This appears to be a direct consequence of a recent settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which had charged HoYoverse with deceiving minors into spending for their loot boxes. The Chinese developer was subsequently banned from selling them to users under 16 without a parent’s express consent, paid a $20 million fine to the FTC, and was also subject to the following stipulations:
- Prohibited from selling loot boxes using virtual currency without providing an option for consumers to purchase them directly with real money;
- Prohibited from misrepresenting loot box odds, prices and features;
- Required to disclose loot box odds and exchange rates for multi-tiered virtual currency;
- Required to delete any personal information previously collected from children under 13 unless they obtain parental consent to retain such data; and
- Required to comply with COPPA, including its notice and consent requirements.
Rare US W ?
But the adults, they weren’t deceived in any way. Hoyo scammed them fair and square.
Ban the entire business model.
No laws against that (lootboxing), yet, and I doubt EA doesn’t have their lobbyists against such laws if enacted. It’s also something that has existed so long as to become a cornerstone of mobile gaming… well, a cornerstone outside of the stupid Voodoo dot-io kind, anyways. While extremely unethical IMO I wouldn’t call it any more deceptive than any regular casino, that is.
I don’t understand. For spending money one requires banking/card information. How children will get their guardian’s banking details without their consent?
Have you paid for things on mobile in-app? The operating system stores your info behind a password (or biometric) because adults (non-gambling as well) also hate having to memorize 16 digits flawlessly every time they needed to make payments.
Why would parents’ payment info be stored in child’s device or user account?
Not everyone buys a separate device for their children or knows how to/can set up a user account.
Then why tf a game is responsible for their monetory loss? Children are susceptible to many more scams. And on top of that taking such privacy invasive ‘measure’ to solve it doesn’t make sense either. Children can even upload patent’s ids if parents are so careless anyway.
Regardless of who’s responsible, children should not be gambling. Why is everyone magnifying “responsibility”? Scamming children is illegal and having them gamble is/should also be illegal. I’ll also link you https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/14325340.
Children can even upload patent’s ids
- We don’t even know they’re gonna use IDs to verify. Steam just uses a birthdate dropdown to comply with legal things.
- No, it takes a lot more carelessness for children to be able to find parents’ IDs in the wild.
Scamming children is illegal. Solution isn’t banning children or requiring id to compromise others’ privacy too (who for example play without gambling). This whole thing is bs.
- people store id in their phone most of the time.
Ignorance is not an excuse for bad parenting.
Damn, got 'em. Actually, they deserve to lose $16,000 while raising a gambling addict because they didn’t pull up their bootstraps and micromanage everything their preteen does in “that colorful game they play.”
Mate, asking under-13s to get parent permission is provoking that good parenting you seem to care about anyway—what on earth is the problem?
Parental controls (or just not inputting card details into a phone the child has access to) is a fairly effective way to prevent the child spending the parent’s money without then knowing. Micromanagement is not typically considered good parenting; however showing interest in, and having some knowledge of, what your child spends significant time doing is.
TDLR: “If you don’t give us PII information within a made up deadline, we will deny you access to any content you paid in the past.”
A settlement with the FTC is not some “made up deadline” Hoyo can change.
TBF the FTC is currently the least legitimate it has ever been as an organization
The settlement—negotiations finished January 17, 2025—was before Trump’s inauguration and the illegal firings.
Blame the US for declaring that US minors are too stupid and US parents too neglectful to pay attention to what is purchased online.
They have to kick off kids from their game, legally, and nearly all mobile and online games that have any way to spend real money will be doing the same within the next year.
Largest simp/grindwage DB ever
Yeah because they intentionally sexualise their extremely youthful characters
… And promote gambling.
wait how exactly are the kids sexualized? i know there’s like one or two, but are they actually sexualized canonically?
erm aktually they’re 2000 years old
Ha. I hope it kills it.
people under 18 will just jerk off to the girls instead of spending money on the game
Deleting friends lists seems pretty extreme for being late to verify your age? What age are they requiring? 18?
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Dang there is a lot of hate for this game here, like it’s definitely not the best game ever but it is one of the most compelling mobile experiences out there, with a decent story that has some great moments, and it can absolutely be played completely for free without missing out on much. The only thing spending money is good for is specific characters and weapons, none of which are required, and you can absolutely save up from playing for free and get almost any of those characters/weapons without spending a dime.
It’s not for everyone but I feel like this game gets a lot of hate simply for the Chinese origin, cartoony style, and microtransactions without any actual knowledge of what it’s like to play it.
When it comes to gacha games or even just Asian developed games in general, Lemmy is equally as bad as Twitter, maybe even worse. Not only in hostility, but also in making comments on things that are just outright wrong or completely ignorant because they don’t play the game and literally never will.
I don’t play Genshin anymore (stopped playing around the time of the “Rosaria Nerf Incident” because I wanted to play other games), but when I did play it, it was pretty fun. The gacha did not feel forced, I never spent a dime on the game and never felt like I needed to. The community was fine when you ignored the Twitter people.
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What the fuck are you talking about. This is an insane take.
Killing off your largest player base. Smooth.
