11 ms·
Oh, I thought this was known. I'm not even joking... A few years ago, I was at a local comic shop, and I watched someone (a kid) play the machine and appear to
by rubyn00bie 5y ago
Oh, I thought this was known. I'm not even joking... A few years ago, I was at a local comic shop, and I watched someone (a kid) play the machine and appear to get a "perfect" shot, key went exactly into the fucking hole... but then it just pulled back. No prize! I was stunned when the kid asked an employee essentially "WTF?" and the employee replied "there's a chance the key may not turn even though it's lined up." So... it's a game of luck and not a game of skill. All I could think was "doesn't that make it straight up gambling then?" Who would be liable for changing the mode of operation? Regardless, it's fucking sketchy and all around pretty awful to take advantage of people like this... $5 million is a bullshit fine for literally stealing from kids. I still feel bad for that kid, it was like a Nintendo Switch or something fucking cool he, IMHO, had stolen from him...
- abaracadab 5y agoSo it sounds like skill + luck: key in the hole gives random chance of winning. Honestly, these kind of lawsuits are ridiculous. People need to sue General Mills for false advertising instead because sugary cereals causing diabetes; or any other big-food company brainwashing children on YouTube kids.
- nkrisc 5y agoThat’s just luck.
- cortesoft 5y agoNo, because if you really suck, you can’t win at all. It is like poker, which is a combination of skill and luck.
- Karunamon 5y agoOkay, I can accept that. But poker is still considered gambling, and we wouldn't allow arcade owners to target poker games at children. Why should this be allowed?
- cortesoft 5y agoI 100% think this is a gambling game and should be outlawed in places gambling is illegal. I was only saying that there is skill involved. Gaming laws never classify gambling games as those that require zero skill. Otherwise, poker, blackjack, even craps wouldn't be gambling, because all bets do not have the same odds, and therefore skilled players do better than unskilled.
- chrismcb 5y agoPoker isn't necessarily considered gambling. It is one reason why some places, like California, have poker rooms.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Poker isn't necessarily considered gambling Yes it is. > It is one reason why some places, like California, have poker rooms. No, that's because some instances of gambling involving betting against other players are sometimes selectively regulated differently than betting against the house. Its the same reason some places, like, again, California, that prohibit casino gambling allow parimutuel betting on horse races.
- boring_twenties 5y agoCalifornia also has legal poker rooms.
- HarryHirsch 5y agoSkill when the machine decides to let you win, no chance when the machine doesn't want you to. It's not at all like poker and very much like the well-known shell game with a pea.
- cortesoft 5y agoIt is like poker.... you can play the correct 'skill' move and still lose the hand because of bad luck (losing in the river, for example)
- Caylio 5y agoThe machine can only "decide to let you win" if you have the skill to get close, otherwise no chance.
- mafuy 5y agoOne gives you a chance to win when you are skillful. If you are skillful enough, you will win eventually just by chance. The other may never pay out even if you are 100% accurate. This is a big difference.
- Caylio 5y agoYour "big" difference is useless and changes nothing to the topic at hand. Nkrisc claimed that no skill was required at all, only luck, which is clearly false. I was just pointing out this obvious fact. Nice strawman attempt though.
- nkrisc 5y agoIf the very last step of the process is that the machine decides if you won or not, it's not a game of skill. It takes a degree of skill and coordination to pull the lever on the slot machine, yet we don't call them a game of skill because of that. If you're 100% accurate and you still lose, it's a game of chance.
- Caylio 5y ago
- 542354234235 5y agoIt isn’t luck, because the game has a 0% chance of winning until X number of loses. That is like saying that getting heads on a coin toss is a game of luck, except they are actually using a double tails coin for 700 tosses. A game of luck or chance requires some chance that you could actually win on a given play.
- wu_187 5y agoThe lawsuit is not rediculous. These are marketed as being games of skill, which means there's always the ability to win on every turn. This is obviously false and people lose tons of money on this thinking it's fair.
