I did not say "less predatory". I don't agree that current trends on monetization are any more or less predatory than loot boxes. Hell, you don't seem to think they're any more or less predatory, either, given your assessment of grind.

I think you may have misread the point I was making. You should give that quote block another look.

But to reiterate, no, it's not "wildly preferable" to grind through a battlepass than to have loot boxes. I prefer loot boxes, honestly. I know I'm not gonna grind to the end of a pass each season, even in the games I do pay regularly, so I would much rather have a randomized pull and get something fun every now and then.

And of course that's all for incidental engagement reward nonsense, which is pointless anyway, paid loot boxes are fundamental to certain games. I liked CCGs when they were made with paper and I still do now. If you ask me I'd much rather have the randomized mishmash of decks you get from loot box-driven Hearthstone than the rigid meta you get in Marvel Snap because they are bending over backwards to still monetize just as hard while not having randomization because people keep whining about it.

And hey, you don't have to play Hearthstone if you don't want to, and if people are concerned about the effect on kids that's what age ratings are for, doesn't affect me. But I don't think it should be banned and I sure as hell don't think the alternative is "wildly preferable" at all. You don't have to agree, but that cuts both ways, and I don't appreciate people trying to make their preference a matter of law.

But you're not describing a loot box. That's not how loot boxes work.

I mean, for one thing, 1 in 4 doesn't mean you should get a payout in the fourth try. You could buy a hundred things with a 1 in 4 chances and never win. Random means random.

But precisely for that reason loot boxes sometimes implement "mercy rules" that increase the odds on repeated tries to prevent people being frustrated because squishy human brains are bad at understanding probability intuitively.

But the way look boxes work is by having a loot table, which associates a list of possible outcomes to a weight and runs a random check against that table each time. It's how it worked on pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons in the 70s and it's how it works in monetized loot boxes today. Different implementations can have different odds, each game can offer different box types with different probabilities, but if we're talking about loot boxes we're talking about that.

I don't know what game you were playing. I suppose a loot table with 75% of nothing and 25% of a single hardcoded item is still a valid loot table, but it's overly simplistic and now how it'd typically be implemented. If you're playing some game that gives you an on-screen representation of a paid item under those rules and you can show that they are misrepresenting the odds you can and should go flag them in front of whatever body regulates advertising in your country, as well as to whatever platform is offering the game. It's very likely that it'd be breaking multiple regulations entirely unrelated to gambling, both public and private. I'm not saying it doesn't happen (mobile games in particular are full of really gross design people aren't following up on enough), but that isn't a typical implementation and not the base complaint people have.

And again, can't stress this enough, it's probably already illegal regardless of whether loot boxes run on gambling rules or not.