[pibaker]

If by subscription you mean World of Warcraft style continuous subscription then yes, it doesn't work for most games. But I'd argue the modern battle pass model is just another flavor of subscription. And according to the article, free to play games with battle passes and micro transactions also get an exemption from the proposed bill, so companies will just move to that instead.

[slg]

Are we still talking about negative impacts of this regulation? Because I don't follow the argument that games going free-to-play is bad for the consumer. Consumer pressure has pushed most games with battle passes and microtransactions to limit those to optional expansions of the base game, often merely cosmetic. People can and do spend hundreds of hours playing Fortnite without paying a cent and I don't see how that type of outcome is bad for the consumer.

And if the consumer doesn't invest any money into the experience, I have a hard time justifying a requirement for the publisher to provide options to keep the game running in perpetuity, so I'm fine with that exception.

[phil21]

It’s basically going to incentivize gambling and skinners box type implementations to juice revenue.

Sure, people can opt out and some will. However the base human psychology is pretty well documented. If the ability to simply not engage in what amounts to addictive behavior was enough we wouldn’t have the crazy online gambling epidemic. That is at least to me obviously bad for the consumer even if you can simply choose not to engage.

Some ethical game companies will likely draw the line at what you say - but I predict far more will realize they can juice revenue quite easily by simply moving towards incentivizing more lootbox type things.

[slg]

You are treating multiple related issues as one singular issue. Battle passes and microtransactions aren't inherently a form a gambling. They can be implemented with gambling, but plenty of games aren't setup that way. If we have a problem with a model that specifically relies on gambling, we can regulate it like other jurisdictions have done[1]. But this specific piece of regulation is addressing something else and doesn't do anything to point the market specifically towards gambling.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box#Regulation_and_legisl...

[Akronymus]

Battle passes/mtx would IMO definitely fall under monetary considerations, which would make the excemption not apply. But as is written now, there still needs to be a precedent set for that, to really cement that interpretation