With upcoming pay-to-win & lootbox bill, will credits/resources/affinity boosters be outlawed?

[Tazrizen]

I don't see how it's going to affect warframe. It's not pay to win, it's play to grind. In the same way buying the latest warcraft expansion would give you a high level character, warframe does the same thing, in fact warframe seems the least forced pay to win game I've seen in a good long while. The closest thing that would be a loot box is the random mod packs that no one buys. 

[IspanoLFW]

3 minutes ago, Tazrizen said:

I don't see how it's going to affect warframe. It's not pay to win, it's play to grind. In the same way buying the latest warcraft expansion would give you a high level character, warframe does the same thing, in fact warframe seems the least forced pay to win game I've seen in a good long while. The closest thing that would be a loot box is the random mod packs that no one buys. 

Because you didn't actually read the bill. You took your "definition" of P2W and stopped at that. Read what the bill actually says.

[(PSN)VariantX7]

no. because the things you mentioned in the title are not randomized.The only randomized items that you could purchase in the market were the falcon,dragon etc mod packs and they dont exist in the game anymore. If you spend 20 plat on an item you get exactly what you spent that 20 plat on. All purchases are direct purchases now. Buying boosters gives you exactly what you pay for, a doubling of the drop chance or doubling of the value you get in the drop. Lootboxes are pay-per-roll which would apply to the old modpacks as you couldn't control what you get.

Edited May 31, 2019 by (PS4)VariantX7

[IspanoLFW]

27 minutes ago, (PS4)VariantX7 said:

no. because the things you mentioned in the title are not randomized.The only randomized items that you could purchase in the market were the falcon,dragon etc mod packs and they dont exist in the game anymore. If you spend 20 plat on an item you get exactly what you spent that 20 plat on. All purchases are direct purchases now. Buying boosters gives you exactly what you pay for, a doubling of the drop chance or doubling of the value you get in the drop. Lootboxes are pay-per-roll which would apply to the old modpacks as you couldn't control what you get.

Maybe read the actuall bill before commenting.

 

... with respect to an interactive digital entertainment product that, from the perspective of a reasonable user of the product, is a game offering a scoring system, a set of goals to achieve, a set of rewards, or a sense of interactive progression through the product’s content including but not limited to narrative progression—

(I) eases a user’s progression through content otherwise available within the game without the purchase of such transaction;

(II) assists a user in accomplishing an achievement within the game that can otherwise be accomplished without the purchase of such transaction;

(III) assists a user in receiving an award associated with the game that is otherwise available in association with the game without the purchase of such transaction; or

(IV) permits a user to continue to access content of the game that had previously been accessible to the user but has been made inaccessible after the expiration of a timer or a number of gameplay attempts; or

(ii) with respect to an interactive digital entertainment product that, from the perspective of a reasonable user of the product, is a game featuring competition with other users, provides a user with a competitive advantage with respect to the game’s competitive aspects over users who do not make such a transaction.

[Ascarith]

33 minutes ago, (PS4)VariantX7 said:

no. because the things you mentioned in the title are not randomized.The only randomized items that you could purchase in the market were the falcon,dragon etc mod packs and they dont exist in the game anymore. If you spend 20 plat on an item you get exactly what you spent that 20 plat on. All purchases are direct purchases now. Buying boosters gives you exactly what you pay for, a doubling of the drop chance or doubling of the value you get in the drop. Lootboxes are pay-per-roll which would apply to the old modpacks as you couldn't control what you get.

I'm thinking this is a lost cause at this point (sorry OP), but it will be (immensely) helpful to read up on what the bill actually says if you want to engage with the OP. Boosters falling into the "lootbox" category is not what OP is worried about, OP is concerned that they fall under the bill's definition of "pay to win microtransaction." 

Edited May 31, 2019 by Ascarith

[jfhsanseiIII]

Seeing as how the avenue to achieve the boosters has a very low bar that doesn’t require money, I doubt it.  To be honest I prefer to not pay for them.  I sell unwanted stuff for as little as ten minutes to get a booster that fits my needs.  I’m quite happy that DE removed the random mod packs on their own.  It was the only thing that I thought was a blight on their business model.  

[Highresist]

On 2019-05-27 at 6:00 PM, FlusteredFerret said:

The only reason rivens are justifiable is because it costs nothing to farm the resources required to re-roll them.

Are they though? I don't think a system that has more layers of bad RNG (Win:Lose ration is heavily on one side) than the number of Brie Larson's plastic surgeries can ever be justified.

