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
this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2023
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If only those "think of the children" politicians would do this instead of attempting to ban encryption.
You know you look really bad when the CCP shows you up!
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If China's plan is successful, other countries will follow suit.
PS: RIP my free intertwined fates in Gaming (Jiaming) Impact.
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It's so destructive that even China doesn't like it
It’s so destructive that even China doesn’t like it
They probably love that it's hurting competing nations, though.
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Very rare China W.
Seriously seeing this come from China is
Mildly confusing, very unexpected but very much a cool move.
To add onto what the others have said, the CCP isn’t shy about enforcing restrictions on digital media domestically. For instance, TikTok in China (Douyin) is quite different from the international version with strictly-enforced time limits, content restrictions, etc.
China has always been against gaming it's the money they like.
If it was only money they wanted they would not do this. The limitations they are imposing will cut revenue to their biggest Game companies. I mean, the laws are not in effect and there was already a big crash on Netease and Tencent stock prices.
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China doing a better job regulating corporations than the west is nothing new.
Even this current one happened while Tencent was barely recovering from another regulation set last year. Kicking megacorps while they're down lol as they should.
Yeah im sad China is so far ahead of curbing predative monetization than my own country is, now.
But think about the CEO's freedom of abusing gambling addicts outside of a safe environment with virtually no regulation and that can be used by kids and teens!
I actually wouldn't have anything against gacha games if they all were marked as Adult-only, even the most dumbass parents would think twice about buying EA FC if it had the AO rating.
And not only AO, if it included the same required gambling-warnings other gambling system have to show every time they so much as mention their name.
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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.
Not recently, but yes.
Also, there's regulation to disclose the probability in getting rewards from opening "chests", which is actually gambling in nature.
In 2019, it was limited to 90 minutes on weekdays and not between the hours of 10 pm to 8 am.
In 2021, it was changed to 1 hour per day, only on Fridays, weekends, and public holidays.
If there's a behavior psychologist/researcher involved in the creation of a product, it's evil, simple as. Those gacha games absolutely use them.
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The S$20000 ($15000) Genshin Impact buying spree incident in Singapore had indirectly contributed to proposed legislation.
The what?
A lot of games are starting to display warnings to spend wisely when purchasing premium currency.
Which part of china is Singapore in?
There's so much addiction and gambling engineered into micro transactions, it's crazy. I'm glad China is regulating it.
Limiting micro transactions and banning predatory reward schemes in video games is genuinely a good thing. We need this to spread around the world.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Assuming it's a clock that's capable of being right twice a day, which isn't every clock.
A clock whizzing backwards at 60 RPM is right 86,400 times a day!
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Good. These kinds of transactions are exploitative and prey in the weaknesses of people with addictive personalities
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.
This will also make for better and more enjoyable games. I wonder if players will want to spend more times with those games then.
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."
I guess we just shouldn't make any law about anything since people can go "well akshually" about it. /s
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.
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.
What else did they do?
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This is China, their CEO will misteriously disappear if they try something so obvious.
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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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