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Comment by Matt3o12_ | Hacker News Reader

On the one side I am glad that they banned such in-app purchases because sometimes it can get ridiculous on how much people (especially young children without realizing the cost) spend on them but I can't help but feel the irony because many "more legacy" things offer similar system. I remember spending far more then $100 for soccer stickers. You would basically buy a pack of maybe 10 stickers and you didn't know if you needed them or not. There were also stickers that were less common so in the end you ended up with over 300 excess stickers just to complete a book and you ended up doing that every other year for the euro and world championship.

I don't think there is much of a difference and both cases should be more regulated (especially those catering to children who do not know any better).

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I was thinking exactly this - I'm not massively clear on where loot boxes and blind-pack card games/sticker collectables differ. Both are fixed price products where you don't know the contents, with the value of said contents varying massively from the invested cost, along with the ability to trade/sell the contents on secondary markets.

Trading Pokemon cards, I reckon I spent more on booster packs trying to get a Charizard than I've spent on all of the chests, loot boxes and packs in games, for nothing more than a piece of card that (sadly) eventually gets water damaged...

> I'm not massively clear on where loot boxes and blind-pack card games/sticker collectables differ. Both are fixed price products where you don't know the contents, with the value of said contents varying massively from the invested cost, along with the ability to trade/sell the contents on secondary markets.

I'm also not clear how this differs from an MMO where you kill monsters over and over hoping for piece of random loot that can then be virtually sold.

Two difference with an MMO are that it needs some sort of skill to kill the beast; and time makes it so you can't just mash a button and max out your credit card.

It's exploiting dopamine hits but not as aggressively, and it doesn't - presumably - cost real money every time you try.

It's exploiting dopamine hits but not as aggressively, and it doesn't - presumably - cost real money every time you try.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the people in these discussions who gloss over the "pay money to roll the dice" portion of the gambling issue.

The difference is the effort involved to get to the "gambling". With loot boxes, packs, slot machines, whatever you put your money in, start your process (open the pack, pull the handle) and watch the outcome.

With an MMO you have to put time and effort into it. It is, in essence, work. And if you don't like the results you can work some more. It would be the same as selling access to a gold panning stream for a lame real world analogy.

The issue with lootboxes specifically is twofold; one, lootboxes generally hold much less content than a pack of cards or stickers. Overwatch, for example, has four items a pack.

The second issue is that a physical object, like cards or stickers, does at least feel like a physical object, in that it's very easy to tell if you start having an excessive amount of them. On the other hand, on a lootbox, there isn't really a innate difference in response to buying one vs buying one hundred. So it eases some of the friction as well.

But the difference between 10 cards and a virtual object is very small. At least for small children. They can understand that a big object (a bike, a big Lego building, etc) must be expensive but I believe children are not really able to understand that a few cards are so expensive. Even rational people can't understand the physical value of a very small pack of cards -- they can only appreciate the virtual or artificial value, so the difference between a few cards (which hold a virtual value) and virtual loot boxes is very tiny.

But where are children getting the money to spend on this? Shouldn't their parent know better than to let them spend $100 on stickers or loot boxes. Passing the regulation on to the governments seems like an unnecessary measure to me.

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