[H0PE]

Warframe is 18+ game no?

So this bill -even if they approve and legalize the bill, which is questionable- won't affect Warframe.

Other games got also an easy solution. Make it mature and that's it.

Not really going to bother much I guess. *shrug*

[beercritch]

If the bill goes ahead is hard to say at this point, but after reading up it seems clear to me that games like warframe are not what the bill is aiming to harm in any way, but there is an outside chance that certain features may be "frowned upon".

Boosters may be a stumbling block, BUT importantly having a booster reduces the grind, but they dont make any of the missions and event any easier. Take the recent event to run a mission and earn a score of 4K to unlock the new vandal weapons. You can have all the boosters active, but that mission is still that mission and you still have to run the levels to get the reward. The only argument against it is that if you need to grind a new frame or weapon to run the mission boosters make that easier. IMHO thats a stretch of the proposed legislation and I dont think its what the legislation is trying to stop.

If you consider other games its a different story. I know world of tanks is a russian based game and they will not care what the americans are up to anyway, but they run event where you have to earn a set amount of experience to earn rewards. These missions are very common indeed to the point of several per week. Importantly if you pay your money and get your premium account and booster it affects the amount of experience you earn and greatly reduces the time it takes to earn the rewards. If its a new premium tank you are earning (monthly missions or so) it can make a massive difference to earning the new tank or not. This to me sounds exactly like the sort of thing the legislation is trying to stop.

Edited May 31, 2019 by beercritch

[FlusteredFerret]

3 hours ago, Highresist said:

Are they though? I don't think a system that has more layers of bad RNG (Win:Lose ration is heavily on one side) than the number of Brie Larson's plastic surgeries can ever be justified.

The point is, there is no money involved in re-rolling rivens. Whether you think its a good or bad mechanic is beside the point.

As has been said many times before, rivens are meant to be hard to obtain anyway and "god-roll" rivens are meant to almost as rare as hen's teeth. This is deliberate. Players have only got themselves to blame if they fixate on them and spend ridiculous amounts of time farming kuva (or worse buying rivens for stupid amounts of plat).

In a nutshell, the game provides ways of obtaining these things without spending any money. Unlike loot boxes.

 

[Highresist]

29 minutes ago, FlusteredFerret said:

The point is, there is no money involved in re-rolling rivens.

Technically there is, because no madman ever farms Kuva without a booster. I mean the whole system is made to discourage people to reroll Rivens for some reason and even after some nerfs to the Kuva cap, it is still pretty ridicilous how much you can get: how much rerolling requiers. This artificially rises the prices of Rivens to unholy amounts, when you think about it - 4300 platium is 200$, and some of them cost over 10k, does that mean that their irl price tag would be 500$+?
I'm not really sure how to feel about the economy of the game. On one side, I like it, because I'm good at managing resourses and I traded over 8k plat through my 900h of gametime, without heavily focusing on it and I can not denie, it is fair if you know what you are doing and is very beneficial, even without overpricing stuff out of your a**. On the other, the whole economy revolving around premium currency makes for a very toxic market, because as I said, if you look at it from a point where every item has a irl price tag, it gets to ridicilous levels. Primed Chamber is over 5000$ if you convert money into plat for it.
The only comparison I have in mind would be the IRL action house of Diablo 3.
DE would be heavily effected by the bill, if it passes (again I hope it doesn't), because, technically - everything in the game, except cosmetics that can be bought through steam, is P2W. It is very badly written by people who never played games in their lifes. The bill does't take the factors of game economy, tradable items, action houses, currency sinks, character progression requierments, nothing. It is a bland statment that is ment be implimented in every game, regardless of how one operates in its own terms. It will brake the economy of A LOT of games. Also its the US government, if you think they would stop at one bill, banning "P2W", you have another thing coming. These old bastards are as greedy as the AAA publishers themselves, if not more. I would remind people, that back in the 90s, even in the early 2000s they tried to ban games from the market altogether, because reasons.

 

 

Edited May 31, 2019 by Highresist

[SneakyErvin]

13 hours ago, Ascarith said:

The bill covers purchases made via real currency or "an in-game proxy for money, such as virtual currency, that can be purchased with money." The existence of a platinum system probably isn't going to shield DE from liability in this case. Regardless of where the plat comes from, there's going to be a "sale" if a user spends plat for a booster. 

America is not the world, but (roughly speaking) if you're doing business in America, you're going to be subject to American laws. Just because you aren't an American company doesn't give you a free pass. 

