890
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
Virtual currency that you purchase with real money should have been banned a long, long time ago.
Should get rid of crypto while we're at it.
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.
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.
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.
Generally agree but where does that leave us with the system that I think EVE started where can buy an in-game token for £15, redeem it for a month subscription or trade them with other players.
I'm sure they could draft something that allows that sort of thing still. The currency in games like EVE/WoW/RuneScape is technically an in-game item rather than a currency for a storefront.
If that sort of thing would end up being abused, then it'd have to go obviously.
That is the problem I can see though, allowing one allows pushing it too. Games start to sell a shitload of cash shop things with the same method, EVE seems to be trying to do that too last time I played it.
Ban it all then. I'd personally ban all extra transactions in games to be honest, but we can start with removing virtual currency.
If the option was all or nothing I would certainly be on the ban it all side of things.
@Korhaka@sopuli.xyz @warm@kbin.earth Maybe that's the argument: if you can trade an in-game item it is different than account-linked items, because you "possess" the item somehow.
Yeah, I can see it working until they come up with some workaround. Like you can buy currency, trade it as much as you want, but then that is used to buy cometics. So probably best to just ban the sale of it altogether.
I'm on the fence about this one, since some games reward you with premium currency for doing well (looking at the finals). Sure, I suppose they could just give you $1 credit, which is definitely more clear, but it still feels strange. Maybe I'm just too used to in-game currencies
Exactly, they can just give you credit if they want to use that strategy. These games are just designed in such ways to get people to spend as much money as they can. Removing the virtual currencies makes the actual spend much more obvious, reducing the effect it can have.
I think people will still spend a lot as they are far far too comfortable with games just offering skins for $20 now as the norm. It's disgusting really where we are at with games like this these days. Remember when you just earned a skin through playing the game?
Shit, some games are just winning currency. Look at “social gambling”. It’s just gambling without the ability to win your money back.
There’s an imbalance of power in it.
You can spend $10 for 1000vbucks or whatever. That costs you. There’s no way of you getting those vbucks on demand exactly when you want it.
The game provider on the other hand, can shit out vbucks until the cows come home. Doesn’t cost them a thing.
In some cases, free credits make them money. Heavily discounted credits for your first purchase entices new buyers into breaking the “first purchase barrier”, which drastically makes it easier to sell a second time, even if the price is 10x.
Free credits can also lure players who have had a bad streak back, and back to spending money.
In game currencies exist to detach you from the true cost of playing games, and to give you the feeling of being rewarded with something of value.
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.
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?
... World
You are my world fam
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.
come to the EU! 🙂
I'd love to, problem is I am crippled and broke.
The what? OP, the what???? DON'T LEAVE ME HANGING LIKE THIS!!!!
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
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
Is this Fortnite? Can you win these points? Otherwise this legislation sort of defeats the purpose of having these points, I think.
That’s not a bad thing, obviously. I just wonder what they will come with next to obfuscate what you’re actually paying.
If you can buy a currency with real money they need to show this. In fortnite its not possible to win these coins (outside of battlepass rewards but these basically just refund your battlepass costs)
If you can buy a currency with real money they need to show this.
I understood this.
No idea why I got a downvote. My point is that these points in games primarily serve to obfuscate the actual price of things. That’s why there’s now legislation to prevent this. From the perspective of the devs (or whoever is responsible here), the points then lose their use, though. Unless they still have some other use.
The second effect is gained from having something cost 800V but only allowing you to buy packs of 1000V.
Then you end up with 200V burning in your pocket that you can't spend. So you buy another 1000V, spend another 800V and now you're stuck with 400V.
So instead of spending 7.5 euro for 800V you spent 40 euro for 4000V to get to an even 0V left.
In the EU, you also have to be able to buy exactly as much as you need
Interesting, these are the only options I get on epic store from Sweden
edit:
As someone who's never touched Fortnite before I didn't find the right place to check. I can pay the exact purchase amount needed when checking out an item.
Is that when you pick a specific thing to buy?
There was one game I played where you could buy points ahead of time starting at 1000 for $10 and 2000 for $15 and so on but when you went to buy an item that was 800 points you could also buy it for $8. I think the 1000 for $10 was there to show the higher ones were a better 'deal' and if you did buy that way you had the 200 left over dark pattern.
This was in the US and it is the only game I remember doing it that way, and it was long enough ago that I don't remember which one it was.
You used to have to do that to buy indie games on the Xbox 360. And the points would expire if you didn't use them in time.
I don't think they understand that points can be purchased with money at different ratios or even acquired in game without spending money.
As long as they display the value based on the most expensive way to purchase the points I think it is a good think. Especially if you are buying at that time with cash for the points.
You get v bucks in the free battle pass as well.
IIRC, the battle pass has some vbucks for free. Otherwise, Fortnite founders could earn vbucks in Save The World.
Now, I wonder what math they use to show the equivalent price given that you get more vbucks per euro with the more expensive packages. By the looks of it, they use the lowest package for the calculations.
EDIT: Still, the fact that you cant just buy it directly with currency sucks.
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Yes, or you could just when I played. In fact you got enough points to pay for the battle pass the next season so in effect you paid once and then didn’t have to pay again if you didn’t buy cosmetics.
Sauce? (aka "can someone reference the EU regulation that did this")
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this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
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