I would've expected to see something like thus out of the EU rather than China, but at least somebody's making the first move against the predatory monetisation of apps
I haven’t had a look at the original text from China, but wondering how much they accounted for. Any of these rules could be easily circumvented if they didn’t account for multiple scenarios.
Rewards for spending money within a game for the first time
“We don’t have a reward for spending money for the first time, but everyone does have a digital coupon for $5 off of their first $10 purchase when they make an account.”
Rewards for buying consecutive microtransactions
“The players don’t get any extras when they buy more of our digital currency, but every gacha pull does make the next 5 pulls a bit cheaper.”
Rewards for daily log-ins.
“No, we’re not giving rewards for daily log-ins, but players can buy this bonus that adds a gift-giving NPC to the main town for 30 days, who will trade a small parcel of premium currency for a single gold coin once per day.”
How do Chinese judges react to transparent attempts to circumvent laws that have the same effect as just breaking the law? I wouldn’t expect them to fall for the “I’m not touching you” defense.
That’s not what I’m saying. I was just hoping this law has teeth, because companies who are greedy for money will always try to circumvent whatever new restrictions are sent their way.
I’m thinking back to earlier policies set by China like the restrictions against showing undead/human remains in video games. World of Warcraft set up all these euphemistic workarounds to circumvent the law while realistically changing as little as possible, basically defeating the purpose of it.
China outlawed loot boxes, but then season passes and gatcha models were implemented in short order to continue exploiting consumers. If the law doesn’t account for all sorts of scenarios that can be abused, it’s just going to be a game of cat and mouse.
Well, it’s China. How the commerce law affect you will depend heavily on who you know in the government and the party. If the new law is heavily pushed by someone important, they probably won’t turn a blind eye for minor technicality. Someone up high probably got mad with their kids getting addicted with microtransactions and want to neuter it. Once that person lost interest or no longer in power, the enforcement will probably become much lenient.
World of Warcraft set up all these euphemistic workarounds to circumvent the law while realistically changing as little as possible, basically defeating the purpose of it.
The only one I’m aware of is China’s cultural distaste for showing bones, so Blizzard had to hide the skeletal structure in the Undead player class. In other words, it wasn’t about the undead, it was only about showing bones.
I think you could go two ways with that. The psychologist could be under a mandate to give feedback to ensure your game is not going to be an addiction or they could be under a mandate to make it as addictive as possible. The latter is way more likely but I wouldn’t totally rule out the value add of any psychologist to any game.
Do you all expect localization is tied to laws for china? I realy don’t think so. Most games are split into global and asia/chinese versions anyway. Why should they remove these mechanics when it isn’t necessary for the market they operate in?
The thought process is that for many games, the majority of their revenue comes from these mechanics and from China. The games themselves will need to change to get revenue flowing. And new games won’t be made with this revenue source in general.
This is similar to how eu regulations can lead to global changes sometimes, China is a big enough market to affect things globally.
Yep, I’m not in the EU but thanks to the GDPR I still see the cookies thing on almost every website I go, sometimes these things have a good ripple effect.
The rating is 77. 77 is the lowest rating a game in the main series of Assassins Creed has received. This means the other games have 78 or up. How in the world is this considered bad? For an entire fucking franchise? Not a fan of the series or anything but I just think it’s ridiculous how this is an actual headline! Don’t the journalists have nothing else to report on regarding video games and the industry? Layoffs? Toxic people and business practices? Microtransactions?
Nah, instead they go: “pretty good (but not great) game is slightly less good than other pretty good (but not great) games in an overall pretty good (but not great) franchise.” Ugh!
The headline says it’s the lowest-rated game in the series, not that Mirage is a bad game. The article bases itself on a single data point, which leaves a lot of room for interpreting. Which the author does a little.
But it’s nowhere mentioned or claimed that Mirage is a badly-reviewed game or doesn’t sell well. It’s just the lowest entry so far. And that’s what everybody should take away from that headline, followed by ignoring the hollow clickbaity article altogether.
I watched a review video that was praising everything in this game. "Finally another good AC." "The vombat is fun and challenging." "Looks fantastic on the new engine."
Then i watched just some guy playing it and it honestly looks janky as hell. He always got stuck while parkouring, the parkour itself seems like the same press one button to do parkour, but this time it's really jank. There is no weapon variety at all. The combat looks really bad, it looks like the least fun combat in all these kind of games. The world looks really good, but the people in the world the jank ass AI and NPC doing weird shit while looking pretty Bethesda like. I haven't played it, but how this got a 77 or anything above a 5/10 is beyond me.
I’m playing out of sync. I did Valhalla Odyssey and now I’m playing through origin. I enjoyed a lot of Valhalla. I can see how they tweaked and polished from origins. I think I preferred the scenery in Odyssey and maybe the story and people. Valhalla had best fighting and slo mo. Graphics were outstanding and voice acting was pristine by Valhalla.
Valhalla is a nice action game but it’s no AC game. Especially the stealth part and name-sake Assassination gameplay take up too little space. And the skill tree they copied from PoE is just ridiculously overloaded - symptomatic for Ubisoft‘s approach to the whole game: it’s so convoluted.
I really enjoyed Valhalla but as an AC entry it disappoints.
From what I saw watching a few streams it seemed fine, closer to the original games but still having that slight off feeling of modern Ubisoft games. Seems like a good game on sale for $30
gamerant.com
Aktywne