A few weeks ago
James was on a panel at a conference
and they got around to discussing
the regulations that the EU
has recently put on Free to Play.
It was a fantastic discussion
but something nagged at him.
In his half-exhausted conference haze
he couldn't quite put his finger
on why these regulations
rubbed him the wrong way.
Later on the flight home
he realized that there was
a deeper reason for the stance he had taken at that panel.
So today we figured we'd put that right
and talk about the really interesting
legal landscape forming around Free to Play games.
[Intro Music]
So first, some background.
A few years ago in the EU
they implemented some laws
to protect children from predatory Free-to-Play games
and the intention here was great
though the implementation was terrible.
Apple yanked titles from the App Store
for just calling themselves "Free to Play"
regardless of what the game actually was
or who it was targeted at.
Many small indie devs
who were actually trying to do Free to Play right
went out of business because of this
and some of the worst offenders
found their way back to the app store in just a few weeks
with clever ways to circumvent the restrictions.
It's a mess
but all of that is on companies
like Apple and Google
and the way they responded to these laws
not actually a problem with the laws themselves.
What James realized too late to discuss at that panel
and what really bothered him about these laws
is that as positive a step as they are
children are actually not the ones
Free to Play games really prey on.
Children don't have credit cards
and there are enough ways for a parent
to keep their child from spending 10,000 dollars on a game
that children only make up a small fraction of the Free to Play money coming in.
No, the people predatory Free to Play really targets are
people who are depressed
people who just suffered a bad break-up
or who lost their job
people without a social outlet
people who find community in these games
a community they don't want to let down
or people with compulsive personalities
who know they shouldn't be spending on these games
but just see each purchase
as one little tiny thing they want to do in the moment
until those purchases add up.
And again, these laws are good to have
and are probably used differently in the EU
than in the U.S.
But the thing that makes James angry about them
is that he has been talking to members of the U.S. government
about ethical Free-to-Play
a great deal over the last year
and the problem is
it's really easy to score some quick political points
by quote, "Protecting Children"
while actually getting nothing substantive done.
And because the rare cases
where some child runs up a 3,000 dollar bill on these games
always ends up on the news
it's very easy to pretend
as if putting in some guidelines for those specific scenarios
somehow solves everything that's wrong with Free-to-Play
while not actually cutting into the bottom-line
of companies that are runing people's lives.
In U.S. politics
this is exactly the sort of law
you pass to sweep a problem under the rug
and not actually have to do something about it.
And I really hope
the EU doesn't use these law as a similar excuse
because working in this industry
you hear the real effect of these games all the time.
A woman who maxed out her credit cards
trying to support her clan
and had to be hospitalized for being near suicidal
when her payments couldn't go through
because she felt as though she let everybody who depended on her down.
A father who stole his children's college fund
to support his Free-to-Play compulsion.
A lady who when the company whose game she played
bought her a plane ticket to come to a convention
to meet the team that built it
couldn't go because she couldn't afford
the train ticket to the airport
as she had spent literally every cent
she had on the game.
These are all real stories,
stories that have been shared with us
by people in the industry
or stories we've heard first-hand.
And how do we know these stories?
Because Free to Play game companies
actually keep in close contact with their biggest whales.
They'll often reach out to them personally
or send them little gifts to show them that they matter,
that the company cares about them.
And when they reach out to these people
sometimes these are the stories they get back.
And the worst part is
even when they hear these stories
nothing happens.
Sometimes brave individual developers will quit
or walk away from those companies
but systemically, nothing.
Every major Free to Play company
has at least a few of these stories,
the most exploitive ones have dozens
maybe hundreds.
And yet, we don't act
because many of these companies financially depend
on their ability to prey on just such people.
So look, I prefer responsible self-regulation
to the regulation by those who know nothing about our industry
or what we do,
but eventually if we as an industry don't act
laws will have to be passed
to protect the most vulnerable of these game companies' victims.
And when they are
I hope we don't just use children as an excuse
to avoid the real problem.
See you next week.
[Outro Music]