lockbox
Predictably, the ESA rebuffs UK call to ban lockboxes, citing nebulous transparent lockbox plan
Yesterday, we covered the UK government’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee panel report on addictive technologies: Readers will recall that the lengthy...
UK parliament committee calls for ban on selling lockboxes to kids, deems games industry ‘wilfully obtuse’
As gamers will recall, the UK government's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee panel has been investigating addictive technologies for the better part...
Path of Exile cancels new lockboxes-within-lockboxes after ‘intensely negative’ feedback
So let's play a little round of bad news, good news with Path of Exile. Yesterday, with the Blight expansion not even a week...
EA’s infamous ‘sense of pride and accomplishment’ post now holds a Guinness record – for Reddit downvotes
By now, we're all familiar with the 2017 comment by EA about how lootboxes provide "a sense of pride and accomplishment." The remark was...
Gaming psychologist Jamie Madigan explains what ‘surprise mechanics’ actually are
We're all familiar with the "surprise mechanics" incident, the absurdist argument in defense of lootboxes from EA's VP of legal and government affairs Kerry...
Leaderboard: Does the ESA’s new transparent lockbox policy go far enough?
Last week, just as the FTC's video games monetization abuse investigation got underway, the ESA announced that many of the major and minor games...
Star Trek Online players play with numbers to crack lockbox drop rates
While plenty of online games with lockboxes already have transparent lockboxes and far more are due to get them over the next year thanks...
The ESA says a crapton of game companies are finally embracing lockbox transparency
Under pressure from no less than the US Senate, the FTC held the first of its planned video game monetization workshops today, and while...
US Federal Trade Commission outlines the agenda for a lootbox-related workshop on August 7
Conversations, studies, and outright rancor over video game lockbox practices have caught the notice of several world governments as readers of MOP already know,...
Researcher stomps the ‘lockboxes are Kinder Eggs’ defense into paste
Most if not all of us pretty much felt the same way Dr. Daniel King, senior research assistant from the School of Psychology at...
Lawful Neutral: Mr. Krabs’ Wacky Bucks and currency in online games
I used to watch Spongebob religiously. I loved the days when I could put on Nickelodeon and have Spongebob on for hours. One of...
EA absurdly argues video game lootboxes are ‘surprise mechanics’
Did you think EA had maybe learned its lesson from the whole Star Wars Battlefront lockbox meltdown back in 2017, when the uproar over...
New study finds connection between gambling addiction and lootbox purchases in adolescents
The research and science continues in the case of lockbox/lootbox purchasing habits and gambling addiction. The latest piece of scientific literature on the subject...
Star Trek Online’s Discovery Enterprise lockbox has captains in an uproar
It stands to reason that in a game called Star Trek Online, the most desirable starships of them all will be any that have...
Lawful Neutral: Why Josh Hawley’s lockbox regulation Senate bill is dead-on-arrival
There's a special place in my heart for lootboxes and exploitative monetization, and that place is somewhere below the revulsion I feel for Martin...
Flemish Games Association speaks out against Belgium’s loot box ban
You may recall that last year, the Belgian Gaming Commission (BGC) released a report in which it concluded that "the purchase of loot boxes...
Rockstar restricts Red Dead Online’s poker minigame due to regional gambling laws
Last week, Rockstar gave Red Dead Online players the opportunity to settle down with some friendly games of poker, but it would appear that...
Ex-Cryptic Studios artist decries ‘harmful’ video game lockbox designs based on slot machines
A 3-D character artist who previously worked at Cryptic Studios on Champions Online and Neverwinter has come out swinging against lockbox mechanics, saying that...
Heroes of the Storm yanks the cash option for lockboxes in its latest test patch
You can buy lockboxes right now in Heroes of the Storm, but with the current patch in testing on the game's test server, you will...
MMO Business Roundup: Overpaid gaming CEOs, FTC’s lootbox workshops, and why online launches are trainwrecks
Welcome back to another MMO Business Roundup, where we check in on all your favorite flaming dumpster fires in the gaming business world.
The 2019...