I'm not sure I 100% understood what you meant by the freemium model. If you mean there are free players (gain exp/loot at the "normal" rate) and there are premium players (pay a sub fee, gain exp/loot at double the "normal" rate), then that probably does count as a "pay to win transaction." "Add-on transactions" (and thus "pay to win microtransactions") can be paid for by subscription fees. 

As for your third example (DLC map), it's going to depend heavily on additional facts. If the entire point of the DLC is to speed up leveling/resource gathering and that's the value that reasonable players perceive the DLC to have, it's "pay to win" under the bill. If it's more traditional DLC and it just so happens to have better exp and resources, then it might be exempted as "additional game content." It's going to be a matter of degree. It's entirely possible the FTC will just go for it and people will have to hash it out in court. 

That bill will be a steaming mess then. If it passes US players will likely never be able to pay either freemium subs or access boosters. 

Regarding freemium, yes you gain extra above the normal, but then there are also game that add other things to it, like expanded storage/inventory over the sub period. Things that technically arent p2w according to the bill because you cant obtain it through gameplay. Like in Black Desert, you have a hardcap on obtainable inventory expansions that you can get from playing, then another cap on how many you can buy straight up, then you get another 16 ontop of that from premium sub.

And in BDO, inventory, maids/butlers and several other things are already considered actual P2W even though they do not increase actual loot/mob. Just pets in that game is the biggest P2W ever, actual P2W and not the vague crap the bill talks about. None of those things will get impacted by the bill because they dont directly increase loot while still being far worse offenders than a simple booster. Or take The old Republic as an example, you can play free with limitations ("normal" rate) or pay premium to access everything and gain xp boosters etc.

It is kinda the same with the DLC maps I mentioned. They arent a higher level that warrants increased loot, they are simply a special area where loot is increased for fullfilling certain gameplay parameters within the area. In short, if you spend 30 minutes in regular 1500 power level mission you might get 1-2 relics (highest tier of items) but if you pop into one of the two DLCs you instead get 10-12 relics in the same amount of time. The maps look exactly the same, but the DLC has a mechanic that rewards you the more you kill. It could be considered P2W by the bill but it could also be considered as specific game-mode mechanics. It is a very hard line to draw. Also the maps you get to play on already exsists in game for other modes.

13 hours ago, IspanoLFW said:

Nanny role? Excuse me? Who the hell said anything about that? No, they should not be predatory. There's a huge difference here. It's really a simple concept.

Also, yes, yes they are. Especially for newer players who want to "catch up." The resource grind, the affinity grind, the credit grind, is honestly, rather slow for new players. Boosters help that quite a bit.

It is simply what it sounds like. The US wants to put all the blame on the game companies. Yes there are predatory ones out there, but most of them will come up with new ideas instead that the bill doesnt cover. Remember, US laws are the center of loopholes. And no, the resource grind and affinity is not slow on newer players.

I mean point #4 can be interpreted to cover freemium access like that in ToR, because once you have done your X amount of PvP games or raids etc. you can get access to them again through paying. But then again, shouldnt this also cover straight up subs like we see in WoW? Because freemium is really nothing different, it simply gives you limited access to the game without paying, so you can try it out. Much like you can play WoW for free up to X level but then have to pay a sub to continue beyond that.

I think they need to sit down and think this really through a few times or more because now it is nothing but a mess.

Techically, everything DE sells can be considered to fall under #1-3.

#1 = Resources/affinity boosters, Primes access, buying weapons, buying frames, forma, taters etc.

#2 = Primes access, buying weapons, buying frames, forma, taters etc.

#3 = Primes access, buying weapons, buying frames, forma, taters etc.

How #*!%ing more vague can the bill get?

[IspanoLFW]

Just now, SneakyErvin said:

That bill will be a steaming mess then. If it passes US players will likely never be able to pay either freemium subs or access boosters. 

Regarding freemium, yes you gain extra above the normal, but then there are also game that add other things to it, like expanded storage/inventory over the sub period. Things that technically arent p2w according to the bill because you cant obtain it through gameplay. Like in Black Desert, you have a hardcap on obtainable inventory expansions that you can get from playing, then another cap on how many you can buy straight up, then you get another 16 ontop of that from premium sub.

