https://www.ea.com/en-ca/news/fifa-points-belgium
Belgium's Gambling Commission ruled FIFA, CS:GO, and Overwatch's lootbox systems were a form of gambling, and up until now only Blizzard and Valve complied (along with 2K Games disabling the system as well in the country). Belgium began criminally investigating EA at the end of last year, after they did not comply.
"We seek to bring choice, fairness, value and fun to our players in all our games." - EA Games
Good on Belgium, but other countries need to start stepping up. If Belgium continues to be the only country to take real action, I feel it'll eventually either be blocked out by future titles or they'll just rip out microtransactions for belgium, leave in grindy gameplay, and nothing will have really changed. A group effort needs to be made by countries governments to stop this sort of stuff, because the ESRB has completely failed to do so, doing more about locked away, incomplete sexual content requiring mods to even access then they are about games appealing to teens and sometimes children that encourage spending money on randomized rewards. Last I heard they just planned to slap a microtransaction label on ESRB ratings which is absolutely retarded as it puts lootboxes and direct payments into the same category. Microtransactions aren't inherently bad or immoral, if people know what they're getting for their money then it's a case of teaching teens what's valuable, and something like paying directly for cosmetics is perfectly fine, you know what you're getting. Lootboxes directly encourage dangerous behavior by acting exactly like slot machines in some cases, and have only escaped the law because the games don't let you directly withdraw the value, which is clearly not the core issue with gambling.
On a personal note, I'd love to see lootboxes erased altogether, as even in cases like Overwatch where you can get them for free, it's a shit reward system where half the rewards don't feel rewarding. I believe they intentionally divide communities and serve as a way to get 'lucky' people or those who have accumulated a lot of them to defend them by saying that they got everything they wanted, and therefore the system is fine, which is equivalent to "works on my machine".
Ⓧ Doubt
Would be funny if they nerf Belgium and their players in the next Fifa out of retaliation.
I choose not to over pay to play your unfair and unfun games
Good thing i don't play EA games.
do you want a parade?
For real, EA and its predatory ilk have no business being in this industry.
Unfortunately, until either consumers or governments start showing otherwise, these "predatory ilk" have become the industry-defining standard.
Well this is a thread about a government body doing something about it so I'm not throwing out the possibility that this will soon change. In either case, I'm hoping this will continue to trend in many other places.
There's enough non EA to host their own huge parade, no worries.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.