Games

Just not buying something isn't a boycott. Don't buy bad games, and it's a good idea to include dark patterns in the criteria for what makes a game bad.

I've never bought or played one & have no plans to.

One of the reasons why Valheim is one of my favorite games these days... You buy it and then you play it... No loot boxes, no in game shop, Doesn't force you to be online and a minimal amount of RNG at all... But the grind is real though...

Do I have to start playing games with loot boxes before I can start boycotting them?

The only one I've ever played was overwatch, but overwatch 2 is garbage, so...

Yes.

I pretty much can't play anything any more because I refuse to play anything with loot boxes or timers or in-game currency.

There are very few games on Android you can just buy and play casually to relax for a few hours.

Definitely boycott paying real money for lootboxes or games with real money lootboxes.

If you're not paying, then it's just a factor to consider, the companies won't care about you much

I'm still waiting for a reliable way to pirate games with micro transactions and lootboxes.

Like, I know Assassin's Creed Odyssey has daily quests and a rotating cash shop, and that must be talking to some sort of server that isn't guaranteed to be there. Surely there's a way to mock that server?

Wasn't playing them in the first place. Also a Linux gamer, if you want a shooter. Isonzo. Easy Red 2 is alright too, not quite as polished as Isonzo but it does have vehicles in it and is more single player/coop focused than PvP.

Will me not buying lootbox microtransaction bullshit games make any difference to the industry? Almost certainly not. But it really doesn't matter much either. I can buy the few good games instead and just ignore what the rest of the industry is doing.

I think your voice could actually be better than your wallet on this.

For one, these games are free. So, are you harming the world by playing them and just not buying loot boxes? Minimally, at best. I also advise people enacting boycotts to represent vocal action around them. For instance, I called Target directly about my boycott when they ended DEI hiring.

You can also help lobby politicians to make clear how you feel on the issue. That can put a lot more panic on publishers. Politicians don’t have a strong reason to defend them - often it only gets ignored because they don’t think voters find it a significant issue. Even if you don’t get a federal ban, sometimes you can get state laws like limiting physical advertising; which can also sometimes spread to other states.

Basically, boycotting as a form of inaction, especially when it makes your days boring, isn’t necessarily an effective approach.

Already do.

You should not put your time or money into anything doing something that you don't like in the marketplace, because that's the only way it changes.

Many of us have been doing this from the beginning, but it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how gacha games work.

Most people do not pump loads of money into these. Many don’t pay anything at all. But those people are not the target audience. These companies are going after the whales. Basically gambling addicts who will destroy their entire lives to pump everything they have into it.

Which is exactly why these games either need to be illegal, or the law needs to put caps on how much individuals are permitted to spend on these.

Just play "Team Fortress 2 Classic" or "Open Fortress" both are really cool community projects without crates, or any micro transactions as far as I know.

Don't pre-order and don't buy games that have loot boxes or other in-app purchases.

I've been boycotting them for years yet we all can see how that turned out

I've bought singleplayer games with loot boxes and no anticheat and just used cheat engine to get the ingame currency for them. I think I'm doing my part.

Imo, yes.

Already boycott lootboxes and gacha games.

Sell me the game and give free updates or fuck off. I'm done paying you to be your beta tester.

I already do, but I'm also not as avid a gamer as I once was. Every FPS became borderline unplayable when loot crates became a thing. Call me old fashioned, but I liked when games had the same weapons for everyone, and there weren't random cards or whatever that made people's guns more powerful / reload /shoot faster, etc. It really brings an imbalance to the game, and enables these stupid gambling sites. The companies making the games are making money hand over fist, so they aren't going to stop any time soon barring regulation, and looking at this administration, good fucking luck with that. Boycott away.

Are boycotts really the best solution to stop this epidemic in gaming?

Consumer boycotts very very rarely work. I've never heard of a single successful video game boycott.

How can we best prevent these gambling grey markets and the gaming to gambling addiction pipeline?

Lobby for appropriate legislation with your government representatives. We could have legislation that forces companies to transparently show the chance of specific rewards, and even show the money you have to spend on average to get XY specific item. (I think there is already a law like this in the works in the EU?)

One of the major psychological tricks gambling games (including lootbox and gacha) employ is to obscure the true costs behind premium currencies. Once they are forced to remove this, and you are shown that yes, guaranteed acquisition of a single Genshin character will cost you ~300 USD, it might make you do a double-take before you pull out your bank card. (There are many more psychological dark patterns these developers employ, so it wouldn't be a single miracle solution, unless of course legislation altogether bans random chance rewards buyable with cash.)

If you are not their target audience then you can‘t really boycott them in the first place. And in my opinion there is no harm in playing a game with loot boxes when you don‘t buy them. They aren’t really getting anything out of non-spenders. That’s not how their servers keep running. And most f2p games that I encounter nowadays do season passes without the random factor anyway, so I feel the loot box discussion is becoming a little outdated for the main stream. Thank goodness.

I‘ve also noticed multiple times that this community has a gripe with multiplayer games for some reason. It‘s better to take anything from online strangers with a grain of salt.

Maybe I'm just an old man now, but it's been years since I was interested in a game with lootboxes. I think the last one I played was Overwatch, back when it originally came out

Are boycotts really the best solution to stop this epidemic in gaming?

Yes, but not if you don't convince others to join you.

How can we best prevent these gambling grey markets and the gaming to gambling addiction pipeline?

Educate people on the dangers. Show them why it's gambling, because there's a lot of apologetics out there to trick people into thinking it's not. Point out the same slot-machine-tactics they use to get people hooked.

And then convince them to boycott. The CEOs that put this shit in games know how to read sales numbers, and if sales start dropping (or player counts), they'll soon figure out that it's because of their lootbox/gacha systems.

Lastly, give people alternatives. I usually point people to Deep Rock Galactic, but there may be others that are better suited to people's tastes. "Just leave" isn't really effective if they don't know where to go.