people under 18 will just jerk off to the girls instead of spending money on the game
Force government ID and I’m out. Max I’m giving you is DOB.
… And I don’t even play anymore
DOB, yes…Fake, but yes.
9/11/1900
I’m old enough for any DOB check, yet I still lie.
Quick scroll down and a click on wherever i land, mhmm.
This appears to be a direct consequence of a recent settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which had charged HoYoverse with deceiving minors into spending for their loot boxes. The Chinese developer was subsequently banned from selling them to users under 16 without a parent’s express consent, paid a $20 million fine to the FTC, and was also subject to the following stipulations:
- Prohibited from selling loot boxes using virtual currency without providing an option for consumers to purchase them directly with real money;
- Prohibited from misrepresenting loot box odds, prices and features;
- Required to disclose loot box odds and exchange rates for multi-tiered virtual currency;
- Required to delete any personal information previously collected from children under 13 unless they obtain parental consent to retain such data; and
- Required to comply with COPPA, including its notice and consent requirements.
I don’t understand. For spending money one requires banking/card information. How children will get their guardian’s banking details without their consent?
Have you paid for things on mobile in-app? The operating system stores your info behind a password (or biometric) because adults (non-gambling as well) also hate having to memorize 16 digits flawlessly every time they needed to make payments.
Why would parents’ payment info be stored in child’s device or user account?
Not everyone buys a separate device for their children or knows how to/can set up a user account.
I’ve refused to move my payment from password to biometrics purely because I’ll spend more if I don’t have to type out my 22 character password. A few times I’ve gone to buy something and seen the password field pop up and just like… uhh cbf.
And then saved like $30.
I usually put limit on accounts or cards saved on device for everyday usage. I did the same for others in family too. Thanks to this my aunt lost only $25 when she got tech support scammed.
Some ancient internet slang you’ve got there.
absorbs
You’ve made me reread my comment multiple times and I still don’t know what the ancient slang is. God I’m not even 30 and I’m already being made feel old lmao
well i can’t be fucked to point it out!
Didn’t know that was ancient, I see it used a lot among… I guess other almost 30 year olds.
But the adults, they weren’t deceived in any way. Hoyo scammed them fair and square.
Ban the entire business model.
No laws against that (lootboxing), yet, and I doubt EA doesn’t have their lobbyists against such laws if enacted. It’s also something that has existed so long as to become a cornerstone of mobile gaming… well, a cornerstone outside of the stupid Voodoo dot-io kind, anyways. While extremely unethical IMO I wouldn’t call it any more deceptive than any regular casino, that is.
The why is rarely argued. The how is always the point of contention. That’s why I am wondering what they are asking for age verification.
Sure would be convenient if the US came up with some way to electronically verify IDs…
I don’t understand what you mean. They’re clearly requesting ages over 13 and disabling purchases for those under 16.
I am asking how will they verify the age?
EDIT: I think you might be misunderstanding the grammar. I am not asking “what for”. “What for” = “why”. I am asking “what do they want as a form of age verification”.
Yeah, if the end consequence is creating a giant database of photos of US ID’s (and storing which accounts theyre associated with as a nice bonus) then that is, in my opinion, not great.
I understand Discord is already rolling out ID verification in the UK and their solution is to use a 3rd party service (you send them your, they just send discord a "is over 18? YES/NO). Personally I don’t think thats much better but it won’t be Discord’s own liability when they find out call center employees in India or Vietnam are using the images of your ID to sell online or something.
Rare US W ?
TDLR: “If you don’t give us PII information within a made up deadline, we will deny you access to any content you paid in the past.”
A settlement with the FTC is not some “made up deadline” Hoyo can change.
TBF the FTC is currently the least legitimate it has ever been as an organization
The settlement—negotiations finished January 17, 2025—was before Trump’s inauguration and the illegal firings.
Blame the US for declaring that US minors are too stupid and US parents too neglectful to pay attention to what is purchased online.
They have to kick off kids from their game, legally, and nearly all mobile and online games that have any way to spend real money will be doing the same within the next year.
They have to kick off kids from their game, legally, and nearly all mobile and online games that have any way to spend real money will be doing the same within the next year.
