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You'll need to pay to edit your Monster Hunter Wilds character beyond the first free redo
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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This is just 'it makes money so it can't be wrong.' People chose to get scammed, ergo, not a scam. Zero concern for how they were manipulated into it. In fact, you've explicitly told me, any manipulation is 100% fine, unless it's overt lying. Hooray for the unlimited right to coax money from rubes!
You don't have to care, because you're immune to propaganda.
Surely that abusive source of easy cash won't affect the options available to you! It's only half the goddamn industry, so far! So long as a game exists, where you can just own it and not be hassled to keep tipping the robot, it's fine. It's fine! Who gives one solitary shit about this hundred-billion-dollar behemoth convincing your kids that addiction and frustration are what video games are for?
Who I am, to say someone is being taken advantage of, is an empathetic human being with working eyeballs. Calling people stupid for being taken advantage of blaming the victim.
That's not the same thing. A scam is when you get something other than what was advertised. These games don't do that, you get exactly what you pay for. It's just that they're charging for things they shouldn't charge for.
I'm a better parent than that. I don't let my kids play that nonsense, and I don't think other parents should as well. I make it very clear to other parents that we won't be playing those games and why.
But at the end of the day, it's not my place to force people to think like me. Just like I can choose for my kids what they can play, they can do the same.
People should be free to make stupid decisions as long as they know all the facts. Go ask anyone who plays these games and they'll admit they're a bad deal. Yet they play them. They're not getting scammed, they know exactly what they're doing. It's just like someone who smokes cigarettes, they know they're expensive and bad for their health, but they like how they make them feel.
A scam is when you pay money for bullshit. If someone convinces you to want bullshit, it's still bullshit.
You recognize a threat to children and their parents... and your entire response is limited to people you know, personally.
Systemic problems are not about you.
It's still a threat, to millions of people. It's half the god-damned industry. You know it's your place to say "this is bullshit," because you're telling other parents how to raise their damn wiener kids, and you're warning your own kids that it's bullshit!
But god forbid we use any sort of collective action to stop greedy assholes from monetizing innate human shortcomings. People know it's bullshit, but do it anyway, therefore... it's not bullshit. They're not victims, somehow. They're not addicted to oh my fucking god you used cigarettes as a positive example what is wrong with your entire worldview. Every interaction with you is like a fascinating glimpse of an alternate universe where harm is made-up. How dare we try to prevent it!
No, a scam involves fraud, which means misrepresenting a product.
No, I'm telling them how I raise mine and why, and only when it's relevant.
If you do something with full knowledge, then no, you're not a victim.
I think it's a fantastic example. Everyone agrees they're harmful, even smokers, yet they continue to use them despite safer alternatives existing. Does that mean they're too stupid to make their own decisions and we should ban them? No. We should prevent kids from using them, but adults should be free to make their own decisions.
I don't want to live in a nanny state where the government decides what's good for me. I want to be treated like an adult, with the responsibilities and consequences that come with that, provided I have accurate information. Instead of banning things, our governments should restrict themselves to advising (e.g. warning labels on cigarettes) and only step in when there's an actual crime (e.g. fraud), and come down hard on the offender.
Calling victims stupid is blaming victims. Cigarette smokers aren't morons - they were given a chemical dependency by forces that didn't lie, exactly, but nonetheless fucking obviously tricked them into a chemical dependency. If your standard is "misrepresentation" then every smoker ever was duped by misrepresenting smoking as safe or cool or sexy or whateverthefuck lever got them to fork over their money to huff carcinogens.
Every game that charges money inside the game is misrepresenting the value of whatever bullshit it's selling. Games make you value arbitrary bullshit! That's what makes them games! The entire fucking point is made-up rules for arbitrary rewards! Attaching a dollar value to that is inherently abusive. There is no ethical version of that exploitation of human shortcomings.
Will this sandwich kill you? Who knows! Cherish the mystery. It's your god-given right to guzzle unpasteurized milk.
Drink up, and good fucking luck.
I never said they were. I said they know it's bad for them, yet they continue to smoke cigarettes despite safer options existing, like vapes, patches, and gums. Yet they continue with cigarettes because they prefer them.
