Re: What is pay-to-win?

On 03/04/2024 15:45, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Wed, 3 Apr 2024 10:04:07 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
 

Anyway back to the subject in hand. I agree that the overall problem is
actually MTX and p2w is just one aspect of it. It really has done some
awful damage, IMHO, to the gaming market in the bigger budget space. I
pretty much avoid it totally now as I think it's taking the pee to
expect you to pay full price for game only to expect you to pay even
more if you want to, you know enjoy the game. The other thing that
annoys me is the devs./publishers know exactly what they are doing but
pretend that this is somehow good for gamers. Oh we have an in-game
currency purely for your convenience, no you have it as it helps create
a disconnect between how much you're actually spending.

 In-game currencies have other advantages as well:
 Items are never sold at prices that evenly divide with the values the
currency is sold at. You want that magic sword? It costs 400 Fakecash.
However, FakeCash is only sold in 300 unit increments. This has the
dual benefit of forcing people to buy more than they need (some of
which will inevitably go unused), and is a psychological prod to get
people to spend more. "Well, I /do/ have 350 Fakecash already, so I
might as well buy another FakeChest so I can afford the sword."
 

WoT has actually been quite good at this as originally it was defined bundles of gold (the in-game currency) and even then because of the way gold was used there was always lots of things to spend it on. Then they changed it to you can literally buy any amount of gold you want.
Saying that they do use the same type of principle with lot boxes in that you have a certain drop chance for each to get a premium tank but after fifty lootboxes you will automatically get one if you haven't already. The catch, lootboxes are sold in x25 bundles and the next step up is x75. Of course x75 is better value per-lootbox than x25.

The other advantage is that if you are using in-game currencies, it
gives the developer a legal defense against accusations of gambling,
since it's not 'real money'. Fortunately, law-makers are becoming
aware of this trick, and (at least in some countries) this is no
longer a valid distinction.
 

In the UK, and I believe many of its peers, it's a bit more subtle than that. The sticking point is it's not classed as gambling unless you can cash out individual items. So if you gained something (including in-game currency) in a lootbox and could then freely sell it for real money, then it's gambling. So even if you had a in-game wallet in local currency as long as you couldn't turn that it real money then it's not gambling.
The gambling commission (the regulator) looked into this several years ago and reached the conclusion that lootboxes have all the hallmarks of gambling (including the issue of problem gambling) but until the law changes they are legal. Our government then set-up a parliamentary committee to look into the issue. The report was even more damning and also used a number of actually studies showing the links between problem gambling and lootrboxes. One I found particular interesting was that games companies were effectively exploiting certain vulnerable people in society. It also showed that the idea that it's just 'rich people' who are whales is untrue.
Our government looked at the report and, mad Nad as she's known, basically went yeh whatever. We shouldn't burden companies with more 'red tape' that will in anyway negatively effect their profits. Why set-up a committee in the first place if you're going to completely ignore what it says.