The Malgorian Blog

Ok, the degree of desperation from big name game companies is getting crazy as they try to redefine loot boxes.

"Loot Boxes" are pretty much accepted as gambling now. (Because they are.) So what's the next step in EA's path to avoid massive legal fines and to enable them to continue preying on those with gambling addiction problems that are ruining their lives? To make sure Congress understands that EA has NEVER had loot boxes in their game ever. They merely have "Surprise Mechanics" built in that are "quite ethical".

(Quick note: Gambling is a very basic example of 'surprise mechanics' but let's continue!)

The representative compares them to little toy capsules. Personally I'd still consider that gambling but on such a small scale that it never becomes a problem for the vast vast majority of people - nobody cares enough about the little worthless toys you get in toy capsules. You understand when you buy them for a dollar that whatever you get from it will be worth at MOST 50 cents and 20 seconds of fascination. That's not the case with loot boxes in games where what you receive might be (And will most likely be) something completely worthless that you spent up to 5 bucks or more on or it might be that limited edition onlyavailablethismonthsogetitwhileyoucan costume, or that bad ass gun that will definitely help you top the leader boards.

Incidentally this is also an example of why you NEVER let an industry regulate itself. It won't regulate itself honestly for the good of it's customers if it means giving up an easy and massive payday.

Also incidentally, I hate those "blind packed toys"/capsules that she's trying to spin as ethical. For capsule toys, fine, they're paying a buck for a shit item. You know what you're getting is shit. But that's spread further into the figurine market for instance. Nowadays it's very common to find mini-figurine sets where one random figurine is sold in a small box. You're not told what one of course. To find out you have to buy it and open it. It costs about 10-20 bucks or so to buy one of these on average.

The problem is you may only want 1-3 of the 12 characters possible. If they were being honest proper manufacturers they'd sell them individually with predictable packaging so you know what you're getting. However to maximize the profit off of you they include a bunch of extra characters of various quality and make you buy and rebuy and rebuy boxes until you get the one you want. If you're unlucky you'll have spent 150+ just to get that one 12 dollar figurine. Only way to make sure you get the figurine you want is to buy a full box of them which usually includes 1 of every possible figurine.

Does that sound familiar? Yep, that's pretty much loot box mentality except in digital loot boxes there's no way to buy a "box" of everything. (They made sure of that by axing out actual Season Passes that give one of everything or making sure the loot boxes aren't a part of it!) Meaning these "Surprise Mechanics" driven toys are actually cheaper than the utter bullshit EA and others do on a regular basis - and even then the toys are still complete bullshit in how they try to make you fork over a lot of extra cash by making it harder and more expensive to buy only what you want.

tl;dr: EA is as full of shit as it's always been and "Surprise Mechanics" are still LOOT BOXES.

And apparently it's glorified spyware EA is intending to use for advertising purposes and the like.

I don't know why they're saying "may be" in their summary based on what the EULA for origin states and what the program actually does. (apparently digs around your harddrive to find out what you're doing, etc, then relays that to the Master EA)

The odds of me giving Origin a chance was maaaaaybe 0.000000000000001%. Keep in mind my chances of giving Steam a chance are 0.0001%. Both are still DRM regardless of how they do it, and I'll have neither. But adding this kind of thing to your program, and trying to force feed it to your customers by making sure they HAVE to use it to play your games, drops that percentage down to 0.

And it will stay there even if the predictable eula change and program update comes along to calm the sheep. Mainly because EA does strike me as the type of company that will leave that "this eula may be changed at any time without notice to the user." clause in there and then re-insert their advertising spyware portion once they feel nobody is looking - hoping that nobody will call them on it the next time around. And if so, try it again, then again, then again.