this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
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[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 14 points 6 days ago

I remember back before I swore off games with microtransactions i was playing one and wanted to buy some in-game currency to support the developer, but it was one of those games with multiple in-game currencies where you buy currency A with real money or sometimes earn small amounts in-game, you buy currency B with currency A at a difficult to calculate exchange rate, and currency C is only purchased with currency B at another difficult to calculate exchange rate, so ultimately it was so heavily obfuscated how many dollars I needed to spend for the small goal I had that I gave up and decided maybe the developer wasn't worth supporting after all

[–] xpey@piefed.social 155 points 1 week ago

This is a huge win against predatory monetization

One more step towards removing shitty in-game currency with awful set bundles and conversion that forces you to spend more than you want to

[–] warm@kbin.earth 117 points 1 week ago (13 children)

Virtual currency that you purchase with real money should have been banned a long, long time ago.

[–] Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social 21 points 1 week ago (19 children)

Should get rid of crypto while we're at it.

[–] Bullerfar@lemmy.world 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I would Like to see you try.. How would you bann blockchain tech? The reason why bitcoin exists, believe it or not, is for you. To have an alternative to current world banking, which is screwing us all over with fake valuta. A factional number on your bank account, that is worth whatever the banks say it is. Bitcoin is an alternative to world banking, so we wouldn't end up in a financial crisis like 2008 again.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Bitcoin was supposed to be an anonymous, secure, digital currency.

If you actually want that, its called monero, not bitcoin, and even it has problems.

Bitcoin, ethereum, all the forks and clones of them with different stupid names?

Not anonymous, not secure.

Oh, right, and they're all massively tied into that financial/monetary speculation machine that they were supposed to be an alternative to.

Now, you just have a crypto balance that is whatever your coin exchange says it is, untill oops, turns out they were double holding 'your' coins in some way, you actually have none, or, a market swing or crash wipes out your 'store of value', because you actually invested in a complicated ponzi scheme.

For all the bullshit fraud and dangerous speculation of traditional finance, the crypto space is a million times worse.

Crypto now largely just is a speculative asset.

It never took off as an actual medium of exchange for anything other than basically illegal guns and drugs... its just a new, more insane kind of stock market, a new kind of speculative asset.

Every crypto video game is a fucking joke.

NFTs are a fucking joke.

Everything you dislike about traditional banking and finance?

Crypto is that, but much worse.

[–] bufalo1973@piefed.social 4 points 6 days ago

The very moment you can get more coins by wasting energy, disk space or "digging" it in any kind of way means that will be used to speculate.

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[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The biggest problem with virtual currency is that they intentionally price it so that you can't easily determine how much something is.

If they're charging $50 for 7500 coins and something costs 300 coins, how much are you spending? It's not easy to know without taking time to do the calculations.

Some games, Path of Exile for example, make it easy to know how much things are even using their currency. 100 points is $10, 200 points is $20... so it's very easy to figure out that a skin that costs 125 coins costs $1.25.

[–] imecth@fedia.io 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Most people aren't buying their virtual currency 1:1 in the path of exile shop, they buy it through FOMO bundles which distorts its value just the same. For example right now you can buy into the early access, but here's the kicker at 30$ it also comes with 300 points, so what's the value of the early access or the points?

Path of exile has other positives aspects going for it, you can finish it without spending any money and it's not P2W, although there's a pay for convenience buy-in that costs about the same as a regular game. But its micro transactions and virtual currencies are as predatory as everyone else with overpriced items, rotating sales and gambling boxes.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

All of the packages always give you points at exactly the $10 = 100 points ratio. You can’t buy points anywhere that is more or less than that. The supporter packs give bonus mtx on top of the points, but if you spend any money you’re getting exactly 10 points per dollar.

PoE definitely has some predatory aspects, but price transparency isn’t one of them. 100 points is always $10 so it’s trivial to understand the actual cost of an mtx. An 80 point item is $8, very transparent.

Compare to Fortnite, where 1000 vbucks is $8.99, so how much is an mtx that costs 1200 vbucks? You need a calculator.

[–] imecth@fedia.io 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

1$ = 10 points only works for dollars, here's the german version for example, you still need a calculator.
The moment you can buy more shit with the same amount of money it derides the 1 dollar = 10 points. Btw if you buy the more expensive packs you can forego physical items for more poe vbucks.

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[–] merdaverse@lemmy.zip 80 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's funny that they would rather handle the EU case differently, rather than give in to the Brussels effect and just show prices everywhere. Just shows how much money this little scam is making them.

[–] dax@feddit.org 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I'm sure they have the statistics that tells them how many purchases aren't being completed once users start seeing the real price. It really puts things into context. 7,50€ for what looks like a lego skin?

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 71 points 1 week ago (2 children)

From the American POV:

Clear and accurate pricing for digital transactions in a hypercapitalist system?

... believe it or not, 'socialism', straight to the antifa terrorist gulag for you.

Christ I hate living here.

Peter Fifa told me that i'm very smart, wow what a smart president you are, he said. He told me about his video gem, Fifa. Wow, i said, that's a lot of people in this game, they can't all be free you know. Many people like to unpack FIFA's, i heard. If people knew how much money they ~waste~ spend, maybe they spend less. What happens to Peter then? Yachts are not cheap fellow patriots. Antifa is gonna win if we suppord these dirty EU tactics, very billionaire phobic they are, nasty people.

[–] pulsey@feddit.org 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I'd love to, problem is I am crippled and broke.

[–] craigers@lemmy.world 48 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] petersr@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago

You are my world fam

[–] rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 37 points 1 week ago

The what? OP, the what???? DON'T LEAVE ME HANGING LIKE THIS!!!!

[–] abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 34 points 1 week ago

I don't really care about the shitshow that is ttye current state of gaming, but even I can see that this is a big win

[–] carrylex@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Sauce? (aka "can someone reference the EU regulation that did this")

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