Good. Gambling is illegal for minors under the age of 18.
Most of the game isn’t gambling, to pretend otherwise is just silly. It’s like being one of those idiots that pretend counterstrike is gambling.
If there’s an otherwise g rated movie with ten minutes of full frontal nudity and hard-core sex what rating do you think that movie is gonna get?
If you think cosmetic lootboxes are comparable to porn, you’re too stupid for internet access and your handler should limit your screen time in the future until a cure is found for whatever thing is currently affecting you.
What are they requesting for age verification?
Largest simp/grindwage DB ever
Ha. I hope it kills it.
Yeah because they intentionally sexualise their extremely youthful characters
… And promote gambling.
wait how exactly are the kids sexualized? i know there’s like one or two, but are they actually sexualized canonically?
IMO minimal clothing on a <18 y/o person with slitted clothing is enough to me to be considered sexualized
erm aktually they’re 2000 years old
Deleting friends lists seems pretty extreme for being late to verify your age? What age are they requiring? 18?
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Killing off your largest player base. Smooth.
People say that, but kids under 16 probably aren’t the majority of people spending thousands in gachas. They usually don’t have money, save for the ones who steal their parents’s credit card.
No, but kids under 16 are hooked into the content drip on their favorite social media. This significantly impacts the drip, a big part of online gaming is sharing what you have or have done through YouTube, TikTok, etc.
Everybody wants to be a content creator. Nobody wants to be a content creator in default skins.
It’s those under 13 required to be deleted, those under 16 just purchases restricted. And even if they were banned, that doesn’t mean they won’t come the moment they turn 16 either.
Any way you look at it, this effects the drip. It’s not franchise ending but it definitely hurts.
Yeah, but it’s not gonna kill things off either.
Dang there is a lot of hate for this game here, like it’s definitely not the best game ever but it is one of the most compelling mobile experiences out there, with a decent story that has some great moments, and it can absolutely be played completely for free without missing out on much. The only thing spending money is good for is specific characters and weapons, none of which are required, and you can absolutely save up from playing for free and get almost any of those characters/weapons without spending a dime.
It’s not for everyone but I feel like this game gets a lot of hate simply for the Chinese origin, cartoony style, and microtransactions without any actual knowledge of what it’s like to play it.
When it comes to gacha games or even just Asian developed games in general, Lemmy is equally as bad as Twitter, maybe even worse. Not only in hostility, but also in making comments on things that are just outright wrong or completely ignorant because they don’t play the game and literally never will.
I don’t play Genshin anymore (stopped playing around the time of the “Rosaria Nerf Incident” because I wanted to play other games), but when I did play it, it was pretty fun. The gacha did not feel forced, I never spent a dime on the game and never felt like I needed to. The community was fine when you ignored the Twitter people.
The only thing spending money is good for is specific characters and weapons, none of which are required, and you can absolutely save up from playing for free and get almost any of those characters/weapons without spending a dime.
This is dramatically underselling the gacha loop. There is absolutely a ceiling for F2P content, where grinding to progress becomes unbelievably time consuming.
It’s deep in the game, I’ll grant that, but that’s the point - like every mobile game, you’re meant to get completely hooked on the progression loop with fast early rewards, then each loop drags longer and longer and longer until you either have to abandon the game entirely or start P2W.
It’s not that hard to get characters and items, but the FOMO system is ridiculous. Just invested all the grinded resources you had to mercy pull a character you’ve had your eyes on? Guess what, the next patch just launched an even better character, or the next banner brought back a 5* that is so meta for your team comp that getting that character will exponentially increase your damage output.
Now you have a limited amount of time to grind all that shit again, or let the banner pass and wait for that massive improvement to your team comp to be available some months/years into the undefined future.
And actually upgrading those items and characters to be useful in late game content?
Time to fork over $$, or at least dozens of hours grinding out dungeons that you can only play on certain days and with a limited number of the same daily grind resources that are required for every different type of progression from level ups to ascensions to gold to skill upgrades… the same materials that you can also buy. And each time you progress to the next “level”, the cost (and time needed to pay it) increases exponentially.
