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From: Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: Go EU!
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2025 06:51:56 -0700
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On 4/10/2025 6:11 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Apr 2025 08:16:17 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
> 
>> Well firstly, that saves me making a post about it.
> 
> Heh. I didn't think it was worth a separate thread either, hence my
> hijacking an earlier one. I'm not so sure how much interest there is
> about the business aspect of game development in csipga so I usually
> try to limit the number of separate threads on the topic. Well, now we
> have one more, I guess ;-)
> 
>> So on to the meat,
>> the legal status seems slightly vague as I believe the CPC Network* have
>> picked a target (some horse game aimed squarely at kids)
> 
> If I recall, it was the Swedish consumer protection commission that
> had an issue with the horse game, and they took it up with the EU,
> where the EU CPC raised the stakes to make it apply for _all_ games.
> 
>> and are using
>> the interpretation of existing EU consumer protect laws to say these
>> type of practices go against them. My assumption is that if you get a
>> case in one member state then you've basically given the green light to
>> all member states.
> 
> Quite. One of the problems with Belgium's anti lootbox law was it was
> only effective in Belgium
> 
>         [for Americans: Belgium is a very small country, about
>          the size of Vermont, with a population of only 11 million]
> 
>             and thus the law was generally ignored or -at best- the
> game was marked as 'not for sale in Belgium' because the publishers
> could ignore so small. But the EU is 445 million people
> 
>         [for Americans: that's 125% the size of the US population]
> 
>              so its unlikely that the publishers are going to pull out
> of _that_ market. More likely, they'll create a "EU version" of the
> game, which will lack these odious features, while America gets the
> 'regular' overly monetized crap. But Americans don't seem interested
> in quality anyway, so I guess that's fine?
> 
Its more that the US has become an oligarchy with our Supreme Court 
ruling that companies are people with free speech rights and can spend 
unrestricted amounts of money supporting elections and candidates.

-- 
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky 
dirty old man.