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Apple Says Apps Must Now Disclose Odds for Loot Boxes

283 points by kelukelugames 9y ago

brianwawok 9y ago
People don't care about odds, or the odds on the back of lotto tickets would reduce gambling. Even if you do know the odds, do you even know the cost of the loot box? Say the loot box cost 500 murp points, and you can buy 25 merp points for $1 or 700 merp points for $9 or 10000 merp points for $80, and the odds of your loot box are 1:100 for having a rare item - what is your EV to spend to get the rare item?
- randomblob 9y ago
  Can't really compare lotto tickets to loot boxes. Even the most invested player knows it's just digital items they win. Winning the lottery can change the course of life in a dramatic way, thus making the extreme low odds justifiable for lotto players.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Uh, people do. Hardcore lotto players know which scratch offs have the best payouts and know the most efficient betting strategies for most games. Some of them even track the outstanding jackpot winners available. Look at what people buy when you're in a gas station. Disclosure would probably reduce the temptation to offer really shitty odds.
  - brianwawok 9y ago
    Yah I do. And I see people without teeth buying 5 tickets of whatever looks shiny. I also live in Indiana so perhaps biased.
  - ThrowawayR2 9y ago
    But these games are aimed at children and teenagers, not hardcore lotto players. They probably won't do the math.
    - Fnoord 9y ago
      True, but as a parent, if its disclosed in App Store, you can do the math for the kid and decide if you want them to play the game or forbid it and offer an alternative, more fair game.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  $400. You consider the smaller merp packages to have an intrinsic penalty, to punish the player for not being a whale. And yet that $400 will only give you a 63.4% chance of getting a rare item. An 80% chance will cost you $640, a 90% chance costs $920, and a 99% chance a whopping $1800. On average, you'll spend $400 per rare item. But can you imagine all your whale players spending $1800 each, and that 1% of them might not even have a rare after all that? Can you imagine being that whale that spends $1800 and gets nothing? If I were developing that game, I would certainly add an "odds pressure" escape valve to the randomness, so that both your overall win-loss record and your recent win-loss record influence your odds of winning on the next play. But as long as we're doing that, we might as well also set up an intermittent reinforcement schedule that essentially guarantees one win in the first five boxes you open, one in the next five, the next ten, the next fifteen, etc.
roc 9y ago
Good. Now add a distinction between IAPs for consumables vs features vs content.
fragsworth 9y ago
This is nothing but lip service. The problem with loot boxes isn't that there are unfair odds - most companies use consistent odds for their loot boxes. There are some shady practices where the odds change on a per-player basis, but that's really beside the point. Apple is willing to "fix" this because it has zero effect on their bottom line. The real problem is that players are getting tricked into installing a "free" game but later sucked into gambling once they're invested and addicted. Showing the odds somewhere in the app doesn't change this deceptive and unethical practice. What they should really do is force apps to disclose the maximum amount a player can spend, front-and-center in the app store. And then also display other statistics - like the ARPU and ARPPU (average revenue per user, and average revenue per paying user). And then allow us to filter apps based on that criteria. If it were visible enough, and filterable enough, we'd see the developer landscape change to make games that are better for players.
- arthulia 9y ago
  I suspect most people would not consider buying a $5 loot box if there was a 95% chance of only getting duplicate items, or a 0.0002% chance of getting the item they're hoping for. Developers will probably increase the drop rates for things so that people will continue to buy their crates. I agree it's still gambling but this is a step.
  - fossuser 9y ago
    People are pretty bad at intuitively understanding probability - it’d have to be stated in a way they’d understand. “You’d probably have to buy this one thousand times to get what you’re looking for” People still buy lottery tickets though because “there’s still a chance”. Not sure how you fix that.
    - godelski 9y ago
      I can't seem to find the video, but I remember Sid Meier talking about how he had to manipulate the battle odds to what people thought was fair combat. For example, they thought that if they had a 2/3 chance of winning, they should win practically every time and thought it was unfair when they lost. Even though they won 2 out of every 3 matches, on average. The average person doesn't understand expected outcome, that it means ON AVERAGE it will take this many times to obtain the thing. Lottery tickets are a bad example because the expected outcome is still really high, though most people still understand this.
jws 9y ago
China enacted a law in May which requires games selling loot boxes to reveal the odds.[1] This new Apple policy will help their compliance. I don’t recall a “do you have loot boxes with unpublished odds” check box anywhere in my iOS app information, so it seems that Apple needed to do something to filter offenders from appearing in the Chinese app store. [1] https://zhugeex.com/2016/12/chinas-new-online-gaming-regulations/ https://zhugeex.com/2016/12/chinas-new-online-gaming-regulat...
- kelukelugames 9y ago
  Interesting. Is Apple doing this primarily to appease the Chinese government or they care about us consumers?
  - IBM 9y ago
    The fact that this policy applies to every App Store and not just the Chinese one should answer your question.
    - MBCook 9y ago
