4 ms·

LBAL and Balatro being banned or 18+ age-gated for having gambling "vibes" despite not actually simulating gambling, while the stores are full of gacha games wh

• inanutshellus 2y ago
  > not actually simulating gambling Nit picking I guess, but... looks like a slot machine simulator... and slot machines are synonymous with gambling IMO.
  • skyyler 2y ago
    It's not simulating gambling any more than Peggle is simulating gambling. It takes the aesthetic of a slot machine but there's no wagers. There's no gambling mechanic. Are we really that blind to what gambling is that there are people that think playing poker without wagers is a form of gambling?
    • jsheard 2y ago
      Balatro is similar, it leans heavily on Poker aesthetics but mechanically the only thing it has in common with Poker is that it starts with a standard 52 card deck and the hands you can play are (mostly) the ones used in Poker. You could play it for a hundred hours and still have absolutely no idea how to play Hold'em.
      • Suppafly 2y ago
        >You could play it for a hundred hours and still have absolutely no idea how to play Hold'em. On the flip side, it's super similar to those video poker machines in bars and restaurants. If you allowed the option to increase the bet and got rid of the special joker abilities, it's basically the same thing. People claiming otherwise are being willfully ignorant. I love Balatro, but it's definitely gambling adjacent and depending on how rules/laws around children gambling are defined, it probably should be age gated, or those rules/laws should be updated to reflect reality, you can't have it both ways. But also, I'd say the same about all of those games with gacha and lootbox mechanics.
        • skyyler 2y ago
          >option to increase the bet There was no bet in the first place, that's the point. It's not gambling because there's no wager.
        • aidenn0 2y ago
          IIRC even the author of Balatro has said he would be fine with any state in which his game gets rated the same as games with actual gambling, instead of those games getting a 3+ rating.
        • bluefirebrand 2y ago
          > If you allowed the option to increase the bet and got rid of the special joker abilities, it's basically the same thing Other than the fact that no real money is involved, which is really the core problem that reasonable people have with predatory gambling apps
        • bee_rider 2y ago
          Now based on this thread, I’m very confused as to what Google is trying to ban or what the law (are they trying to comply with some law?) actually says. Balatro is not gambling, it has a gambling aesthetic but no actual money changes hands. Lootbox games are gambling, at least if we accept the idea that the things in the loot boxes have value; money goes in, and then you get something out with a random component to the value. But they don’t have a gambling aesthetic, they are usually wrapped up as something related to the game, right? I could see Google wanting to comply with some directive not to “glorify gambling” or something along those lines. This would be independent of whether or not the games actually are gambling. Anyway, I don’t think people are being willfully ignorant. I think they are just assuming Google is trying to regulate actual gambling. Not gambling aesthetic for non-gambling. But I have no idea what Google actually is trying to do. I will note that it is pretty suspicious that the one type of gambling they managed to regulate is the one that doesn’t make them any money other than the first purchase…
        • deleted 2y ago
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        • deadbunny 2y ago
      • oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
        > it starts with a standard 52 card deck Well, most of the time :)
    • sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
      If you grew up in certain communities or religious groups, standard playing cards were forbidden items because of their association with gambling. In many of these communities, obvious replacements like Rook decks [0] are somehow perfectly fine. Even though you can easily emulate a standard deck using this deck that consists of about the same number of ranked cards divided into 4 suits. Two things that are practically identical, but one is "evil" and one is not purely by association of how some people use one of the things. As a species, we draw some pretty weird dividing lines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rook_(card_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rook_(card_game)
      • pjc50 2y ago
        > If you grew up in certain communities or religious groups, standard playing cards were forbidden items because of their association with gambling. Yes, and this is extremely stupid.
        • Spivak 2y ago
          Is it? If you go to any casino you'll see playing cards plastered on every wall and suit themed decor. Even games without cards use red/black. Media depictions of gambling are usually cards. People who go to Vegas take home a souvenir deck of cards. Casinos A deck of cards which you can use to play non-gambling card games but that doesn't use the same "branding" I'm sure works really well. It's hard to feel "cool" when you're playing with a Fisher-Price deck.
          • wink 2y ago
            Yes it is, potentially. Where I live (and grew up) the only game played with these type of cards is Poker, and we didn't exactly play Poker growing up - so all our local games use a different deck of card. And in other not-too-distant regions they use yet another deck or two. This might be the "worldwide standard" but that doesn't mean anything.
