Games can no longer use virtual currencies to disguise the price of in-game purchases in the European Union
Commission and national authorities take action to protect children from harmful practices in video games
In-game purchases should display the exact cost in the local currency. In-game currency should be completely banned.
There are many many examples of predatory uses of in game currencies, but here are some big reasons devs use them besides being scummy.
Transparency is good, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
What baby? In game purchases? That's not a baby, that's a big shit somebody took in your tub. If transparency is too hard to implement, publishers should feel free to get rid of them altogether.
They can give items for free instead. Without currency they cant give you 90% of what you need and force you to overpay for extra.
A variable for a value is trivial. It already works perfectly fine in the store!
Sure sales on mobile... (sounds like Apple and Google would get some needed pressure to improve this area) but thats another problem, none of these purchases should be expensive enough to even warrant needing a sale in the first place.
The real reason they want in game currency is not any of these, it's for the deception factor, avoiding refunds, upselling etc
Giving currency for free: giving people real money isn't something any dev wants to deal with, so giving in game currency allows this to happen. This also applies to games where you can convert free currency to premium currency.
But this is how gift codes work, no? You're not giving money away directly. Just give a voucher for a real currency if you want to gift users.
Also in some games players can trade the currency
Depends what counts as an in game currency, does a game where you earn currency in-game and spend it in-game count as an in-game currency? What about if players can trade it?
We are talking about anything that has real monetary value, if you cannot obtain it through real money, then it's not in the discussion. Of course it opens a whole new problem, where they could sell "boosts" to earning virtual currency etc. So that would have to be taken into account with the legislation.
The CPC Network, coordinated by the European Commission, is publishing a set of guidelines today to promote transparency and fairness in the online gaming industry's use of virtual currencies.
That doesn’t seem binding.
Nah thats usually how those start out afaik. They start with a guideline and a grace period. Then when the grace period is over there is a warning period and after that it goes straight to fines.
The CPC Network will monitor progress and may take further actions if harmful practices continue.
Lets see what happens.
It is in part. They are hosting workshops and publishing these guidelines so companies can work on it on their own merit but they will also take further action if the harmful practices continue
It seems they are saying that these are already enforced:
The key principles and the Common Position are based on the existing general rules of EU consumer law directives that apply to digital services and digital content provided to consumers, including video games. The Commission will continue to examine these topics in the context of forthcoming consultations on the Digital Fairness Act.
Stop selling gambling as okay to kids. Gacha games equal gambling for minors.
It'd be fine if it was limited to like 1-5 dollars per account monthly with a yearly maximum. Not a 100 dollars at a time.
Stay winning EU.
I wonder if this will in practice put an end to the scummy practice of badly sized in game currency pack sizes, one of the many scummy techniques they use to make people spend more.
Let’s say the thing most players buy costs 3 ingame currency (I love that my autocorrect made „insane currency“ out of that). The smallest pack you can buy is 5. So, the player buys 5, spends 3 and has 2 left with which nothing to do. If they want another 3, they have to buy 5 more. Spend 3, have 4 left. Spend 3, have 1 left. The cycle continues.
Or, just stop games from selling in-game content?
Every skin is a texture or model swap, every "exclusive" always exists in the files, every in-game currency is fabricated.
Games try really really hard to make you pay for something that is copy and pasted
Artificial scarcity in it's barest form.
The fact that even some people think this shit is acceptable is very telling of how far we have yet to go, psychologically speaking, as a species.
Monkeys in fucking trousers.
This is one of those radical ideas that people are terrified of, because it would kill the business models of a lot of massive corporations. It's easy to spin that as the death of the game industry, rather than what it is: the death of a business practice.
Like the laws against underage smoking probably wiped out billions in shareholder value, but that was objectively a good thing. Banning (or heavily regulating) in-game purchases would also be a good thing, no matter how much it affects existing players. If it leads to the death of name brands like EA, Ubisoft, etc. then who cares? The market will readjust and new players who were able to adapt to the changed environment will take their place.
Now do Stop Killing Games
I hope it doesn't affect EVE Online. As I remember it their system didn't involve any deception or confusion, even though there was in-game currency you could spend € on if you wanted to.
Well I mean there was plenty of deception and confusion among and between the players, but none from the game itself.
If the conversion rate isnt 1:1 or its not directly using € in the game then i would call that confusing or deceptive.
For real. We need to get rid of games where 10 Red coins = 2.2 mystic gems = 1256 diamonds = 1.56 flowers and you can only buy red coin and only spend flowers and each conversion has a 1 green coin processing fee and you have to convert in that order. It's predatory and so sad that people get duped by it.
As I remember it: It's an online game, so you need a monthly subscription to play. That is a set price in whatever real-world currency as normal. But you can buy as many months as you like in advance; and if you buy more than you need you can sell them in-game for whatever you can get on the open market which is controlled by players.
It was a long time ago, no idea if it still works that way. But it seemed to me like a good system, for a game in which in-game market trading between players is a big part of it.
P.S. Actually come to think of it I think they went free-to-play at some point. I wonder if my account still exists.
The interesting thing about EVE is that the economy is completely player driven. That means you can even sell PLEX (Im pretty sure I got my name before eve named their money that, and I definitely didn't know EVE back then!) and therefore even buy PLEX with in-game resources you 'worked' for.
Because of that, I agree that EVE is a special case. If that PLEX currency did not exist to be bought with real money, that means that the in-game items are no longer able to be traded for essentially real money. Though perhaps there is some smart way to do it better and with less real world capitalism
The first two principles for virtual currencies that they have listed are "Price indication should be clear and transparent" and "Practices obscuring the cost of in-game digital content and services should be avoided", so if EVE is honest and up front about it then it should be fine
I find it interesting that it says it’s based on existing legislation. In that case I’ma bit disappointed that it took them so long to act. But, it’s of course a stop in the right direction.
Nice, good for EU
What does this mean for me, a capital G gamer? /s
But seriously, will I still be able to earn gold in MTGA?
How will this affect the Platinum market in Warframe?
These seem to be the four major points:
clear and transparent pricing and pre-contractual information;
avoiding practices hiding the costs of in-game digital content and services, as well as practices forcing consumers to purchase virtual currency;
respect of consumers' right of withdrawal;
respecting consumer vulnerabilities, in particular when it comes to children;
First one actually seems pretty well covered by Warframe already. Second point can be met just by displaying the real currency price next to the plat price, calculated based on what people on average give per plat when purchasing through the Warframe website. Third point... Yeah that's going to be a point of contention for sure. That'll require a redesign of the plat system. Fourth point I'd also say Warframe does. Their 'oh shit' moment when they ended up creating a slot machine with, what was it, kubrow skins? Demonstrates them actually caring about this already. Basically they saw people interacting with a new mechanic much like one would a slot machine, and then soon after rolled it back and refunded everyone who had spent money on it.
"Right of withdrawal" is quite easy: allow cancelling the transaction before the in-game content has actually been used.
It only takes a "has been used" flag, and maybe a log entry to prove when.
Considering you can't sell platinum for money, you could add complexity by converting it to another currency when exchanging hands. No value lost, exact same ratio. You buy platinum, you spend it on the store or it decays when you give it to another player. Platinum carries real world value, decayed doesn't. Would that work? The only reason for doing that would be to obfuscate the fact platinum has real world value. The players being constantly aware of the fact might mess with the economy.
Honestly, their monetization is really something I could never criticize.
Will they get rid of games have 3 or 4 or more "currencies."