ticky
@ticky

TIL that a class action lawsuit regarding North Carolina consumer law may be the reason why Fortnite dropped loot boxes in 2019

We used to offer random item Loot Llamas in Fortnite: Save the World, which was an in-game purchase option where you wouldn’t always know what you were getting.

So we decided a better experience for players was to be upfront and outline the details of in-game purchases

with preliminary approval for a class action settlement, we’re awarding 1,000 V-Bucks to anyone that purchased a random Loot Llama

Uh-huh, "we decided", definitely.


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in reply to @ticky's post:

I'm fascinated that this means a) there's no admission of guilt here, but it seems plausible that this was in breech of North Carolina consumer law, which applies to them because they are incorporated in North Carolina, and b) this hasn't stopped anyone else because nationally and internationally the rules are even less clear on this stuff.

gambling laws in the netherlands and belgium are strict enough to also explicitly ban any game containing lootboxes, so i assume it would've fallen under this as well and would've been banned here until they removed their lootboxes

sadly we're not big enough to force game companies to actually remove lootboxes for their games..... usually it just results in games not being available here (which is still good!), and i wish these laws would be implemented in the entire EU so that we have more leverage against lootboxes

for reference, Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis is not available here, Lost Ark was unavailable when it launched but i see it now so maybe they made changes to their game, or (more likely) amazon struck a nasty deal with lawmakers to get an exemption....

also twitch predictions where you can gamble twitch's funny channel points on polls are also banned, even though it doesn't involve real money, because a streamer might attach physical rewards to redeeming a large amount of channel points, so if you live in one of a select few countries you can't interact or even SEE the prediction popup lol