- numlock86 5y ago> something is "ridiculous" because there are much worse cases to be taken care of Yeah, same can be said about "brainwashing kids on YouTube" (whatever that's supposed to mean anyway) or "false advertising" of cereals ... what is your point?
- kbenson 5y agoNo, that's now how it works, according to the article, which is going by what the manual shipped with the cabinet states. The machine will not allow a win no matter what until a set number of losses has happened. The default shipped setting is to not allow a win until there has been 700 losses. Some other vendor in Arizona is noted as having been sued because he ran his games at a required 2200 losses to allow a payout. Actual gambling devices are much more regulated and have much better payout odds most likely (depending on what's winnable), but more importantly are actually random. These games are not chance, and they aren't skill, they're a scam that market themselves as a game of skill.
- csharptwdec19 5y agoFun fact: Actual Gambling machines are also audited on the reg. A college friend works for my state's gaming commission. During a 'drinking talk' about digital signatures, she told me an interesting part of her job; not just going through the slot machines and validating the payout settings, but also checking the EEProms MD5 Hash* to make sure that it was in a list of 'approved' code hashes. * - This was 15 years ago, I -really- hope they use something better nowadays.
- kbenson 5y agoYeah, I've hear as much before. That's one of the things that makes this worse, these cabinets are (were?) a loophole that allows fleecing people without oversight. It's not like gambling is in your favor when you do it at a casino, but you can usually trust that the state has kept it from being egregiously unfair. > checking the EEProms MD5 Hash* to make sure that it was in a list of 'approved' code hashes. > This was 15 years ago, I -really- hope they use something better nowadays. I dunno. If the hash is generated and displayed by the hardware on a separate LCD display (or a serial you attach) and maybe a bit of non-flashable code, that seems pretty good to me, especially that it's regularly spot checked in person. Something like that is far harder to fake and fool real people with successfully for an extended period, IMO.
- josephcsible 5y ago
- 542354234235 5y agoIt isn’t luck, because the game has a 0% chance of winning until X number of loses. That is like saying that getting heads on a coin toss is a game of luck, except they are actually using a double tails coin for 700 tosses. A game of luck or chance requires some chance that you could actually win on a given play.
- jetrink 5y agoYeah, I googled 'sega keymaster' to see what the game looked like and the first result was a 2014 video in which the person demonstrating the game described it as "pretty much luck" and "not due to pay out no matter how accurate you are." 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iczyli1Uo1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iczyli1Uo1w
- brightball 5y agoMark Roper actually did a video on this and found the exact frequency at which people are allowed to win.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- loonster 5y agoIt's also in the article...
- pfundstein 5y agoIt is simply gambling for kids. These 'games' are much more profitable than traditional arcade games (street fighter/mario kart/pacman/etc/etc), and when you boil them down it's because they're essentially slot machines.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoI wonder why class action lawsuit then. Shouldn't this be prosecuted as a crime?
- Uberphallus 5y agoThey're certainly scummy but, I mean, this isn't any different from the claw crane machines that are usually exempted from gambling laws under certain conditions (win chance, prize value, where they're located, etc); machines that nobody expects to be fair.
- MikeUt 5y ago> machines that are usually exempted from gambling laws But that's besides the point. You don't need gambling laws to see that this is fraud, deceiving customers to pay in the expectation that the game is fair.
- Y_Y 5y agoI think some people (especially kids) do assume they're fair, and nobody around is inclined to disabuse them of that notion.
- krapp 5y agoIt's not even luck. IIRC, most such machines are programmed not to pay out at all until they've taken in more revenue than the cost of a prize. So 99% of the time, your chances are nil, as opposed to infinitesimally nil.
- Spooky23 5y agoThey loosened up the rules on this stuff awhile back. It’s bullshit — unregulated gambling. There’s one machine like this I saw on a mass pike rest stop… there’s a 10 year old iPad fading away in there, but people are always playing it.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y agoIt could be the other way around: people win it so frequently that they can only afford to stock it with obsolete computer hardware…
- taneq 5y agoI'd have thought it would be harder and more expensive to find an unused 10 year old iPad now than to just buy a new low-end one. Give it a few more years and that one in the machine will be a collector's item!
