Judge Labson then left to her 4 million dollar summer home in Aspen that she recently bought for $1 from an anonymous but major Google stockholder.

HoSpanky wrote on Jan 11, 2022, 17:03:
I don't see this as any different from Blind Boxes for toys

Or every collectible card game since Magic: The Gathering. Or Star Wars and baseball cards before them. I think those are more akin to gambling than video game loot boxes, since you're paying real money for unknown payouts. On the video game side -- is it gambling every time a video game has a random number generator, like when you step on a hut in Civilization and you don't know if you're going to get free technology or a stack of barbarians? Or when you kill bad guys and random coins, weapons and armor fall out? Or are boxes with keys specifically what make it gambling? I think if you're going to take it to court you'll need more than message board randos declaring a game is "obviously gambling", and you'd have to work with the definitions laid out in a jurisdiction's gambling laws.

Sepharo wrote on Jan 11, 2022, 14:30:
He said "gumball machines" but I expect he probably meant the capsule toy machines next to the gumball machine. Which do operate pretty much exactly like lootboxes. You're guaranteed something is inside the box, but not necessarily the item you want. You have to buy more if you're trying to complete a collection or get a specific piece.

Never did win the Spongebob jellyfishing sticker. Curse you, sticker machine.

Ozmodan wrote on Jan 11, 2022, 14:52:
It is obviously gambling as anyone with any common sense can see.

Unfortunately, common sense isn't very common.

I don't see this as any different from Blind Boxes for toys, and those are legal. Literally, if you don't know precisely what you are buying, it's gambling. It's been around for forever, but now that it's in video games, NOW parents care?

As with many patents, it should be dismissed simply because "now it's being done on a computer" isn't really doing something particularly differently.

*throws wine glass*
What is a lootbox?
A miserable little
pile of gambling.

Sepharo wrote on Jan 11, 2022, 14:30:
He said "gumball machines" but I expect he probably meant the capsule toy machines next to the gumball machine. Which do operate pretty much exactly like lootboxes. You're guaranteed something is inside the box, but not necessarily the item you want. You have to buy more if you're trying to complete a collection or get a specific piece.

A lot of gum ball machines which are placed in restaurants or back in the day rental stores would offer a prize if you drew, say, a black gum ball. I'd imagine that's what he was referring to.

It is obviously gambling as anyone with any common sense can see.

Cutter wrote on Jan 11, 2022, 14:19:

loomy wrote on Jan 11, 2022, 12:27:
it's definitely gambling, but so are gumball machines, so the laws are just loose

No, they're not. You're not guaranteed anything beyond a gumball, and that's precisely what you receive. Lootboxes promote prizes in a manner that make it seem like you have a good chance at receiving something special when 99% of the time you end up with garbage. You understand you may not win that special prize precisely because it IS a gamble.

He said "gumball machines" but I expect he probably meant the capsule toy machines next to the gumball machine. Which do operate pretty much exactly like lootboxes. You're guaranteed something is inside the box, but not necessarily the item you want. You have to buy more if you're trying to complete a collection or get a specific piece.

https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/washington/wawdce/2:2016cv01941/240392/123

Full case history here but sort of broadly

1) 2017 case was brought forth
2) 2018 case sent to arbitration
3) arbitration basically destroyed the case
4) 2019 appeal of arbitration
5) half of the counts are dismissed with prejudice by judge (cannot refile)
6) today the rest of the counts are dismissed with prejudice
7) this kills the class action status of the case as well

loomy wrote on Jan 11, 2022, 12:27:
it's definitely gambling, but so are gumball machines, so the laws are just loose

No, they're not. You're not guaranteed anything beyond a gumball, and that's precisely what you receive. Lootboxes promote prizes in a manner that make it seem like you have a good chance at receiving something special when 99% of the time you end up with garbage. You understand you may not win that special prize precisely because it IS a gamble.

It sounds to me like the plaintiffs didn't present their facts well. And/or the defense didn't have to try very hard. For something like this they would have needed to detail everything about the lootboxes in question, from the percentages of rare items to the secondary currency required to buy many of them, so on and so forth.

loomy wrote on Jan 11, 2022, 12:27:
it's definitely gambling, but so are gumball machines, so the laws are just loose

it's definitely gambling, but so are gumball machines, so the laws are just loose