      Enforcing it globally is probably just easier, especially since other countries may end up passing similar laws. Honestly any transparency in this area is probably a nice win, even if this isn’t as good as banning the things are fixing a lot of the other scummy practices out there.
rowyourboat 9y ago
This makes it very obvious that buying loot boxes is, in fact, a form of gambling. We'll see how long that lasts in jurisdictions with tight gambling laws (i.e. Germany)
- Retric 9y ago
  Germany does not ban trading card games (Pokemon, Magic the gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh! etc), which are real world examples of loot boxes. The difference is you can trade rare X with someone else for money, but the company is not going to pay you when you get rare X.
ebbv 9y ago
It's still legal gambling targeting kids. It's heinous.
- menacingly 9y ago
  In my sphere, it's actually adults that play these games the most. My kids love physical loot boxes (like blind bags and card booster packs), but they aren't really interested in the digital stuff. I was just thinking about this this morning, because I think of them as targeting kids too, but the real junkies I know are grownups.
  - ivanbakel 9y ago
    It's equally true because children tend not to have any good whale properties - disposable income near-nil, no credit card, etc. The kickback against accidental purchases has pretty much killed off that corner of the market, so there's no real reason to keep trying to get blood from the stone.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
xutopia 9y ago
I stopped playing Clash Royale despite finding it a wonderful game because it's essentially pay to win. I would love to play a game similar to that one where the odds aren't stacked against the poorest of the players. Where you can play against players who have the same character choices as you.
- minimaxir 9y ago
  That's the appeal of MOBAs like League of Legends, where all characters are equal and real-world money is only used to buy cosmetics. In the mobile market, Arena of Valor just released in the US and it's surprisingly polished, gives a lot of heroes for free, and isn't aggressive about monetization. (in contrast, Vainglory, an earlier mobile MOBA, is very aggressive about getting you to spend money, including locking a lot of content behind lootboxes)
  - throwaway2048 9y ago
    All characters in league of legends are not equal, its less blatantly pay to win than some games, but to argue its only cosmetic is ridiculous.
    - nasmorn 9y ago
      All characters can be unlocked with in game currency. So a poor player can play any character she likes. Just not all of them
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Steko 9y ago
  I've played Clash Royale since global release, most of that time as f2p, and I'd argue it is not remotely p2w: (1) tournaments, challenges, friendly matches are all played at tournament card levels which are quite easy to reach as f2p (and friendly and special challenges level new players up to the tournament levels). (2) in 2v2, by far the most fun game mode for me, card levels are massively less important since there's no ladder. (3) the 1v1 ladder is not a pure skill matchup but still finds everyone a range where they have essentially a 50% win rate based on a combination of progress and skill. (4) yes the top of the ladder players have almost all spent a lot of money but most of the playerbase of any game isn't serious about being on the very top of the leaderboard. A smaller factor is that the most talented f2p players are sponsored with max decks and stop grinding f2p challenges.
dmitrygr 9y ago
> Loot boxes [...] are virtual grab bags that can give players a host > of items ranging from common to rare. [...] you can buy these loot > boxes [...] for real money, which has led some players to classify > them as gambling—a label that the Entertainment Software Rating > Board doesn’t acknowledge. Is the ESRB using some strange definition of gambling that the rest of us are unaware of? This seems like the textbook definition.
- IncRnd 9y ago
  It it only gambling if you can take in-game items and convert them using game facilities back to cash. In other words, what you describe may appear as a form of payment for consideration to win, but if you aren't really winning anything that can't be classifed as gambling. This is why most game sales specifically mention they cannot be converted to cash and are for digital items only.
joosters 9y ago
I hope that the appearance of odds will make it clear that these loot boxes are just a form of gambling, and as such they should not be allowed for under-18s. In most countries, it is an offence to target gambling at minors, and you must do reasonable checks to prevent them from playing. The threat of losing a large proportion of their customers would hopefully dissuade some companies from including gambling in their games.
spunker540 9y ago
I do think it’s only fair for these games to disclose odds but I don’t think it will lead to any change. Casinos also disclose odds and they’re clearly in favor of the house, but people still go in droves! The bottom line is this new micro payment business model is here to stay, and hopefully people give money to the games that do it well and avoid paying the games that are simply exploitative.
pmarreck 9y ago
I have trouble biting my tongue about the games mentioned so I will just say: Ethically, those games are, arguably, predatory shit. They use psychology to vampire money out of you via your dopamine receptors and they bring shame to all gaming by even being termed “games.” (And don’t get me started on the casino industry rebranding gambling as “gaming.”) As soon as any game I ever come into contact with starts to “well, you can wait an hour OR have it get finished right now with 1 doohickey!”, immediate delete. What is frustrating is that this toxic mechanic has been applied to franchises I have previously loved such as Simpsons and Star Trek.