Basically, the “good” parts of Genshin are specifically (and very effectively) designed to increasingly consume your time or your money. There is nothing “good” about it because it’s all just a massive investment in stealing away your life or your life savings.
They didn’t make all that awesome content for you to have fun - they made it so that you don’t notice when your brain starts telling you “I’ve put hundreds of hours into this game, $5 is totally worth all that time… just $20 and maybe I’ll get that character or skip the next 30 hours of grinding… if I spend $100 I’ll get all the stuff I want at a discount, and then I won’t have to grind for awhile… except I still need to keep progressing and now that I’ve skipped ahead by investing money, the gacha loop is even more punishing now, but I’m locked in an ever spiralling sunk cost fallacy now”
And yeah, don’t even get me started on the sexualization. What the actual fuck.
So basically your argument is, if you don’t like the gameplay loop, they force you to pay? I’m not arguing that there are idiots out there who will spend their life savings on digital crop, but you are dramatically OVERselling the difficulty of upgrade requirements. Sure if you wanna play 8 hours a day you’re eventually gonna have to spend money, but. If you play for an hour or so each day, hit the events that are worth the time, do some daily/weekly dungeons as they are available, a little exploration and a little questing, and have any sense of “progress takes time”, the actual gameplay is fun enough to carry without spending money. If it isn’t, for you or someone else, then just don’t play?
Also, oversexualization of minors is a term that gets thrown around a LOT with this game and I just don’t see it, basically ever. The few characters that are actual children are dressed conservatively, act like children, are treated like children by other characters, there’s never inappropriate commentary about them… if you wanna offense to the anime-style art that makes everyone, including adults, cartoonist, that’s your opinion. It’s weird that a lot of people act like it’s a pervasive issue when it really doesn’t exist at all in the game.
So basically your argument is, if you don’t like the gameplay loop, they force you to pay?
Lol no, I’m saying if you do like the gameplay loop, you will eventually get trapped in it. The more you play, the more time-gated walls you hit in the daily grind, and the more time-gated ceilings you hit in the weekly/monthly grinds, all while the game is designed to hook right into your dopamine reward system and never let go. Want to play more? Better cough up some money! Finished your dailies? But today’s the last day, time is running out on the banner! Cough up some money!
Oh, lol, you don’t see it? The fact that there is an entire model type called “short female” with
eight(edit: ten!) characters… but no short males? “Modestly dressed” lmao they’re like 60% exposed skin, short shorts and skirts.And oh, right, there are some “modestly” dressed children that look like children, and act like children… but coincidentally several of those short female models who aren’t modestly dressed fall under that “I look exactly like the children but I’m not! I’m actually an adult! Or even an immortal” lolicon trope.
It’s. Fucking. Gross.
https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Short_Female_Characters I clicked on 4 among the grand total of 10 characters of this type and don’t see what you mean. Do you mean that the miniskirts are supposed to be sexy or something? …I don’t really see it. Maybe it’s a cultural thing where as an Asian I don’t find that sexy?
Do you mean that the miniskirts are supposed to be sexy or something?
Klee and Nahida’s skirts effectively don’t even exist - they end at the hip, with exposed undergarments.
It’s a good thing you don’t see that as sexy on those character models, but imagine those same outfits on conventionally attractive real-world adults. If you’re suggesting that miniskirts and exposed midriffs are considered “modestly dressed” then what, exactly, would be immodest to you?
Those were actually two of the four I checked out. That’s underwear‽ Didn’t realize that. That looks so itchy and bumpy on the skin… And that would indeed be sexualization IMO.
But if that wasn’t exposed underwear, I really don’t see that any more sexualized than https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duan_Qun_Miao_women_from_a_One_Hundred_Miao_Pictures_album,_pre-1912.gif, which depicts one of the traditional outfits of the Miao shortskirt people. Not saying that this is what you usually find in Asia either, but I find the third person from the left conventionally attractive and not sexualized saved for exposing the breastbones, and perhaps her midriff is a little large.
exposed midriffs
While checking out the four I also checked what body type the male protagonist was. He also has exposed midriffs and I never noticed that while playing as him when I did a few years ago.
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What the fuck are you talking about. This is an insane take.
