Posted on 05/08/2019 12:06:19 PM PDT by Sir Napsalot
US Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) announced he is introducing a bill that would potentially bar the sale of loot boxes in certain video games. If enacted, Hawley's bill, called The Protecting Children from Abusive Games Act, would ban loot boxes and "pay-to-win" microtransactions in titles targeted at or popular among minors, likening the business model to addiction.
"Social media and video games prey on user addiction, siphoning our kids' attention from the real world and extracting profits from fostering compulsive habits," Senator Hawley said in a statement. "No matter this business model's advantages to the tech industry, one thing is clear: there is no excuse for exploiting children through such practices. …
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Loot boxes have been a point of controversy in the industry for many years. 2017's Star Wars Battlefront II, for instance, garnered a lot of criticism and backlash for the way it initially incorporated microtransactions, effectively tying them to your progression. In response, publisher EA removed all loot boxes from the game just prior to launch, but that didn't help stem the push for anti-loot box legislation.
(Excerpt) Read more at gamespot.com ...
Kind of like a scratch-off ticket for video games. You pay the game company $1 or something, and they give you a “loot box” that when you open it, it gives you a random selection of in-game items. Some of them are going to be crappy, some of them decent, but once in a great while, you open one of these boxes and get a very rare item, or an item you cannot obtain any other way.
So if you want that totally awesome gun or the best magic sword for your character in the game, you may need to buy ten, twenty or a hundred loot boxes before you find it.
This doesn’t need to be banned entirely, but it damn well should be made that any game with MTX automatically gets an “adult” rating for gambling.
This bill is a total waste of time.
Republicans should not be dictating what rewards exist in a video game.
$#!+heads.
Senator Josh should team up with Tipper Gore (wherever she is now...)and write a really restricting law to protect everyone from everything in games.
“Why is a republican in the business of ‘Banning things’.
there’s tons of things i’d like Republicans to ban, starting with banning censorship on social media ...
That’s not banning. That’s making sure we can use our first amendment rights. Difference
Maybe he should also ban casinos - from my psych class, one of the best ways to instill a habit is to provide rewards of varying amounts at random intervals....exactly what a slot machine does.
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