Fortnite recently ditched it’s blind loot box monetization model, which turned out to be a real prescient move now that Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has introduced a bill that would make the practice illegal. Hawley’s bill would ban loot boxes and other pay-to-win mechanics in games for children. Here’s what Haley said, via NBC.
“Social media and video games prey on user addiction, siphoning our kids’ attention from the real world and extracting profits from fostering compulsive habits. 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,” Sen. Hawley said.
“When a game is designed for kids, game developers shouldn’t be allowed to monetize addiction. And when kids play games designed for adults, they should be walled off from compulsive microtransactions. Game developers who knowingly exploit children should face legal consequences.”
I’m with him except for the kids part. Just make this s**t illegal period. It’s predatory and it’s killing the ability of actual games to exist because who wants to sell a game once for $60 when you can squeeze hundreds of dollars a month out of people.
Honestly, this is something that’s long overdue and much needed. South Park nailed this particular issue years ago.
We keep seeing movies where some kid spent $50,000 AUS on a mobile game popping up into the news and we haven’t done anything about it. That’s over $35,000 in real money! How could someone possibly spend that much money on a video game? The game was Game of War: Fire Age, which means it was basically all spent speeding up the construction of virtual buildings. One adult embezzled a million dollars to spend on this game, and that article says the average player spends $550 a year on it. Red Dead Redemption 2 was $60. That’s like… ten Red Dead Redemptions.
It was bad enough when games started locking half the content behind paid DLC, but at least that was just a one-time purchase. Now video games are bilking a million dollars out of a single person. Do you know how many games of Pac-Man a million dollars would buy? You can just buy a Ms. Pac-Man table for like, $1,200 and just set it to free play. I don’t know what kind of system you have to have in place to get someone to spend a million dollars on a video game, but I’m certain it should be illegal.