283 points by kelukelugames 9y ago

People don't care about odds, or the odds on the back of lotto tickets would reduce gambling. Even if you do know the odds, do you even know the cost of the loot box? Say the loot box cost 500 murp points, and you can buy 25 merp points for $1 or 700 merp points for $9 or 10000 merp points for $80, and the odds of your loot box are 1:100 for having a rare item - what is your EV to spend to get the rare item?

randomblob 9y ago
Can't really compare lotto tickets to loot boxes. Even the most invested player knows it's just digital items they win. Winning the lottery can change the course of life in a dramatic way, thus making the extreme low odds justifiable for lotto players.
Spooky23 9y ago
Uh, people do. Hardcore lotto players know which scratch offs have the best payouts and know the most efficient betting strategies for most games. Some of them even track the outstanding jackpot winners available. Look at what people buy when you're in a gas station. Disclosure would probably reduce the temptation to offer really shitty odds.
- brianwawok 9y ago
  Yah I do. And I see people without teeth buying 5 tickets of whatever looks shiny. I also live in Indiana so perhaps biased.
- ThrowawayR2 9y ago
  But these games are aimed at children and teenagers, not hardcore lotto players. They probably won't do the math.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    True, but as a parent, if its disclosed in App Store, you can do the math for the kid and decide if you want them to play the game or forbid it and offer an alternative, more fair game.
logfromblammo 9y ago
$400. You consider the smaller merp packages to have an intrinsic penalty, to punish the player for not being a whale. And yet that $400 will only give you a 63.4% chance of getting a rare item. An 80% chance will cost you $640, a 90% chance costs $920, and a 99% chance a whopping $1800. On average, you'll spend $400 per rare item. But can you imagine all your whale players spending $1800 each, and that 1% of them might not even have a rare after all that? Can you imagine being that whale that spends $1800 and gets nothing? If I were developing that game, I would certainly add an "odds pressure" escape valve to the randomness, so that both your overall win-loss record and your recent win-loss record influence your odds of winning on the next play. But as long as we're doing that, we might as well also set up an intermittent reinforcement schedule that essentially guarantees one win in the first five boxes you open, one in the next five, the next ten, the next fifteen, etc.

roc 9y ago

Good. Now add a distinction between IAPs for consumables vs features vs content.

fragsworth 9y ago

This is nothing but lip service. The problem with loot boxes isn't that there are unfair odds - most companies use consistent odds for their loot boxes. There are some shady practices where the odds change on a per-player basis, but that's really beside the point. Apple is willing to "fix" this because it has zero effect on their bottom line. The real problem is that players are getting tricked into installing a "free" game but later sucked into gambling once they're invested and addicted. Showing the odds somewhere in the app doesn't change this deceptive and unethical practice. What they should really do is force apps to disclose the maximum amount a player can spend, front-and-center in the app store. And then also display other statistics - like the ARPU and ARPPU (average revenue per user, and average revenue per paying user). And then allow us to filter apps based on that criteria. If it were visible enough, and filterable enough, we'd see the developer landscape change to make games that are better for players.

arthulia 9y ago
I suspect most people would not consider buying a $5 loot box if there was a 95% chance of only getting duplicate items, or a 0.0002% chance of getting the item they're hoping for. Developers will probably increase the drop rates for things so that people will continue to buy their crates. I agree it's still gambling but this is a step.
- fossuser 9y ago
  People are pretty bad at intuitively understanding probability - it’d have to be stated in a way they’d understand. “You’d probably have to buy this one thousand times to get what you’re looking for” People still buy lottery tickets though because “there’s still a chance”. Not sure how you fix that.
  - godelski 9y ago
    I can't seem to find the video, but I remember Sid Meier talking about how he had to manipulate the battle odds to what people thought was fair combat. For example, they thought that if they had a 2/3 chance of winning, they should win practically every time and thought it was unfair when they lost. Even though they won 2 out of every 3 matches, on average. The average person doesn't understand expected outcome, that it means ON AVERAGE it will take this many times to obtain the thing. Lottery tickets are a bad example because the expected outcome is still really high, though most people still understand this.

jws 9y ago

China enacted a law in May which requires games selling loot boxes to reveal the odds.[1] This new Apple policy will help their compliance. I don’t recall a “do you have loot boxes with unpublished odds” check box anywhere in my iOS app information, so it seems that Apple needed to do something to filter offenders from appearing in the Chinese app store. [1] https://zhugeex.com/2016/12/chinas-new-online-gaming-regulations/ https://zhugeex.com/2016/12/chinas-new-online-gaming-regulat...

