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.
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.
Didn’t China also recently introduce a limit of hours adolescents can game?
The world would be a better place without those transactions in my opinion. It might sound extreme but in my view this is the first step towards gambling addiction.
We as humanity are becoming really obsessed with everything digital instead of spending more time physically interacting with our peers. And unfortunately I am no exception.
Part of the problem is that there’s no incentive for game companies to ensure that players are of an appropriate age and are gambling responsibly. It’s a Pandora’s box of capitalism in the same way fossil fuels, cigarettes, and big pharma are. Their customers have a demand for their product which is driven by a physiological/psychological/socioeconomic need, so they aren’t subject to normal market mechanics.
You are allowed to completely disagree with leadership and goverment policies and actions and still agree with reasonable restrictions and laws. Course I haven’t looked into this so it could very well go way too far.
Ffs only on lemmy can you get shit on for telling ccp supporters to fuck off, china and russia are just barely worse than the states(also fuck america) for most corrupt shithole countries.
Fuck china and and fuck you, you tankie piece of garbage. Go back to weibo or hexbear where you belong you piece of shit.
I don’t care for ol Winnie and his Thousand Acre Ego, and hate many things China has done. In far too many ways they are backwards, explicitly destructive, and often refuse to negotiate.
However, and likely due to the overreach of government there, they certainly can and do make decisions I can at least agree with. If it wasn’t for the general conniving and “fuck you, I prefer one-way streets” way of essentially absolute control, I’d argue they were the good guys. Problem is we know better. The world isn’t that simple.
I just wish it was.
We’d be so much further along as a race if we could work together.
It’d be nice to see that come to rocket League. You know, the game where they removed crates because of the gambling, then removed trading to get kids to spend more money in the shop. So much better :/
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