Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law

Hirom@beehaw.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• MudMan@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  For those protections to have any effect in Brazil, however, they'll necessitate the usage of age-verification mechanisms. Previously, Brazilian law had considered it sufficient for users of digital services to self-declare their age. The new law, however, requires the providers of those services to "take proportionate, auditable and technically secure measures to assess the age or age range of users."

  Seriously, read things before reacting to them.

  It's been decades of social media and centuries of press. How have we not learned about this as a society?

  I mean, if you're cool with this, then you're cool with this and we disagree, but I'm gonna say you probably were going out of the headline alone.

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  • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Either that or we ban loot boxes for everyone — which is the better choice, IMO.

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    • MudMan@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Super hard disagree. I do like me some Magic the Gathering and CCGs in general. If anything I'm say more concerned with the increasing trend of real world blind pack collectibles aimed exclusively at kids than I am with online loot boxes, which is something most of the industry has abandoned anyway after the panic went viral.

      But nope, absolutely not. Loot boxes aren't worth forcing online age verification any more than porn was a few months ago when we were all mad because the UK did it. And absolutely no, I am an adult and if I want to gamble online, let alone buy loot boxes in a videogame, I absolutely should be happy to do that.

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      • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I don’t care. Loot boxes are gambling, which is addictive and frankly evil.

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  • Hirom@beehaw.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’m happy with loot boxes being categorized as gambling when money is involved, and regulated as gambling.

    By “cool with this” are you refering to age verification? That wasn’t a comment on age verification. You’re putting words in my mouth, or I was ambiguous in the above comment, or both.

    Online age verification is tricky to do right, balance effectiveness and privacy. That’s true of any age restriction, whether it’s loot booxes, other kind of gamblings. Existing age verification has bad effectiveness, privacy, or both. That doesn’t gambling shouldn’t be regulated, or that age verification can’t improve.

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    • MudMan@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Yeeeeah, you're way less down on age verification on principle than I do.

      You're also more down on loot boxes than I am, in that I still dispute the equivalence to gambling. It's not absurd, but it requires ignoring a lot of nuance.

      Still, the problem I have with this situation in general is that the loot box element (which isn't that heavy, it mostly establishes by law that loot boxes will make a game be automatically listed as 18 and up) is masking the mandatory age verification element. And the mandatory age verification is baaaad. It effectively does the magical wishful tech thinking thing we've been seeing recently elsewhere where it just... says it should be private and comply with privacy regulations but doesn't explain how that's possible, while at the same time demanding that every single store and service provider both design a perfect age verification system AND somehow magic up an API to share that information with each game while remaining entirely private. Which is pretty much impossible.

      But nobody is talking about that, everybody just wants to dunk on loot boxes. Like four years too late, because most of the industry saw the writing on the wall and moved on to battle passes instead on the PR hit alone.

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      • Hirom@beehaw.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Good point, it’s a bit late, and may hit hard on some games that already implemented loot boxes. But it’s never too late, assuming it’s indeed a kind of gambling.

        Hopefully it’ll lead to less games integrating loot boxes, so that people of all ages can play games with neither loot boxes, nor the age verification that comes with it.

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