[xg15]

Arguments like this is what I find entertaining about (pure) free-market advocates.

They argue that regulation is not needed because, if there is a problem, consumers would vote with their wallets to remove it - and when the consumers inexplicably fail to do so, the advocates get mad and blame the consumers instead of adjusting their theory.

[pitaj]

Gaming is one of the most competitive industries I can think of. It's very easily accessible by new developers and there's an entire industry of indie games.

> They argue that regulation is not needed because, if there is a problem, consumers would vote with their wallets to remove it

Loots boxes exist because they aren't actually a problem. A consumer has a choice between games with varying degrees of loot boxes and games without them.

Obviously if people buy games with loot boxes, they don't oppose them strongly. Personally, I don't have a big problem with loot boxes because I like cheaper games. Loot boxes are a way for game makers to milk more money out of whales while leaving the rest of us better off with a cheaper game. Banning or regulating loot boxes will only take away options from consumers, increase prices, or both.

People don't need to be babied by the government whenever a small minority of people make bad decisions. It just allows people to be lazier and less skeptical than they already are.

[xg15]

That assumes all consumers are connoisseur gamers who are well-informed about the verious upcoming indie games and not just kids who want to play Battlefront because they like Star Wars.

In other words, this assumes, as the efficient market hypothesis requires, that consumers are perfectly rational and have perfect information about the market. And I hold that, as always, this is not actually the case in the real world.

Moreoever, loot boxes aren't just some random game design feature. They are currently the best way to make money with a game. (And I believe they are well-known to the vast majority of developers). So there are actual economic forces pushing developers to implement loot boxes unless they explicitly reject the idea and have enough resources to do so.

> Obviously if people buy games with loot boxes, they don't oppose them strongly.

This is exactly the circular reasoning I'm talking about in the parent post. If that were the case, then people wouldn't at the same time complain about them so much.

[swebs]

Who specifically? You're just building a strawman to attack, while framing it as us-vs-them.

Comments like these lower the quality of discussion by removing nuance and pushing people into tribalism.

[s73v3r_]

I don't think it counts as a "strawman" if it's reflecting the way reality actually is, and shows a huge hole in their philosophy.

[xg15]

How would a more nuanced counter-argument look?

[smhost]

It's also pretty funny that the thing that is finally shifting the typical reddit/youtube hardcore gamer-atheist demographic away from their ancap ideology is lootcrates.

[ionised]

What's atheism got to do with any of this?

[Shorel]

I would say it is the rhetoric argument that all comments in Reddit are written by a single group of people with shared beliefs.

Taken to the extreme, all comments are written by a very dedicated Redditor.

[smhost]

i don't know, you'll have to ask them.