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago> Give it a few more years and that one in the machine will be a collector's item! Just drive-off with the entire machine in the back of yer truck, heh
- 29athrowaway 5y agoGambling is illegal in Japan so there are many forms of gambling disguised as other stuff. Notably pachinko parlors, gashapon, trading card games, loot boxes in video games. https://www.serkantoto.com/2012/05/05/japan-social-games-regulation-report/ https://www.serkantoto.com/2012/05/05/japan-social-games-reg... And other than gambling, there are auctions... for the weirdest stuff... koi fish, mango, etc. https://www.kodamakoifarm.com/shop/live-koi/auction/ https://www.kodamakoifarm.com/shop/live-koi/auction/
- raverbashing 5y agoSo, what's the business model of koi auctions? I mean, ok, for the seller side it's obvious, for the buyer one, not so much.
- skhr0680 5y agoWho wouldn’t want a sweet Koi?
- 29athrowaway 5y agoSome koi patterns are culturally more desirable and rarer. The koi auction is a way for people to acquire a rare koi.
- headmelted 5y agoI thought this was known, too. I imagine the losses are going to be far worse for those plush toy claw-grabbing machines if this case succeeds. Especially as they attach cash envelopes to them where I live. And those block stacking machines, too. It’s clearly gambling for kids, I suspect when the first company got away with rigging the game everyone else just assumed it must be legal and ran with it. Now they’re literally everywhere. The publicity alone will likely cause an EU ban. They don’t like to be seen as trailing on consumer protection law.
- gadders 5y agoThe claw machines doing this as well now. If it's not your turn to win the grabber is weaker than normal.
- indymike 5y agoShh. Don't tell anyone. -- Dad who like to count plays on the claw machine and tell my kids... "Play that one. I have a good feeling about it"
- laumars 5y agoI wish modern arcades were banned. They’re nothing more than fruit machines that target kids. There’s no thought about enjoyment, it’s literally about the fastest way to hook a child. I know the arcades of old weren’t exactly innocent either, with many being optimised to consume the players coins, but at least there was some game play involved. At least the player got something out of the experience. I feel the ethical line has truly been crossed in terms of what kind of machine is suitable for children.
- skhr0680 5y agoConsole games were so polluted with arcade bullshit design (see: Battletoads) that Super Mario World was instantly notable for being designed to be fair.
- laumars 5y agoA lot of the problem is longevity. In the 8 bit, and to some extent the 16 bit era too, the memory constraints were so great that games were often pretty short. So the difficulty bar was set as a method of ensuring longevity. There was an actual slang term for this used by western developers, the name of which I’ve forgotten, but it directly talks about how games should take longer to complete than your average rental loan.
- namelessoracle 5y agoDidnt the designers of popular rpgs like Dragonquest and Final Fantasy admit they added leveling grinds so customers would be outside the allowed return window if they beat it too soon?
- namelessoracle 5y agoAlot of modern arcades actually have unlimited play models or "play as much as you want for X time". They make their money off food/drinks/alcohol. At least the last few I have been too. I guess people for the most part had decided if you were gonna drop 50 bucks you might as well buy a new videogame and play it at home. The scummy part is the "ticket" games, where you have a chance to win below dollar store grade prizes and exist to waste your game time away from games that have actual game play in them. (ski ball is still fun even if its a ticket game) Last one I went to it was kind of neat to finally be able to beat one of those old school 90s arcade games that in retrospect had their difficulty tuned to do nothing but eat all your quarters.....
- grishka 5y agoBack when we had a claw machine with plush toys in nearly every grocery store, it was generally a well-known fact that it's a game of chance much more than it is a game of skill. When it didn't want you to win, it just didn't grip as hard as would be necessary to hold the toy. It would either not grab it at all, or it would but then would drop it due to an abrupt stop when it hits the top while lifting the claw.
- taneq 5y agoThe one or two times I tried one of those machines, the claw literally just re-opened on the way up no matter what I did. I pretty quickly figured they were rigged to only 'pay out' a certain percentage of plays in order to guarantee they stayed profitable.