I have been avoiding multiplayer Valve games like Counter-Strike 2 and Team Fortress 2, due to their in-game economies that have created an underage gambling gray market, which Valve has done little about. However, I am on Linux, and the choices for multiplayer shooters are few. Besides, my small boycott is not stopping Counter-Strike 2 from being the most played steam game. Are boycotts really the best solution to stop this epidemic in gaming? How can we best prevent these gambling grey markets and the gaming to gambling addiction pipeline?
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I started my protest a decade ago.
While you can argue that nothing happened and we still have loot boxes, I’d argue that my life is greatly enriched for not feeling any motivation to play in those looty skinner box games.
You should not put your time or money into anything doing something that you don’t like in the marketplace, because that’s the only way it changes.
This is a very smart and thoughtful perspective. One should consider their time and money as valuable, and not put it in games they disagree with. Do you have any good alternatives to recommend for the most popular Valve FPSs?
You might not like my answer, but I haven’t really played new FPS games in years, because basically none of them are doing what I want. I’m well served in basically every other genre right now, but these things are cyclical. We’re just getting through the era of indie FPS games inspired by Doom/Quake and other more maze-like shooters, and we may soon be entering the era where FPS games are inspired by my favorites. My multiplayer these days is usually fighting games, and the only ones that will give you trouble on Linux are Dragon Ball FighterZ and the upcoming 2XKO, both due to anti cheat.
As an aside, I’ll also say that where you put your time shouldn’t matter, if the product is free, for instance, but it does matter in online video games. Your presence in matchmaking is adding value for someone else who might spend money in the game, so you’d still be helping the causes of CS2 and TF2 just by playing on the official servers. For TF2, I think the code just went open source and there’s a revitalization project to bring it back to what it was like at launch? If so, that might be pre-loot-box, and playing that version of the game would help send the message you want to send. The same might apply to old versions of Counter-Strike.
That’s a fine answer, thanks!
I like a FPS but I have the most fun with the PVE sub genre of FPS. Left 4 Dead 2 and Deep Rock Galactic being my two favorites. Playing against other humans can be annoying if the skill balance isn’t right and if they’re cheating then it makes it no fun, imo.
I haven’t been into FPS for several years, but if I was going to play anything current, I’d give The Forever Winter a look. It’s still being worked on, but the early access gameplay is really cool looking, and it’s bringing a lot of ideas to the table creatively.
Many of us have been doing this from the beginning, but it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how gacha games work.
Most people do not pump loads of money into these. Many don’t pay anything at all. But those people are not the target audience. These companies are going after the whales. Basically gambling addicts who will destroy their entire lives to pump everything they have into it.
Which is exactly why these games either need to be illegal, or the law needs to put caps on how much individuals are permitted to spend on these.
Don’t get me started on magic the gathering
Ohhhhhhhhhh boy
I’ve been boycotting them for years yet we all can see how that turned out
Yeah the problem with boycotts and “vote with your wallet” is that one whale can offset the boycott of thousands of low-spending players 😐
Already boycott lootboxes and gacha games.
Sell me the game and give free updates or fuck off. I’m done paying you to be your beta tester.
I already do, but I’m also not as avid a gamer as I once was. Every FPS became borderline unplayable when loot crates became a thing. Call me old fashioned, but I liked when games had the same weapons for everyone, and there weren’t random cards or whatever that made people’s guns more powerful / reload /shoot faster, etc. It really brings an imbalance to the game, and enables these stupid gambling sites. The companies making the games are making money hand over fist, so they aren’t going to stop any time soon barring regulation, and looking at this administration, good fucking luck with that. Boycott away.
Are boycotts really the best solution to stop this epidemic in gaming?
Consumer boycotts very very rarely work. I’ve never heard of a single successful video game boycott.
How can we best prevent these gambling grey markets and the gaming to gambling addiction pipeline?
Lobby for appropriate legislation with your government representatives. We could have legislation that forces companies to transparently show the chance of specific rewards, and even show the money you have to spend on average to get XY specific item. (I think there is already a law like this in the works in the EU?)
