Star Wars Battlefront

There are a few states that do positively enforce ESRB ratings. But yeah, like mentioned, the ESRB is industry-run and industry-funded, so its ability to act is limited coz it can't bite the hand that feeds it.

The German youth protection law specifically states a list of non-government institutions which are allowed to dictate what is considered harmful to minors including the USK.

Theoretical question, I don't mean to give anyone ideas but...

Say, in a world where the ESRB does enforce an instant M-rating on loot boxes and otherwise flags games that contain microtransactions, a game comes out and sells well without either. And then a month after release, the developers decide to add loot boxes as "something they weren't planning on until post-launch" in a downloadable update.

Could the ESRB do anything about that, if it isn't a part of the base game as sold by retailers?

edited 15th Feb '18 6:47:54 AM by NesClassic

Yeah, the ESRB can re-review content when it changes and review DL Cs, though AFAIK the former doesn't happen automatically.

edited 15th Feb '18 7:39:31 AM by Ghilz

Washington is also looking into loot box legislation. It's a shame things got this far, but this absolutely had to happen.

How would this be enforced via a digital retailer like Steam or Origin? The age verification thing is notoriously unreliable for stopping underage people from buying m-rated games. EA and others could continue to sell these games to minors, especially since digital downloads have been slowly overtaking buying at retail. There's also the matter of buying the game and gifting it to someone else.

edited 16th Feb '18 1:47:29 AM by Nerevarine

Well Amazon.de requires you to enter your Public-ID-Card information if you want to setup 18+ stuff. For countries that don't have ID-Cards ... well..drivers license?

edited 16th Feb '18 2:00:13 AM by Kiefen

They would really have to obey it, in much the same way that some states have laws on taxing online goods.

Part of the reason Steam doesn't make too much of an effort to prevent people from buying M-games is, again, because the ESRB doesn't have any teeth. If an actual law with real penalties comes down, they're going to find a way to be sure about it.

Well Amazon.de requires you to enter your Public-ID-Card information if you want to setup 18+ stuff. For countries that don't have ID-Cards ... well..drivers license?

Depends on where you are in the world, plenty of places don't have public ID cards that include age, for obvious reason. And drivers licence databases are not usually publicly accessible so Steam for example has nothing to check what you enter against.

Gotta love how discussion about a game involving one of the world's biggest fiction franchises out there mostly mostly gets active when talking about goddamn lootboxes.

Good bloody work EA!

edited 16th Feb '18 9:27:53 AM by Elbruno

To be fair news on the game's development have been a bit stagnating for the last 2 months.

edited 16th Feb '18 9:41:45 AM by Kiefen

^ That, and it's the "face" for want of a better term for why the anti-lootbox movement exists in the first place.

We can actually say it's a battlefront...

"poster-boy" if you don't wanna use "Face"

And just as I spoke about there being no new changes...new changes! patch 1.2

The Senates abilities no longer hit through walls but they buffed his basic attack range to compensate.

Did they at least bring back a regional server or two? A major reason why I stopped playing BF 2 was because the latency had become aggravatingly bad, with Starfighter Assault becoming almost unplayable.

edited 19th Feb '18 7:42:29 AM by SgtRicko

^ Are you sure it's a lack of regional servers? Battlefield 1 recently took a nosedive in terms of latency and performance, not because of lack of regional servers but developer incompetence. DICE is not above screwing things up, far from it they're one of if not THE worst programmers in the industry from a strictly technical competence perspective.

And in other news originally sourced from r/Gaming.

Over 60% Of All UK Residents Think Lootboxes Should Be Classified As Gambling According To New Study.

Wow did EA/DICE fuck up if they turned a plurality of a country against a mere concept.

edited 21st Feb '18 6:54:40 PM by MajorTom

Do you have any sources or articles to back up that claim? I mean, all things considered DICE is also one of the best at making such complex multiplayer titles such as the Battlefield games even work in the first place. It certainly ain't easy to drop 64 players into a single map and then try to have them all stay synchronized with the least amount of latency possible.

If anything I'd say Bohemia Interactive is worse. Their ARMA games manage to have all the faults of DICE's multiplayer titles, yet somehow run worse, demand a far greater gaming rig, often have hopelessly bad unit AI, and still crash on occasion.

(NOTE: I'm not even gonna touch the guys that made PUBG: that game is essentially a massive Unreal engine mod formerly based on ARMA 2 with a big budget and polish, and thus has an unholy amount of bugs as a result)

^ Go look at r/Battlefield_Live right now. Widespread discontent and problems owing to recent patches.

For example, they dropped this stupid bug on us just this Tuesday.

https://www.reddit.com/r/battlefield_live/comments/7yv7y4/major_bug_post_patch_microstutter_after_every_kill/

Every point scoring action (so basically everything) causes massive frame rate drops and CPU spikes among other problems.

Then they introduced a whole slew of previously not there graphical glitches, like this one.

https://www.reddit.com/r/battlefield_live/comments/7z7gp5/hellriegel_defensive_broken_sight/

DICE not incompetent? I don't think so mate.

Sorry to post about lootboxes again (if there's a better thread, please direct me to it), but Hawaii had a Q&A with ESA lobbyists on the subject of lootboxes. It didn't go well for the lobbyists.

ESRB Will Address Loot Crates With "In-Game Purchases" Label.

Yeah, this sounds like a half-assed too little too late kind of measure.

Extremely half assed, they dont even state 'lootboxes' its just any kind of downloadable content likely including patches. Its just a label that will be placed on every modern video game....

Can they throw in an "Ensure the game isn't a broken mess on release" law too? It'd help the business.

Realistically? No. That'd be a nightmare for any sort of company of abide by, period. The nature of glitches means that it's guaranteed some will slip by QA, and once the public is aware that means they're liable for lawsuits. You'll be doing more damage than good with that approach. And while you might argue that certain industries are held to higher standards when addressing known bugs and such, such as Apple of Microsoft dealing with security breaches, do remember that even then it's very much an issue they've often solved by either being proactive and patching the issue ASAP or by just compensating customers in some other form... most of the time.

Best to keep things as is when it comes to addressing glitches: let the consumer's wrath be the judge of what will sell or fail. It's worked pretty well for far, for the most part; EA and Konami are getting reamed for all the issues Battlefront 2 and MGS Survive contain, aren't they?

edited 28th Feb '18 4:55:38 AM by SgtRicko

^^ Verily needed. Good Bad Bugs are fine when they produce amusing glitches, but if something doesn't work when it should, or crashes the game/server when it shouldn't or otherwise just causes problems, there oughta be some kind of law or regulation against it.

Video games used to not be this shoddy at a strictly technical level.

edited 28th Feb '18 4:55:34 AM by MajorTom