China announced new laws to limit microtransactions, affecting major corporations like Tencent.
China announced new laws to limit microtransactions, affecting major corporations like Tencent.
China unveils new laws intended to limit certain practices by gaming companies, leading to some big changes in the nation's gaming market.
These laws will ban rewards for spending money within a game for the first time, ban rewards for buying consecutive microtransactions, and ban rewards for daily log-ins.
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
126If only those "think of the children" politicians would do this instead of attempting to ban encryption.
73You know you look really bad when the CCP shows you up!
15There's no money in it
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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.
10The Chinese government has started it‘s witch hunt against video games years ago and we have yet to see any of their draconic laws being enforced. It looks like they made them just so they can cherry pick and suppress whoever disagrees with them one way or another. This will be no exception. Gambling, prostitution and porn are all illegal in mainland China but it has always been a huge and open business in every part of the country.
1Permanently Deleted
1Predatory as in they literally employ psychologists to help design them to be as addictive as they can be, then they market it towards kids or at the very least don't really do anything to prevent kids from gambling in them (yeah it's also partially a parenting issue but can't really expect all parents to be tech savvy enough to understand all everything about gaming).
Then there's the other sucky, but just not sucky enough for it to be an illegal side of things: games that these mechanics suck ass and we are getting less and less objectively good games because more and more games seek to make some quick buck by making their games casinos of sorts.
It's only as luxurious as being addicted to cocaine in hopes that the next line will hit like the first one, or in game terms, hoping that the next loot box gets you the skin/character/whatever you wanted and releases that quick dopamine rush. Rinse and repeat.
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Hi Tim
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It's so destructive that even China doesn't like it
103It’s so destructive that even China doesn’t like it
They probably love that it's hurting competing nations, though.
25Even Big China man no happy with your business Mr Wei-song, what should we do?
"Tell him to fuck himself"
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Very rare China W.
77Seriously seeing this come from China is
Mildly confusing, very unexpected but very much a cool move.
29To 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.
23China 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.
16Well China doesn't like companies having power so this is a way to neuter them, especially in response to trying to limit online game consumption already.
Edit: Tencent is apparently the most profitable company in china right now so this is a direct attack at their profits most likely, not just China doing good
Edit2: This video goes into it a bit https://youtu.be/uieLEIVlQgc?si=mNiOlXPn9k7V6XX-
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Very common W
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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.
56Part of the problem is that there's no incentive for game companies to ensure that players are of an appropriate age and are gambling responsibly. It's a Pandora's box of capitalism in the same way fossil fuels, cigarettes, and big pharma are. Their customers have a demand for their product which is driven by a physiological/psychological/socioeconomic need, so they aren't subject to normal market mechanics.
28Not recently, but yes.
Also, there's regulation to disclose the probability in getting rewards from opening "chests", which is actually gambling in nature.
8In 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.
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53If there's a behavior psychologist/researcher involved in the creation of a product, it's evil, simple as. Those gacha games absolutely use them.
43I think you could go two ways with that. The psychologist could be under a mandate to give feedback to ensure your game is not going to be an addiction or they could be under a mandate to make it as addictive as possible. The latter is way more likely but I wouldn't totally rule out the value add of any psychologist to any game.
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God, I hope they do that here. Would clear the appstores and other stores of 90% of shovelware overnight.
42Limiting micro transactions and banning predatory reward schemes in video games is genuinely a good thing. We need this to spread around the world.
32The S$20000 ($15000) Genshin Impact buying spree incident in Singapore had indirectly contributed to proposed legislation.
31The what?
6A lot of games are starting to display warnings to spend wisely when purchasing premium currency.
3Which part of china is Singapore in?
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There's so much addiction and gambling engineered into micro transactions, it's crazy. I'm glad China is regulating it.
30Even 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.
29A clock whizzing backwards at 60 RPM is right 86,400 times a day!
29EDIT: Bruh this ain't funny
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Well done, I hope other countries will follow.
29Good. These kinds of transactions are exploitative and prey in the weaknesses of people with addictive personalities
14Do 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?
13The 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.
27Yep, 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.
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This will also make for better and more enjoyable games. I wonder if players will want to spend more times with those games then.
8I 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."
3I guess we just shouldn't make any law about anything since people can go "well akshually" about it. /s
22That'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.
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This is China, their CEO will misteriously disappear if they try something so obvious.
7China doesn't take shit like that. I've spent quite a bit of time there. If the intent of some mega corporation is to skirt the letter of the law by breaking the spirit of it they're going to get smacked down in court, if it even gets that far.
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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 :/
2The Chinese government actually does something right for once? My year is saved.
2A broken is right sometimss
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China being based as always
-4Fuck china, the CCP, and Xinnie the pooh.
Fuck anyone that supports china, including you.
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