Games

All of this is predatory. It's a trick being played on you. How else do you make some normal-ass game cost thousands of dollars, and still have some idiots pay that? Smaller numbers don't change anything. Using the trick to get less money is still tricking people out of money.

You’re the one claiming that in-game transactions are innately unethical, not me.

And that makes 'but what about ethical uses?' relevant to me, somehow. Like this conversation can 'go somewhere' if I'm condemning this entire practice as fundamentally dishonest exploitation of immutable human vulnerabilities, but you want to play whack-a-mole with specific expressions of that underlying abuse.

You’re the one claiming my suggestion would be insignificant and ineffectual, when it’s been the standard practice in the business world for decades, and outright bans are left for extreme scenarios.

Yes.

Oh, you think that's a counter.

This is half the industry's profits. That's pretty fucking extreme. The premise beneath all forms is an abuse of predictable irrationality, much the same way as gambling. (And this abuse may outright involve gambling.)

Pitting any legislature's ability to pin down and pick apart specific abusive practices, versus the gaming industry's ability to mutate and adapt those abuses, is very plainly not gonna work. We spent so long bickering about lootboxes that lootboxes went away - and were replaced by even-more-profitable abuses, minus the few details that people recognize as exploitation. If it's not pay-to-win and it's not randomized, apparently people don't give a shit if a "free" game has five thousand dollars worth of waifus and hats. Maybe we'll fine the company for doing that, because that figure will totes mcgoats outweigh the literal billions they make every single year.

My point,

Which misses the point. 'It deserves money somehow' does not justify this.

You want money for a new thing? Sell it like regular. Horse Armor that shit. Tell people they can't have the thing, until they give you money, and only then do you give them the thing. But that's never what these products do! They're selling you shit that's already been added to the game. It goes in every copy. They add stuff, and declare some of it's suuuper special, and expect five actual dollars to say you have it. Or five hundred. But always disguised as some made-up currency that's seventeen to the dollar, so you can't think too hard about how many meals this imaginary geegaw costs, and you can instantly blow that money inside the game. Y'know. Where the developer controls presentation, comparison, context, availability, and literally everything else including fuckin' gravity. This is not an environment for rational consumer choices. This is an automated con job.

Would it help to point out, the games will often give you shit shit for free, if you play enough? Diablo especially will gladly take real money for additional whacks at a pinata that routinely gives you a few free whacks. Can you imagine asking for cash back instead? Like if some bullshit item is "worth" $30, can you even picture receiving a check from Activision-Blizzard-Microsoft-Atari-Kunkleman-Chevrolet, because you turned it back in? The number on that check is the true value of the thing.

This is the same 'but games need revenue!' excuse given to gems, and pay-to-win lootboxes, and... whatever you call being forced to wait half an hour or pay a dollar. No shit games cost money. That's not an all-purpose excuse for how they take money! The problem is the business model!

I don’t know what you mean by “and your justification is, that’d make the worst people doing it win somehow”.

It means you think it would punish a ton of indie creators who do this shit, and somehow be a gift to abusive AAA crap - like Genshin Impact, my example. Actual quote: "Banning the business model will kill indie developers, and make the scale of AAA the only way to make profit on video games."

My guy. Have you seen AAA games lately? They're the assholes making billions off this bullshit. They're the morons who can't turn a profit, without this bullshit. Venture capitalist cult leaders keep gutting beloved studios and making them do "live service" shit, specifically to enable this stupid business model.

The overwhelming majority of indie games have neither the infrastructure nor the back bench necessary to even consider this crap. Your objections are built on the exception to an exception.

Nothing inside a video game should cost money.