(UK) Number of child gamblers quadruples in just two years - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46286945 The Young People and Gambling report found: Over the past 12 months, 39% of 11-16 year olds have spent their own money on gambling and 14% in the previous week Young people who have gambled in the past week spent an average of £16 6% had gambled online using a parent or guardian's account 60% of young people think their parents would prefer them not to gamble at all, however only 19% said their parents set strict rules about gambling Some admitted using betting shops or online gambling sites despite them being illegal for under-18s The commission also raised concerns that close to a million young people had been exposed to gambling through "loot boxes" in video games or on smartphone apps. These can involve a player paying money for an item that is only revealed after purchasing. Last week, a Gambling Commission report said that only 10% of pubs intervene to stop children gambling on their premises. TL;DR : explosion of underage gambling, the article blames mainly deregulation, pro gambling advertising and social media campains targetting kids, pubs never intervening to stop kids from gambling, and video games lootboxes Link to the report

When I read "child gambling" I had an entirely different picture in my head. I was imagining several people sitting around a poker table and one of them saying "I'm going all in, and I'm throwing in this kid too"

Hope they're winning $$$$!

Wow loot boxes encourage a gambling habit who would have thought :thinking:

Literally my first thought coming into this thread.

Freemium games and lootboxes are immoral. Their creators are simply hooking children on gambling early and with the expectation that children don't understand that real world value of the money they're spending on virtual items/game time. They expect children to use their parent's iTunes or Google Play account to pay for items on mobile.

Waiting for our local apologists to come into the thread

Loot boxes aren't bad mate, you win everytime you open one!

Dunno about you lads but have you fuckin played worms on the spinnies in spoons? I've paid for my nights out with that shit. God bless the spoons spinnies <3

"b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b--b-b-b-bb-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b--b-b-but its purely visual! Its just supporting the developers!"

And by win we mean "we win" even when you win and especially when you lose..

Who would have thought that increasing access to gambling, and encouraging people to gamble, will cause people to gamble.

Eh, good luck kids!

my ma always used to say, life is like an overwatch loot box; you never know what you'll get - except you do know: jack shit

The funniest thing is that if you look at modern digital slots, they've clearly taken inspiration from lootboxes and other free to play garbage like candy crush. The gambling industry looked at all the shit video games get away with and went 'woah fuck that's way better than what we were doing'

To some degree, yes, they enabled these companies to continue their practices because they were trying to justify their wrongdoing. I'd say the true culprits are the ones behind the loot boxes (certain game companies) and the ones that are letting this continue to happen (politicians, generally speaking).

That, and video game themed gambling. Tons of gambling machines have been either designed with gaming like interactions, or straight up themed after video games. And not just konami's pachinko, Cod, hitman, tomb raider for instance got their slot machines reskins. Absolutely tons of mobile games are designed after gambling, lifts slot machines mechanics and aesthetic. And now twitch has a straight up casino section, for life gambling, and are playing a part in this. They know their audience's age. Games and gambling industries have been mixing in many different forms and it's honestly gross. This is exactly what Alexandro Jodorowksy talked about in his Technopriests series, as soon as 1998. He had respect for games as a medium, but saw where they were heading, warned of it.

That's a lot of pride and accomplishment

Well there's only one, clear solution to this. We have to ban children.

For even less subtlety, King, developers of Candy Crush, ran an online casino before (and still are AFAIK). If you've ever looked at King's lineup on the app store, they pretty much just have x Candy Crush skins, which is exactly what modern slot machines do; they have a bunch of "different games" that are essentially just skins for slots on a single machine. Now I don't know if video games or slot machines did it first but looking at Candy Crush and its ilk, if you're a particularly irresponsible or addictive personality, you might dole out a ton of MTX money for multiple games that are basically the same shit on a different day.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'll never understand why so many people see any value in these single models/textures to begin with. Most of them you pay insane amounts of cash and you don't even get to properly "own" them like with similar real world equivalents (random cards, figures etc.). Not to mention the "expiration date" that so many online-only games suffer these days as most become unplayable once the plug gets pulled. Like you'd think people would consider this stuff a rip-off, but instead they seem to just call you "entitled" or argue that the live services behind them need (insane amounts of) funding if you even think something's wrong with them.

As someone who spent an exorbitant amount of his own cash on TF2 lootboxes (and has long since come to regret every penny spent on the crap), I'm not at all surprised. Same logic as the big casinos: you find one good item and you think to yourself 'surely the next one too!' and it just goes on and on and on. Lootboxes are by far the worst thing that's ever happened to the industry.

It's like fashion. Millions of fools pay top dollar for a $20 bag because it has a $180 brand name on it. There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting your characters to look cool or at least different but that's how they get you; they know you want it and since cosmetics used to basically be an extra thrown in by the artists because they had spare time on the project, why let people work to add value to a game when you can take that value from player's wallets after the fact?

To make it clear, when I say value, I specifically mean monetary value. I'm 100% okay with people customising themselves however they want, but when I buy a 40-60 dollar game which is made out of thousands of high quality models, textures and animations and then see publishers sell an additional single video game asset at prices like $5 it just... boggles my mind how easily that gets accepted. Speaking of fashion, in such cases you actually get to keep the clothing item you bought, and you get to store it in your closet not in the manufacturer's depot. Not to mention you can also fix the physical stuff that breaks. If you want to get an abandoned MMO you paid cosmetics for to work, you have a very steep cliff to climb, both technically and legally speaking. Buying a virtual thing you can't even touch in an online environment you have zero control over just feels like a ripoff to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgmfV5VLHvs

expected outcome