I'm not talking about how they got addicted, but what they choose to manage that addiction. They know their options, and with taxes, they choose one of the most expensive options.
It's their right to make that choice for themselves.
There's no objective measure of value for something like this. They present exactly what you're buying, and you get what's advertised, nothing more, nothing less. That's a clear cut, informed decision.
That said, I do draw a line at psychological tricks, like artificial scarcity or other types of FOMO. That's manipulation and I would be fine with prosecuting that because the customer is being tricked. If something will remain in the game, it should always be available to get. Something like paying to respec a character is dumb, but shouldn't be illegal.
It absolutely is, provided I demonstrate that I understand the risks (e.g. sign a waiver with clear language), and the company does its best to keep things sanitary.
The higher the risk, the higher the burden on the provider to keep things as sanitary as possible.
I firmly believe people should be allowed to do whatever they want provided it doesn't harm less m others and they are properly informed of the risks.
Because addressing systemic problems would require you to examine your trivial worldview. Why would all these people choose an expensive problem that slowly kills them? Oh well, must be their own choice. The morons.
And you are calling them morons, by consistently saying it's a stupid decision. Why would rational people make irrational choices, by the millions? Shut up is why. Shut up and never ask questions, because only individual choices matter, and large scale individual choices can't have systemic implications.
You're defending cancer sticks.
Oh, sorry, in context, you're also talking about games, which fundamentally make you value worthless nonsense. THAT'S WHAT MAKES THEM GAMES. Any sane definition of video games must conclude that they make you value objectively worthless arbitrary goals.
Why.
How.
On what basis.
How the fuck do you split hairs about these specific things, versus your libertarian insistence that only overt lying could possibly be wrong?
There's nothing sanitary about unsanitized goods. That's... do you speak English? Some things will kill people. Some things are just plain bad, actually. Some things are a risk to millions of people, for no reward whatsoever, and only confused cranks insist otherwise. Living in a complex modern society requires acknowledging that driving too fast is dangerous, and botulism kills people.
Saying a decision is stupid isn't the same as calling a person stupid, smart people do stupid things all the time. I'm saying something like "mouth feel" is a stupid reason to dramatically increase your risk of lung cancer, especially when vapes exist.
People should be free to make stupid decisions.
That's unfair and you know it. Video games can provide a lot of value.
Yes there's trash out there, and that exists in every field. Look at people getting into CCGs like MtG, wine collecting (esp when wine experts can't reliably tell "good" from "bad"), or any other form of hobby with a high price ceiling.
It's about power imbalance. Scarcity in MP games (e.g. cosmetics) is completely artificial because the game files continue to include those products so you can see others wear them, so the only reason to stop selling them is to inflate their price.
Can you truly make an informed decision under time pressure? No. The only reason for the scarcity is manipulation, hence why it's wrong. That's why high pressure sales is successful, and also why I oppose it.
I totally understand companies choosing to stop selling a product. I have my own views on how that should be handled (e.g. they give up any copyright protections), but if they're still maintaining a product and it costs them nothing to keep selling it (i.e. no ongoing licensing costs), they should keep it available for purchase.
There's a huge difference between unpasteurized milk and unsanitary milk. When I say "sanitary," I mean things like washing/disinfecting utters before milking, quickly cooling the milk and keeping it cold though shipping, ensuring clean jugs, testing cows for disease, etc. I expect more stringent controls for unpasteurized milk than pasteurized because you don't have that pasteurization process to cover up your mistakes.
Pasteurization alters the taste of the milk, to the point that I refuse to drink ultra-pasteurized milk (i.e. shelf-stable milk) and actually prefer powdered milk to it. Unpasteurized milk is delicious, but pasteurized whole milk is close enough, so that's what I buy.
Well yeah, it presents a risk to others, so it should be controlled. Your rights end where mine begin, and you driving too fast presents an unacceptable risk to my (and others') life.
It certainly does, and should obviously be avoided... That's why we have food safety standards and health inspections, to inform the public of any dangers and shut down dangerous operations.
That said, if you want to take the risk, be my guest. I sometimes buy from unregulated street vendors, knowing full well the risks of doing so.
'Playing games is healthy' will not counter the fact that points aren't real. Games make you... care about... arbitrary worthless crap. No general defense of the benefits of play will make the made-up goals... real. It's a game.