            • Spivak 2y ago
    • SkeuomorphicBee 2y ago
      It is like chocolate cigarettes, they are not real cigarettes, they don't have nicotine nor smoke, and yet they serve to present and normalize real cigarettes to kids, so there is an argument for banning them. Where you draw the line is a difficult ask (a chocolate with packaging and wrapping copying exactly a cigarette pack seems like a clear case, but what about cylindrical chocolates that vaguely resemble? Probably not). I think it is fair to argue where to draw the line, but I think some "looks like gambling but without gambling" do in fact deserve more scrutiny just because of the resemblance. (On the other end of the spectrum we as a society should really crack down on the "doesn't look like gambling but is gambling" epidemic.)
      • skyyler 2y ago
        To extend your analogy, banning Luck Be a Landlord while allowing lootboxes and the like is kind of like banning chocolate cigarettes while allowing kids to have nicorette gum. One of them has the aesthetic, one of them has the actual negative thing. The aesthetic being banned is supposed to be in support of reducing the impact of the actual negative thing, but the actual negative thing is being PROMOTED instead of banned. It all feels very pants-on-head kind of up-is-down logic.
      • jhbadger 2y ago
        This is the sort of hysteria that got comic books censored in the the 1950s and "violent" video games in the 1990s. The argument that fictional depictions of undesired behavior cause real cases of it just isn't supported by evidence, but only assumed.
  • pie_flavor 2y ago
    Gambling is not when a lot of colors flash by on the screen, no matter what kind of pattern they flash by in. Gambling is when you bet real money on a game of chance. If simulated gambling includes simulating any game commonly gambled on even when the actual gambling part is removed, does it include dice?
  • floydnoel 2y ago
    do you happen to work for google, perhaps in the app review department?
  • wodenokoto 2y ago
    Spending money to win is synonymous with gambling. virtual money that gets renewed when you start a new game is as much gambling as shooting hellspawn in Doom is murder.
  • drdrey 2y ago
    this is purely based on aesthetics. Even Mario games use the slot machine “skin” to represent RNG
• woodrowbarlow 2y ago
  the gacha games have a higher age rating -- that's the difference. this is friction between the ESRB/PEGI and app-store moderation.
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  • AlexandrB 2y ago
    I just checked and Genshin Impact has a 12+ rating in the App Store. AFK Arena is rated 9+. Many other gacha games are 12+. This doesn't seem like a "higher age rating" to me.
    • woodrowbarlow 2y ago
      balatro is fighting to keep the 3+ rating it was originally assigned.
      • jsheard 2y ago
        FIFA is a gacha and that has a 3+ rating too. The above games have higher ratings because they have moderate violence, not because they are gachas.
      • aidenn0 2y ago
        Which would be the same as EA Sports FC, which has gacha mechanics.
      • shagie 2y ago
        In the Mac app store, where Baltro is an arcade game: Age Rating 12+ Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References Infrequent/Mild Simulated Gambling Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes
• thih9 2y ago
  Looks like the stores allow apps acting like a casino and they’re only against apps looking like a casino. Perhaps LBAL should get reskinned (with no slot animations and with some pocket monster collection instead of cards, or similar) - with no change to the gameplay.
  • codeflo 2y ago
    I think that's exactly the point. And maybe from a business perspective, that's the correct (if cynical) decision -- the behavior of "activist" groups and/or public outrage seems to be driven purely by optics and screenshots, not substance.
    • giraffe_lady 2y ago
      The generation of gambling addicts who were raised into it with mobile gacha games isn't quite grown into adulthood yet. Anti-gambling activists have limited resources too. They're going after what they recognize, which is casino gambling and simulations of it. This new shape of gambling just isn't on the radar of non-tech people yet.
  • jprete 2y ago
    I'm imagining exactly who makes these calls, if a human is even involved, as someone spending five seconds on a moderation app looking at screenshots and immediately pushing the "gambling" button so they can go on to the next task more quickly. It doesn't have to be a human, either, at this point it could be AI trained on the same bad answers.
  • ryandrake 2y ago
    "Gambling" restrictions in apps and media are never about the actual dictionary definition of gambling. They are about traditional visual and audio patterns. Does the app look like a casino game? If it does (but no wagering is happening), then it's gambling, and if it doesn't (but wagering is going on), then it isn't gambling. Raters probably have a list of checkbox items (icons typically associated with cards and chips, green felt, red-and-black color schemes, maybe certain sound effects), and if enough of them are checked, it's "gambling". If none of them are checked, like an anime-themed gacha game, then it's not gambling. It really probably is as simple as that. It's just like "sexual content" ratings in TV and movies. It's not really about sexual content. It's about whether or not you show a nipple or genitalia. A show can have plenty of steamy sexual stuff but it's unlikely to be classified as sexual content unless it visually contains key checkbox items. Likewise, if it merely shows a body part in a non-sexual context, it gets labeled as sexual content.