And in BDO, inventory, maids/butlers and several other things are already considered actual P2W even though they do not increase actual loot/mob. Just pets in that game is the biggest P2W ever, actual P2W and not the vague crap the bill talks about. None of those things will get impacted by the bill because they dont directly increase loot while still being far worse offenders than a simple booster. Or take The old Republic as an example, you can play free with limitations ("normal" rate) or pay premium to access everything and gain xp boosters etc.

It is kinda the same with the DLC maps I mentioned. They arent a higher level that warrants increased loot, they are simply a special area where loot is increased for fullfilling certain gameplay parameters within the area. In short, if you spend 30 minutes in regular 1500 power level mission you might get 1-2 relics (highest tier of items) but if you pop into one of the two DLCs you instead get 10-12 relics in the same amount of time. The maps look exactly the same, but the DLC has a mechanic that rewards you the more you kill. It could be considered P2W by the bill but it could also be considered as specific game-mode mechanics. It is a very hard line to draw. Also the maps you get to play on already exsists in game for other modes.

It is simply what it sounds like. The US wants to put all the blame on the game companies. Yes there are predatory ones out there, but most of them will come up with new ideas instead that the bill doesnt cover. Remember, US laws are the center of loopholes. And no, the resource grind and affinity is not slow on newer players.

I mean point #4 can be interpreted to cover freemium access like that in ToR, because once you have done your X amount of PvP games or raids etc. you can get access to them again through paying. But then again, shouldnt this also cover straight up subs like we see in WoW? Because freemium is really nothing different, it simply gives you limited access to the game without paying, so you can try it out. Much like you can play WoW for free up to X level but then have to pay a sub to continue beyond that.

I think they need to sit down and think this really through a few times or more because now it is nothing but a mess.

Techically, everything DE sells can be considered to fall under #1-3.

#1 = Resources/affinity boosters, Primes access, buying weapons, buying frames, forma, taters etc.

#2 = Primes access, buying weapons, buying frames, forma, taters etc.

#3 = Primes access, buying weapons, buying frames, forma, taters etc.

How #*!%ing more vague can the bill get?

And that's the point of the thread. To discuss what would happen if it passes. I too don't think it will pass, at least not in the state it's in. But my opinion on that is besides the point.

However, no, it does not cover subscriptions and whatnot. It does not cover DLC. People have gone through the bill and such, it's vague, sure, but it's also fairly clear which bits it applies to. IV would apply to something like the Internation version of Ragnarok Online, it has a VIP that you pay for and there are dungeons and content you cannot access without it. Stop paying, lose access, even though you can still play the game.

[SneakyErvin]

1 minute ago, IspanoLFW said:

And that's the point of the thread. To discuss what would happen if it passes. I too don't think it will pass, at least not in the state it's in. But my opinion on that is besides the point.

However, no, it does not cover subscriptions and whatnot. It does not cover DLC. People have gone through the bill and such, it's vague, sure, but it's also fairly clear which bits it applies to. IV would apply to something like the Internation version of Ragnarok Online, it has a VIP that you pay for and there are dungeons and content you cannot access without it. Stop paying, lose access, even though you can still play the game.

Yeah and it is very wrong that it applies to VIP systems because they really are nothing but a sub system, the difference is just that when the sub runs out you can keep playing instead of getting shut out like in the case of WoW/FFXIV etc. That is the major flaw in #4, it doesnt think beyond the "well dur hur the game has free access so everything you pay to access is P2W". I mean any sensible and slightly knowledgable politician would see that freemium is really nothing but a subscription, with the addition that you never get locked out.

If you dont pay a sub in WoW you cant play most of the content, but Blizzard doesnt call it premium access, they call it subscription based, even though it is is nearly the exact same thing as premium/VIP or whatever the hell a game calls it.

I'm wondering what kind of cave men/women came up with this bill proposal.

[Methanoid]

well, surely if this bill passes (somehow cant see it with EA's bank balance and influence) it will only be an issue for american players, the rest of the world will carry on as usual regardless, its not like it will be any issue for DE, they are a chineese owned canadian company, why would they care about an american law/rule?  at most they would just have to change the market/system for american players only.

[Buttaface]

On ‎27‎/‎05‎/‎2019 at 12:29 PM, spirit_of_76 said:

also true they should be working on a budget, tax reform, fixing the NFA so that it is not ineffective, election reform, term limits... while not dead last this bill is a waste of time and more than likely a PR move.  

Yep, states, not Fed, are the proper locus for such laws. Empty saber rattling regardless of what "butmuhbillsez!"

[Buttaface]

dupe

Edited June 1, 2019 by Buttaface