Oh, so you're actually fine with legal consequences for manipulative antipatterns; you're just struggling to maintain a prior conclusion as the slow realization undermines any consistent rationale. Good. Keep thinking about it. Hey, you know which other mobile-trash gimmicks inflate the price of frivolous nonsense with zero marginal cost? All of them.
That's a super subjective take. One person's trash is another person's treasure. Who's to say your collection of beanie babies holds any more value than my collection of achievements in Steam? It's entirely subjective.
Yes, because at a certain point, manipulation constitutes an initiation of force against a user. That point isn't "paid character respecs" though, but a consistent pattern of putting people under pressure so they have to make a decision before they can get complete information. If they allow refunds within a generous enough amount of time (i.e. if you drunkenly buy a bunch of cosmetics or something then request a refund when sober), then it's probably fine. However, I believe these types of rules should be set by court precedent, not legislatures, legislatures merely define broadly what constitutes "force" in a variety of contexts to give judges and juries something to build off of.
That's still shuffling unrelated definitions of "value."
You understand Achievements have no intrinsic worth. The fact you've been made to care about them anyway, is what I am talking about. You were made to care about collecting a thousand unicorn skulls, because the game dangled a cleverly-named merit badge for doing so. Dollar value: zilch. Totally arbitrary nonsense, could've been anything else.
Kinda weird to frame it with the non-aggression principle, but sure, yes, good. These systems exploit cognitive vulnerabilities to shortcut our decision-making and trick people out of real money. Generally for things that cost the seller nothing... like editing your own character on your own computer. Any game taking real money is inevitably a collection of these abusive antipatterns, for that kind of manufactured desire.
Nitpicking individual cases is letting the trees obscure the forest - these are game studios. Finding novel ways to manipulate customers is their job. Only a sweeping solution could possibly work.
For me, yeah, I agree. For someone else, maybe they do have value. Achievements are a particularly stupid example because you can automate getting them, but my point is that digital things can have value. Maybe they're sentimental (I did a hard thing and this proves it), or maybe they're resellable (rare item in a game, which can be traded).
Something physical that you value could have no value to someone else. Value is subjective.
As a libertarian, that's generally how I frame things, because if I can't justify it under the NAP, it's probably me forcing my values on others.
True, but isn't that true of pretty much everything if we zoom out enough? Politicians want to manipulate voters to get (re)elected, restaurants want to manipulate patrons to return, etc. We all have a selfish interest in getting others to do what we want.
There has to be a line at which point self-interest is "wrong" to the extent that we should use government to regulate it. I use the NAP to reason about that point, others use some other (often subjective) metric. This same line of reasoning could be used to ban porn games, games with self-harm, or games critical of a government.
Banning things is generally not what governments should be doing, they should practice restraint and only step in when someone's rights are violated or at risk of being violated.
Fixed the edit.
They literally cannot have the form of value in question. They're not real. However much you desire a goal in soccer, it's just a ball going through some posts. In some sense the entire concept is imaginary. We don't count when the ball goes back out. We could - we don't. It's arbitrary. All games work this way.
Any sense of pride and accomplishment, or whatever other justification you can name for how hard you enjoy your shelf of digital geegaws, is a product of the game exploiting your psychology. That's why affixing a price tag is immoral. You can be made to val-- to want, any damn thing. The more intrinsically worthless, the better... from the seller's perspective. You don't print a deed for the Brooklyn Bridge on the good paper.
My guy, the key word in that sentence was "novel." The point is that these abuses you now recognize as abuses will just be laundered into different forms. Like how we finally got rid of lootboxes, and the same problems ramped up under different gimmicks.
And now lootboxes are back. The only form of this bullshit that everyone recognized as bullshit, and they're just bringin' it right back, because hey guess what, your choices don't matter. They can tell you the stick gives you cancer and enough people will still buy it because they were tricked into forming an addiction.
Only legislation will fix this.
As if describing a hat with a timer as violence is obvious and rational.
You're trying to mesh the ideology you consider an identity with conclusions that feel undeniable. One of these things will not survive. In this thread, you've described retired cosmetics as a violation of people's rights - and justifying that is a stretch, when informed consent is the only tool in your bag.