“Online games will now be banned from giving players rewards if they log in every day, if they spend on the game for the first time or if they spend several times on the game consecutively. All are common incentive mechanisms in online games.”
I really hoped we would get a PS6 with a built-in stern cartoon Xi blocking the buy button in the PS store, pointing his finger and shouting “No! Finish your backlog first!” but I guess you can’t have everything in life
Man do I hate daily log in rewards. I wonder if this will affect tencents games that are released in the west?
China wants to remove the adverse affects of gambling/addiction from it’s populace, not the world. This is just another facet like their social media restrictions.
When I saw the title, I was concerned.
Upon reading the article, I was really happy to see this.
Now that I actually think about it though, I DO play a gacha game and it would simply be impossible to exist if not for the gacha business style it utilizes. I’m very happy that so many people sink real money into it, as I simply am unable to do so myself.I’m very happy that so many people sink real money into it, as I simply am unable to do so myself.
I get what you’re saying, but it does also create incentives to develop for whales.
Like, okay. Take Fallout 76. They – unlike with previous games in the series – do not have large, commercial DLC packages that come out. Rather, they have small, free, seasonal releases of content. Howard has committed Bethesda not to doing any commercial DLC for the game.
I was happy with that “large commercial DLC” model, and purchased them. But, okay, as it stands, I get a game that someone else is mostly paying for, right?
They sell a “premium” subscription for $12/mo, which provides some relatively-minor benefits.
And they sell various cosmetic items that people can place in their camp that one could hypothetically spend a pretty much unlimited amount on.
My problem is that financially, this constrains them to have basically no incentive to do anything other than develop new cosmetic items and sell to people who really want to buy them. And in the past, Bethesda has made some excellent large, commercial expansions for games in the series, like Far Harbor for Fallout 4.
This isn’t to argue in favor of or against the law in China, but to point out that the “someone else will pay for the game” model has some problems with it – if you aren’t paying anything, and someone else’s wallet is covering all the costs, it means that the game developer is entirely-incentivized to do development to appeal to whoever is paying for the thing, not you.
Actually good regulations targeting the most manipulative of game designs.
You missed the bit that game companies have to have their servers physically located in China.
Hasn’t it been like that for decades now?
