this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3073672

In this whole article there are only two paragraphs that are not useless word salad:

The government now wants to set a cap on how much money each player can spend within a title, according to the draft.

The regulations also asked that game publishers operating abroad respect Chinese laws and culture and refrain from endangering national security, without elaborating. Tencent is the world’s largest gaming publisher, with investments in studios from Epic Games Inc. in the US to Supercell in Europe. The agency will take feedback on the proposed rules for a month, without saying when they take effect.


Bonus reddit gamer cope:

I can get behind prohibiting these sorts of mechanics. Don't think they really add anything of substance. Though I would prefer that companies and the industry self-regulate rather than having the government step in, but that's unlikely to happen.

Look at this idiot that believes in corporations regulating themselves. I bet he thinks children who believe in Santa (a very real phenomenon whom I once saw in a mall) are stupid.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Hell yeah.

One of the most toxic thing about a lot of online games is the practically infinite amounts of money you can spend. When they restricted children's access to them a couple years ago, I hoped the next step would be looking at spending caps.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago

I wonder if this will end up creating a Chinese "flavor" to games. Like how people look at Korean MMOs and say "it'll be grindy as fuck", people might look at Chinese games and go "Oh it'll have good drop rates."

[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Incoming horde of western gamers angry that China doesn't enforce regulations in foreign markets for their companies.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Western gamers would prefer to bled dry by corporations rather then being subject to asiatic authoriarianism.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This is their perfect moment, it hits everything they have ever wanted:

  • They directly benefit in clear and immediate fashion
  • They can claim to be victims of government oppression
  • They can be openly racist about it
[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago

Gacha paypigs crying loudly about how the CPC stopped them from financially ruining themselves by spending 5000 USD for a new waifu 5 times a year. How authoritarian.

Xi, please come for tcgs next, I want to build an mtg deck out of 4 booster packs because that's the max you can sell in a week, I'll import the Chinese ones if WotC refuses to follow Chinese regs in the "United States."

[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago

xi-clap

Also, it's been funny seeing libs react to this. I've seen a bunch of them say stuff like: "wow, the monstrous CCP finally does something right", lmao. "Monstrous" they say, while they actively shame people into voting for a guy who's supporting a live genocide. Propagandized clowns.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago

Common China W. Hopefully gacha game operators from China must comply with these laws even with global servers.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago

they're targeting gamers. gamers.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (1 children)

CCP ENDS GENSHIN IMPACT IN BRUTAL CRACKDOWN!!! soypoint-2

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago

Based, kill gambling

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago

To be fair, that lib was saying 'in an ideal world people would be nice but they won't be so I can get behind this'. Which all things considered is what the actual liberal position should be. The one gamer who understands lootboxes exist due to unregulated self interest by large corporations.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The regulations also asked that game publishers operating abroad respect Chinese laws and culture and refrain from endangering national security, without elaborating.

My impression of this line is "we would like you to also follow these laws when publishing your games abroad and not to use 2 different monetisation models, one in china vs one in the west, in order to milk the anglos pockets because they have very poor regulators."

My guess here is that they're trying to rein in the gaming industry to extend Chinese soft-power. They want the monetisation models to be more popular and they want these models to be used by their companies globally. They want Chinese games to have less awful models than western games as a means of affecting gamer opinions of China.

It's a good idea. West will either ignore it and their soft power will grow, or the west will do something about the models in their own industries.

Gaming is the new hollywood imo. It should be the focus of soft power growth.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I agree. It would be really funny though if unequal exchange could be overturned solely through exporting gacha games though.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

Century of Humiliation but it's just chinese people pointing and laughing at gullible westerners spending thousands for pngs of waifus.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

To effectively weaponise the medium they need to move off of gacha games and into single player games that have a significantly larger cultural impact.

The gacha games have no cultural impact. The GaaS multiplayer pvp games like cod, overwatch and so on also have no cultural impact. They aren't influencing people's minds or opinions much if at all.

The games that do are the singleplayer immersive experiences, because the IMMERSION is the part that sucks people into being influenced by the story, environment, world, etc.