kelukelugames 9y ago
Interesting. Is Apple doing this primarily to appease the Chinese government or they care about us consumers?
- IBM 9y ago
  The fact that this policy applies to every App Store and not just the Chinese one should answer your question.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    Enforcing it globally is probably just easier, especially since other countries may end up passing similar laws. Honestly any transparency in this area is probably a nice win, even if this isn’t as good as banning the things are fixing a lot of the other scummy practices out there.

rowyourboat 9y ago

This makes it very obvious that buying loot boxes is, in fact, a form of gambling. We'll see how long that lasts in jurisdictions with tight gambling laws (i.e. Germany)

Retric 9y ago
Germany does not ban trading card games (Pokemon, Magic the gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh! etc), which are real world examples of loot boxes. The difference is you can trade rare X with someone else for money, but the company is not going to pay you when you get rare X.

ebbv 9y ago

It's still legal gambling targeting kids. It's heinous.

menacingly 9y ago
In my sphere, it's actually adults that play these games the most. My kids love physical loot boxes (like blind bags and card booster packs), but they aren't really interested in the digital stuff. I was just thinking about this this morning, because I think of them as targeting kids too, but the real junkies I know are grownups.
- ivanbakel 9y ago
  It's equally true because children tend not to have any good whale properties - disposable income near-nil, no credit card, etc. The kickback against accidental purchases has pretty much killed off that corner of the market, so there's no real reason to keep trying to get blood from the stone.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

xutopia 9y ago

I stopped playing Clash Royale despite finding it a wonderful game because it's essentially pay to win. I would love to play a game similar to that one where the odds aren't stacked against the poorest of the players. Where you can play against players who have the same character choices as you.

minimaxir 9y ago
That's the appeal of MOBAs like League of Legends, where all characters are equal and real-world money is only used to buy cosmetics. In the mobile market, Arena of Valor just released in the US and it's surprisingly polished, gives a lot of heroes for free, and isn't aggressive about monetization. (in contrast, Vainglory, an earlier mobile MOBA, is very aggressive about getting you to spend money, including locking a lot of content behind lootboxes)
- throwaway2048 9y ago
  All characters in league of legends are not equal, its less blatantly pay to win than some games, but to argue its only cosmetic is ridiculous.
  - nasmorn 9y ago
    All characters can be unlocked with in game currency. So a poor player can play any character she likes. Just not all of them
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Steko 9y ago
I've played Clash Royale since global release, most of that time as f2p, and I'd argue it is not remotely p2w: (1) tournaments, challenges, friendly matches are all played at tournament card levels which are quite easy to reach as f2p (and friendly and special challenges level new players up to the tournament levels). (2) in 2v2, by far the most fun game mode for me, card levels are massively less important since there's no ladder. (3) the 1v1 ladder is not a pure skill matchup but still finds everyone a range where they have essentially a 50% win rate based on a combination of progress and skill. (4) yes the top of the ladder players have almost all spent a lot of money but most of the playerbase of any game isn't serious about being on the very top of the leaderboard. A smaller factor is that the most talented f2p players are sponsored with max decks and stop grinding f2p challenges.

dmitrygr 9y ago

> Loot boxes [...] are virtual grab bags that can give players a host > of items ranging from common to rare. [...] you can buy these loot > boxes [...] for real money, which has led some players to classify > them as gambling—a label that the Entertainment Software Rating > Board doesn’t acknowledge. Is the ESRB using some strange definition of gambling that the rest of us are unaware of? This seems like the textbook definition.

IncRnd 9y ago
It it only gambling if you can take in-game items and convert them using game facilities back to cash. In other words, what you describe may appear as a form of payment for consideration to win, but if you aren't really winning anything that can't be classifed as gambling. This is why most game sales specifically mention they cannot be converted to cash and are for digital items only.

joosters 9y ago

I hope that the appearance of odds will make it clear that these loot boxes are just a form of gambling, and as such they should not be allowed for under-18s. In most countries, it is an offence to target gambling at minors, and you must do reasonable checks to prevent them from playing. The threat of losing a large proportion of their customers would hopefully dissuade some companies from including gambling in their games.

spunker540 9y ago

I do think it’s only fair for these games to disclose odds but I don’t think it will lead to any change. Casinos also disclose odds and they’re clearly in favor of the house, but people still go in droves! The bottom line is this new micro payment business model is here to stay, and hopefully people give money to the games that do it well and avoid paying the games that are simply exploitative.

pmarreck 9y ago

I have trouble biting my tongue about the games mentioned so I will just say: Ethically, those games are, arguably, predatory shit. They use psychology to vampire money out of you via your dopamine receptors and they bring shame to all gaming by even being termed “games.” (And don’t get me started on the casino industry rebranding gambling as “gaming.”) As soon as any game I ever come into contact with starts to “well, you can wait an hour OR have it get finished right now with 1 doohickey!”, immediate delete. What is frustrating is that this toxic mechanic has been applied to franchises I have previously loved such as Simpsons and Star Trek.