. Saying "the devs" is like saying that the guy manufacturing cigarettes will go to jail because your corner store sold them to kids. That's not how it works. Think more of publishers, and especially their management).

Quote

Makers of several games have been ordered to change their lootbox system.  Failure to do so may result in fines of up to 1.6 million EUR and prison sentences of up to 10 years. 

That's my point exactly, the makers of the games are the ones being charged and sent to jail, not the distributors. Given the alcohol example, i think that's how it should go, with an age rating on the game if it contains "gambling"

Then if a kid is too young, the parents will have to buy the game if they deem fit. No different than normal age ratings on games based on other factors like nudity and violence. What makes this hard is the home aspect of it. for someone to use a slot machine, they have to go to a casino, and the casino will check age before letting them in, but what games a parent buys for their kids isn't able to be regulated as well because it's in the privacy of the home. This brings up questions about how to enforce. Can a parent be charged with distributing/allowing underage gambling by buying a game for their kids? As an extension, should we ban all chuckecheeses and other venues that let you toss in money for the chance at a prize? How are those different than gambling

All in all my point is that the line is too wide, too gray and fuzzy. Making devs go to jail and pay fines because they have lootboxes isn't fair to the problem. The parenting needs to be better, younger generations should be expected to understand the value difference between gambling and buying cosmetics in a game. We SHOULD be upset at the devs for being greedy and using lootboxes, but we shouldn't be jailing them for it, we should be stopping buying their crappy games! If we stop buying the lootboxes and games with them, the companies will stop making them

[SpaceGhostC2C]

17 minutes ago, Jtalk4456 said:

That's my point exactly, the makers of the games are the ones being charged and sent to jail, not the distributors.

I think "game makers" here can be misleading. I think the "makers" here are the companies selling the video games, and therefore criminal responsibilities will be attached to their managers - the ones with the final word in the product delivered to the market. I mean, if they found Overwatch is infringing the law in this way, it is correct to ask Blizzard to fix it or face the responsibilities, and criminal responsibilities would be charged to the person within Blizzard with the power to decide whether they comply with the law or not. It's not "Jimmy the intern who coded the lootbox mechanism" who's on the line here.

 

 

17 minutes ago, Jtalk4456 said:

Given the alcohol example, i think that's how it should go, with an age rating on the game if it contains "gambling"Then if a kid is too young, the parents will have to buy the game if they deem fit. No different than normal age ratings on games based on other factors like nudity and violence. What makes this hard is the home aspect of it. for someone to use a slot machine, they have to go to a casino, and the casino will check age before letting them in, but what games a parent buys for their kids isn't able to be regulated as well because it's in the privacy of the home. This brings up questions about how to enforce. Can a parent be charged with distributing/allowing underage gambling by buying a game for their kids? As an extension, should we ban all chuckecheeses and other venues that let you toss in money for the chance at a prize? How are those different than gambling

That's a different argument, one about which laws they should have, and is a valid position. I just wanted to stress that they first need to enforce the rules they have, and change them if they believe there is a better regulation to be had. I also think that their current stance seems to also be valid in my view. You may prefer a different type of regulation, which I respect, but I don't think they are doing anything crazy either.

 

17 minutes ago, Jtalk4456 said:

All in all my point is that the line is too wide, too gray and fuzzy. Making devs go to jail and pay fines because they have lootboxes isn't fair to the problem.

Well, it's more about sending company directives to jail and issuing fines to companies who fail to comply with a particular law and judicial mandate in due time - it's not like they are going to jail now without a warning. Worst that can happen is that they decide not to comply, and therefore cease to operate in Belgium, with no one going to jail.

 

[Tieox]

It's not the developers faults, it's the bottom line pen pushers and their never ending drive for MOAR PROFITS. 

 

 

[Jtalk4456]

25 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

I think "game makers" here can be misleading. I think the "makers" here are the companies selling the video games, and therefore criminal responsibilities will be attached to their managers - the ones with the final word in the product delivered to the market. I mean, if they found Overwatch is infringing the law in this way, it is correct to ask Blizzard to fix it or face the responsibilities, and criminal responsibilities would be charged to the person within Blizzard with the power to decide whether they comply with the law or not. It's not "Jimmy the intern who coded the lootbox mechanism" who's on the line here.

Fair enough if it's the exec's, but I still believe that is no different than jailing the execs of a company that makes slot machines after a kid snuck into a casino and started playing. The level of choice involved in this debate is a lot more involved. And I have to ask again what about the chuckecheeses of the world. If this is illegal why aren't those

[SpaceGhostC2C]

Just now, Jtalk4456 said:

Fair enough if it's the exec's, but I still believe that is no different than jailing the execs of a company that makes slot machines after a kid snuck into a casino and started playing.

Well, the thing is that the maker of the slot machine is also the casino when it comes to videogames, since the company selling the game and running the associated services under scrutiny is the same.

 

Just now, Jtalk4456 said:

And I have to ask again what about the chuckecheeses of the world. If this is illegal why aren't those

Mmm...

*calls Belgian lawyer

 

[PocketNerd]

4 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Well, the thing is that the maker of the slot machine is also the casino when it comes to videogames, since the company selling the game and running the associated services under scrutiny is the same.

Yup. If, for example, Aeria Games were hosting/publishing the EU version of Overwatch on their servers. Then it'd be Aeria Games that'd be getting the punishment (though, there's still the chance of Aeria asking Blizzard to create a patch if they couldn't disable the system on their own). And the Alcohol/Cig analogy would make more sense.