The biggest cultural impact of call of duty is in 12 year olds telling you they fucked your mom, and the biggest cultural impact of Overwatch is pornography.

The single player titles have all of the cultural influence, they are where minds get shaped.

anti-shinra-action an-tifa

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

This would actually kill most, if not all Chinese game developers if they for some reason decided to commit suicide and respect this law globally

Depending on what the cap is, 70-90% of a free game's revenue comes from "whales", the outlier large spenders

As the libs like to say, this one is actually destroying their own industries to save the minds of Western children

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, it would do everyone a favor if the gacha industry imploded.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't think we need to defend the most egregious form of video game revenue for the sake of revolution.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I deleted comment cause didn't want to get into this but I do feel gaming companies are overemphasized here because people here are gamers and terminally online

Like market reforms have resulted in infinitely worse things than gacha games. Poor conditions in factories, mines, competitive schooling system, etc.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Good point.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Nah they'd find a new monetisation model that's less cancerous.

And that's a good thing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Free market would mean they'd be beat out by other companies that don't follow the freemium model

The whales subsidize the game so ~95+% of the player base can play for free

Pretty much all the top PvP PC games are free nowadays with cosmetic transactions

https://newzoo.com/resources/rankings/top-20-pc-games

Contradictions popping up now with trying to enforce socialist values in a country of private corporations participating in global capitalist markets

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Free market would mean they'd be beat out by other companies that don't follow the freemium model

No I disagree. There are plenty of games that don't follow the freemium model that achieve critical success.

They will lose in the GaaS space. That doesn't mean they will lose in gaming overall. Even then I'm not convinced they will lose in the GaaS space with a spending limit, they'll lose WHALES in the GaaS space but that has absolutely no bearing on whether they would lose average players.

With that said, the games do not have to be "top pvp" games. Single player games have significantly more cultural impact anyway, nobody gives a fuck about the story in any pvp games which grossly limits their ability to be any form of soft-power.

If this kills the GaaS market the industry will just transition to a different type of game to produce that isn't GaaS, which is a good thing because the GaaS market of games is widely regarded as shit even if everyone is playing them between the releases of the good impactful games.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

What you say about whales is true. It's possible that the law does not affect how Chinese publishers operate in the "free world" though. That would be very funny.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The regulations asked that game publishers operating abroad respect Chinese laws and culture and refrain from endangering national security, without elaborating.

Idk, sounds like they expect them to follow these laws globally.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Yeah you are right. For some reason I interpreted that as a message for non-Chinese publishers for when they operate in China.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

It wouldn't make sense for them to "ask" foreign companies operating in China to "respect" Chinese laws and culture. The laws also apply to those entities

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Ah, I hadn't considered reading it that way. Yeah, I'm actually not sure.

I could see it going either way now that you mention it. Damaging national security could be harming China's global image with predatory products from China or it could be harming the financial and mental well-being of Chinese people with predatory products brought into China from other countries.

I guess we'll have to see, since China is an actual democracy we won't know what the law will look like when finalized until the public has a chance to comment.

Edit: actually after reading GaveUp's comment I'm back to my original comment, any company operating in China would obviously need to follow the law within China, this is almost certainly about ensuring that mihoyo doesn't scuff up China's image with their predatory gacha stuff.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

Imagine gamers around the world using VPNs to connect to Genshin's Chinese servers because they don't have MTX anymore and were remade to make unlocking characters fun and interesting.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Unfathomably based, but Xi still needs to open the gamer gulags.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

do genshin impact first, i kind of want to play that

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

xi-pog

pogging out of my gourd

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The gamer genocide is real. Xi is coming for your waifus.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

My ~~Apes~~ Waifus, all gone! oooaaaaaaauhhh

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

What absolute loser is worried about "excessive" regulation of blatantly exploitative corporations?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

game publishers operating abroad respect Chinese laws and culture and refrain from endangering national security

The only thing I can think of that they might be referencing here is War Thunder Forums -style leaks of classified information.