One of the major psychological tricks gambling games (including lootbox and gacha) employ is to obscure the true costs behind premium currencies. Once they are forced to remove this, and you are shown that yes, guaranteed acquisition of a single Genshin character will cost you ~300 USD, it might make you do a double-take before you pull out your bank card. (There are many more psychological dark patterns these developers employ, so it wouldn’t be a single miracle solution, unless of course legislation altogether bans random chance rewards buyable with cash.)
If you are not their target audience then you can‘t really boycott them in the first place. And in my opinion there is no harm in playing a game with loot boxes when you don‘t buy them. They aren’t really getting anything out of non-spenders. That’s not how their servers keep running. And most f2p games that I encounter nowadays do season passes without the random factor anyway, so I feel the loot box discussion is becoming a little outdated for the main stream. Thank goodness.
I‘ve also noticed multiple times that this community has a gripe with multiplayer games for some reason. It‘s better to take anything from online strangers with a grain of salt.
I’ve bought singleplayer games with loot boxes and no anticheat and just used cheat engine to get the ingame currency for them. I think I’m doing my part.
WTF there are singleplayer games with lootboxes?!?!?
Some assassin’s creeds.
Now I realize why i never play those games
Yeah. I liked Origins as a game but since playing that one, which I got for free anyway I think, I haven’t looked at the series since.
I’ve never played Assasins Creed but why on earth would a game like that need loot boxes? That just sounds crazy to me.
They decided to give the game a wardrobe system with loot rarity so you could get EPIC MOUNTS and RARE SWORDS.
But there’s no point to it because the game just gives you the Chocobo mount for free and that’s the only one worth using.
Borderlands, iirc
Does that really count? As far as I know, the golden keys mechanic was just a way to get some good gear. It wasn’t exclusive gear, and you could get it just by playing the game.
Right, but the fifa series afaik makes most of its money by selling packs of cards with players in them. Packs and players that you can get by just playing. But they still sell those packs for $$, so why wouldn’t it count? Afaik, that’s one of the main culprits besides counter strike that are named when talking about loot boxes
Borderlands the same, you can buy random gear with cash. I guess it’s less fomo and less abusive, but they’re still literal loot boxes that they sell for money
The Gatcha system is why I never finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The first game was phenomenal… But the second game required a gatcha system to unlock new party members. There were even quests that were locked behind certain ultra-rare party members. It’s an entirely single player game.
I’ve never bought or played one & have no plans to.
Are boycotts really the best solution to stop this epidemic in gaming? How can we best prevent these gambling grey markets and the gaming to gambling addiction pipeline?
No, boycotts do fucking nothing. The only thing that could make a difference is regulations to properly label these type of thing as gambling and even that is not very likely to succeed. They make a lot of money with gambling.
Should we boycott games with loot boxes?
Do if you want to do it.
Do what you think is right, but spend some time to consider whether you want to reward someone or some organization with your hard earned money if you consider what they are doing immoral or bad.
Do I have to start playing games with loot boxes before I can start boycotting them?
The only one I’ve ever played was overwatch, but overwatch 2 is garbage, so…
Sad what happened to that game. OG Overwatch was freaking awesome, OW2 is complete garbage.
Almost everything about OW1 is now back in OW2! 6v6 is back, loot boxes are back. You can even play the OW1 metas if you want, though they pretty much only show just how much better the game has gotten over the years.
I’ve been playing OW1 since launch and have really liked OW2, my only complaint was that they were making playable heroes unlockable, but that was fixed a long time ago.
Maybe I’m just an old man now, but it’s been years since I was interested in a game with lootboxes. I think the last one I played was Overwatch, back when it originally came out
While I agree with the spirit of moat answers, I don’t think that the few of us boycotting such popular games will harm or affecg them at all. We are a very small minority.
However, I do think we can support a sustainable niche market of good and sensible games.
So I think a it’s a better use of anyone’s time to try and support good games than spend your energy on bad games.