• Eavolution 2y ago
  Balatro having an 18+ age rating is insane. The only thing gambling about that game is it uses poker hands for scoring, and has an element of luck. How is that different to any other mobile game with a luck component (see 99% of them) with a scoring mechanism inspired by poker? To me gambling requires betting of long term/valuable resources. In Balatro, the only thing that you'll affect is each individual run, you're back to square one after each as it's a rouguelike. Games like Clash Royale where you can spend actual money on chests for items that affect the game long term, not just for a single match, to me is actual gambling, whereas playing a poker hand using fake chips that only affects that single <1h run absolutely isn't. It looks like whoever came up with the ratings just saw it uses poker hands for scoring and represents a score with chips, therefore it's gambling, and gave it an 18+ rating, when you're not actually gambling anything (either real world money, or long term items in the game)
  • jsheard 2y ago
    > Balatro having an 18+ age rating is insane. PEGI can't even make their minds up, I believe it was originally given an 18+ rating, which was amended to 3+ when the publisher appealed, and then it was amended back to 18+ unprompted.
    • gambiting 2y ago
      The fact that Fifa(sorry, EA Football) has a 3+ rating while having the most predatory gambling mechanics in any video game but Balatro gets 18+ is just proof that the system is not working correctly.
      • sbarre 2y ago
        Or it's working exactly as intended. Pay-to-win isn't just for the game itself.
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• miohtama 2y ago
  In the modern world of compliance-industrial complex, private companies like Google and Apple are tasked to police what's morally acceptable or not: https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operating-Pre-Crime-Society/dp/3031192230 https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operati...
• NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  What counts as gambling simulation? Is the original Legend of Zelda gambling simulation because you can wage 10 rupies to win 100 in that one cave?
  • spondylosaurus 2y ago
    In the first three generations of Pokemon, Celadon Game Corner has those in-game slot machines where you can bet and win tokens. In gen four, the Japanese games keep the Celadon slots, but in every other release they got replaced with a minesweeper-y game to appease PEGI.
• surfpel 2y ago
  > The latter makes Google and Apple insane amounts of money though so of course they're not going to do anything about them unless their hand is forced. Similarly, they avoid drawing attention to their shenanigans by keeping the vibe clean
• Der_Einzige 2y ago
  While we are at it, WTF is with us as a society normalizing gambling behavior with places like Dave n Busters and Chuck-e-Cheeze and their ticket machines? That stuff is probably worse than gambling from the perspective of ROI.
  • bee_rider 2y ago
    I wonder if it is thought of as not really gambling because the ROI is so bad. The rewards have very little actual value, so fun must come from playing the games, and the toy is just a little trinket at the end. And if a kid ignores the tickets and just plays the games they like, they’ll probably have more fun. But the ticket minigame is something that some find fun, so… Anyway, I think this is wrong, because kids are mostly playing with their parents’ money. So it still becomes a system with a positive ROI from their point of view.
• nshireman 2y ago
  The only logical path forward is to implement loot boxes with paid keys in LBAL
• tweetle_beetle 2y ago
  Everyone is paraphrasing what the judgement is. It's easy to find on pegi.info: > This game teaches - by way of images, information and gameplay - skills and knowledge that are used in poker. During gameplay, the player is rewarded with ‘chips’ for playing certain hands. The player is able to access a list of poker hand names. As the player hovers over these poker hands, the game explains what types of cards the player would need in order to play certain hands. As the game goes on, the player becomes increasingly familiar with which hands would earn more points. Because these are hands that exist in the real world, this knowledge and skill could be transferred to a real-life game of poker. Their issue with Balatro is that it teaches poker hands. Now search the PEGI site for 'poker' and you'll find numerous games with Poker in the title which are rated 12 and 16. 'Poker Smash' for Xbox and 'Poker Masters' for PC and three other games are even rated '3'. It seems that ratings have changed over time - early 2000s were much more leniant on gambling as a topic. Every game on Google Play with Poker in title, bar one, which I found had an '18' rating.
  • Carrok 2y ago
    This is still absurd. "Oh no! Learning poker hands! Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children!"
    • StefanBatory 2y ago
      I remember my old Donald Duck magazines that taught how poker or other card games work in my late '00/early '10 :P
    • shagie 2y ago
      https://projecteuler.net/problem=54 https://projecteuler.net/problem=54
  • nox101 2y ago
    Mario has "slot machines" in, even today
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• SkyBelow 2y ago
  I find it an interesting commentary on child protection laws (and standards organizations that don't reach the level of legal enforcement) and related to an idea I've had for years, that people are interested in appearing like they are protecting children more than they are interested in actually protecting children.