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No, the Dutch and Belgian governments are saying you CAN play the game as long as it's changed to remove gambling aspects or is sold as a gambling product with all the consequences that entails.

Activision Blizzard doesn't want to do that. Not the fault of governments

And as for the (im)possibility to develop games that follow the laws of all countries: that had been successfully done for decades. It just doesn't involve predatory microtransactions

>No, the Dutch and Belgian governments are saying you CAN play the game as long as it's changed to remove gambling aspects or is sold as a gambling product with all the consequences that entails.

In other words, they're saying that you cannot play the game.

>Activision Blizzard doesn't want to do that. Not the fault of governments

If I were Dutch and wanted to play the game, then it wouldn't be Blizzard stopping me from playing. It would be the Dutch government. That is quite literally their fault.

The Dutch government is saying that they know how I should live my life better than I do.

>And as for the (im)possibility to develop games that follow the laws of all countries: that had been successfully done for decades. It just doesn't involve predatory microtransactions

Yeah, good luck with that. Hope you have some extremely deep pockets to fund it yourself, because nobody's going to invest in it if the projected returns suck. Video game prices have stayed at the same level or even decreased over the years while costs to develop have gone up, because players aren't willing to pay the inflation adjusted price for them. They also expect way more complex technical work on the games.

And even when you make all that work the players will still jump to games like Diablo Immortal instead, regardless whether your local government bans the game or not. Getting around region locks in gaming isn't exactly new.

I truly do not mean this as a flippant response to your comment, but there is a very simple solution to the problem you are envisioning coming from these regulations. Developers could just make a game with no micro transactions. The only way your ‘issues’ exist, is if these games are only made to make money via the gambling mechanics that are being regulated. Want your game available everywhere … just make a game that people can pay for and play.

I understand what you're saying, and I don't think it's a flippant answer at all, but that's only something the game developer can do. Ultimately, they're running a business and will make choices that make them money. If that means they don't publish their game at all in Europe or North America then that's what they're going to do. They won't be poorer for it, it'll be us, Europeans, who can't play their games (or we get to play some heavily Americanized version of the game, because that's the company that ends up publishing the game in Europe with lots of American changes).

My problem with this is that ultimately it ends up limiting my choices because I happen to live in Europe. I can choose not to play games that I think are trying to take too much advantage of me (or complain about ones that try to), but it's much more difficult to play a game that isn't permitted to be playable in my region.

> The Dutch and Belgian government quite literally are saying that you can't though. Of course, in practice it just means Dutch and Belgian players will pretend they're from another European country via VPN.

I am a Dutch player who played D1, D2, D3. I won't play Diablo Immortal. First of all the condescending comment about phones as well as the launch of D3 which made whatever this game is quite sour. Then they made it a reskin by NetEase; it only uses Blizzard IP it isn't developed by Blizzard. Then they made it P2W, as this item proves.

> I'm not sure if you're saying this in bad faith, are ignorant of gambling laws or truly believe this. If you were to regulate video games with gambling laws then that video game ceases to exist.

Of course they can work around it by not having P2W. Its that simple, really. How about make a damn good game and sell it?

I can only hope more countries start regulating crap like this, as should happen with ML/AI ('algorithms') as well.

>Of course they can work around it by not having P2W. Its that simple, really. How about make a damn good game and sell it?

Because the average player is not going to pay $100 for a game. Also, now you're lumping P2W and gambling together.

But all of this is beside the point. If you do not like games like this then you shouldn't play them. I want to still be able to play the games I choose. I don't need the government to try to "protect me" from this.

Do I like that games do this? No, but I can always choose not to play them. If people chose to not play them then they wouldn't monetize games like this, but it's pretty apparent that people are okay with this. You want to use force via the government to stop those people from doing something they want to do and using "it's for your own good" as an excuse.

Games will absolutely shut out countries where they feel that handing regulation is too much for them. This will include games that don't conflict with the regulation, but it's simply too risky to figure out whether they do or not.

As someone who spend thousands of EUR on MtG in my youth and who's wife had a father who was an alcoholic I'd like to disagree with 'I don't need the government to try to "protect me" from this.' USA is also currently in an opioid crisis.

This is both P2W and gambling, and its the combination which is the issue. RNG alone isn't an issue. Also, it is aimed at youth, who not yet can deal with gambling. How come a country where you may drive at age 16 and drink at age 21 doesn't care about digital gambling via the internet?

The argument is the same about other things like heroin, gambling, LSD, etc. The law is there to protect the people. If you want to break the law, then you are on your own, with all the repercussions which may come with it including: that your Battle.net account gets disabled/banned, that Blizzard or the player gets a fine, that you become addicted, that you have to pretend you are from another jurisdiction in order to play it, that you move to a different jurisdiction, or vote for different politicians in your jurisdiction. There's plenty of options for you to influence the current outcome.

> If people chose to not play them then they wouldn't monetize games like this, but it's pretty apparent that people are okay with this.

No, it is not "pretty apparent". Stop projecting.

> You want to use force via the government to stop those people from doing something they want to do and using "it's for your own good" as an excuse.

Yes, such is the basis of law.

> Games will absolutely shut out countries where they feel that handing regulation is too much for them. This will include games that don't conflict with the regulation, but it's simply too risky to figure out whether they do or not.

That's fine, I'm not missing out, hopefully more countries follow suit and may it provide incentive to change this rotten to the core industry.