Re: Go EU!

On 4/10/2025 6:11 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 10 Apr 2025 08:16:17 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
 

Well firstly, that saves me making a post about it.

 Heh. I didn't think it was worth a separate thread either, hence my
hijacking an earlier one. I'm not so sure how much interest there is
about the business aspect of game development in csipga so I usually
try to limit the number of separate threads on the topic. Well, now we
have one more, I guess ;-)
 

So on to the meat,
the legal status seems slightly vague as I believe the CPC Network* have
picked a target (some horse game aimed squarely at kids)

 If I recall, it was the Swedish consumer protection commission that
had an issue with the horse game, and they took it up with the EU,
where the EU CPC raised the stakes to make it apply for _all_ games.
 

and are using
the interpretation of existing EU consumer protect laws to say these
type of practices go against them. My assumption is that if you get a
case in one member state then you've basically given the green light to
all member states.

 Quite. One of the problems with Belgium's anti lootbox law was it was
only effective in Belgium
         [for Americans: Belgium is a very small country, about
         the size of Vermont, with a population of only 11 million]
             and thus the law was generally ignored or -at best- the
game was marked as 'not for sale in Belgium' because the publishers
could ignore so small. But the EU is 445 million people
         [for Americans: that's 125% the size of the US population]
              so its unlikely that the publishers are going to pull out
of _that_ market. More likely, they'll create a "EU version" of the
game, which will lack these odious features, while America gets the
'regular' overly monetized crap. But Americans don't seem interested
in quality anyway, so I guess that's fine?
 

Its more that the US has become an oligarchy with our Supreme Court ruling that companies are people with free speech rights and can spend unrestricted amounts of money supporting elections and candidates.
--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky dirty old man.