Ethical and Fun?

Today I thought a look at a piece of recent gaming news could be interesting.

A couple of days ago, EA's VP of legal and government affairs, Kerry Hopkins, appeared in the UK before a parliamentary committee to talk about lootboxes. There has been a lot of press about them in the recent couple of years due to strong allegations that they prey on people with poor impulse control and indeed teach/train children to gamble.

At the hearing, Hopkins interrupted an MP to correct him that they “don't use the term lootboxes” at EA. This isn't only rude, but a blatant lie. EA has, black on white, used the term on multiple occasions, even as a selling point. Hopkins went on to state that EA now calls them “Surprise Mechanics” and that like Kinder eggs they are, “both ethical and fun”.

This went over as well as one could expect on the internet. Surprise mechanics is a, frankly bullshit, term that means nothing outside of a corporate boardroom. A nonsensical attempt to cover up their greedy, moneygrubbing ways.

Then we have ethical and fun... They don't get to state what is ethical. Not even a little bit, no more in fact than I can state that this blog post is ethical. That's up to you to decide. As for fun? Come on... pull the other one.

However, the sheer gall to compare their “surprise mechanics” with Kinder eggs and other toys with random content is galling and inaccurate. When you buy a Kinder egg, you know that you are getting a tasty chocolate treat, followed by a really cheap little toy. That's it. EA likes to put game winning elements into their boxes. Their products are devalued without the extra content they sell you separately in an expensive and random manner. Shame on you EA. Shame.

It is no surprise that EA and indeed certain other big publishers are getting desperate concerning lootboxes. They are enormously lucrative, raking in hundreds of millions in revenue each year, and

no business wants to loose that kind of money. That's obvious. They are however already illegal in the Netherlands and Belgium, and now the UK and US are looking hard at them.

Of course the AAA industry is scrambling to defend their garbage, that's a given, but the fact that EA is changing the name and calling them ethical demonstrates that they know the boxes are bad for people. Otherwise they would be defending them as they are, not trying to weasel out of the dilemma sideways, which is what they are doing.

No one else gets to do that, and EA is no different. A burglar can't stop the police by calling his activities a “surprise visit” and a “moral readjustment of wealth”, can he? No, of course not.

Time will tell how this will end, but I for one hope that the politicians have the ethical backbone to protect the people and not the corporations. For once.

That is it for this time, tune in again next time and until then, have a great week!