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Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/gaming@lemmy.zip
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The loot box ban will go into effect in March.

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[–] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

I'm not convinced an outright ban would be helpful. Regulation focused on harm reduction, ie restricting to adult like various kind of gambling, would be less heavyhanded, hopefully better compromise.

Looping back on the earlier comments, adding extra requirements on age verification is the more controversial part. Especially since privacy-preserving solutions aren't ready. Clearly neither of us are happy with that (not necessarily for the same reason).

I'd be happy if regulators just categorized loot box as gambling, applying the existing declarative age verification that already apply to gambling.

The choice between state regulation and self-regulation depend on various factors, eg exactly how it's implemented, people's opinion on freedom to operate companies without state intervention. A meta-analysis conclude results vary a lot from self regulation, it can go well or fail. This is just an opinion and nothing definitive, but I don't think game editors that make money from loot boxes would setup efficient self-regulation. It would hurt their bottom line.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I don't think an outright ban would be acceptable at all or grounded in any kind of proportionality. It's one thing to use gambling as a guilt-by-association thing, but if gambling isn't outright illegal even in that somewhat fallacious interpretation an outright ban would be absurd.

    Which is something I feel a lot of the people rallying against this practice often didn't think through, but hey.

    I still disagree with your interpretation of that literature review.

    This systematic literature review analyzes 190 empirical studies published between 2012 and 2023, revealing nuanced findings. Regarding compliance, 41% of studies reported high compliance levels, 29% low compliance, and 29% inconclusive results. For effectiveness in achieving regulatory goals, 44% found self-regulation effective, 33% ineffective, and 24% inconclusive.

    Our review also finds that the presence of intermediaries such as industry associations, third-party auditors, and NGOs, along with certain types of state involvement, tends to enhance self-regulation outcomes.

    That's less "it's a crapshoot" and more "it generally works, especially if there is an overisght body".

    Which in this case there absolutely is, given that this all slots into pre-existing age ratings and content warnings. Your misgivings don't line up with the data you provide and don't line up with pre-existing analogous self-regulation.

    I've seen nothing to suggest this is any more problematic than either other types of monetization or other types of content restriction, and the big differentiator between violent/sexual content and this seems to be whether the segment of the userbase that posts online likes it as a matter of creative opinion.

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