Belgian govt opens criminal investigation into EA

[Tabbykatze]

The amusing thought that just popped into my head while reading would be if kickstarters and crowd funding campaigns would be classed as gambling?

You can put money into a project that may not return anything

Asking as a semi serious joke!

[peterb]

The amusing thought that just popped into my head while reading would be if kickstarters and crowd funding campaigns would be classed as gambling?

You can put money into a project that may not return anything

Asking as a semi serious joke!

Well, in a sense it is, but you can do some research (or due diligence) to assess the level of risk, and if you are a big investor with a large stake in the company you may get a say in the running of it so you can influence the outcome.

But in the sense that the outcome or return may be unknown, yes it is a gamble, but not necessarily on a random set of circumstances.

[Saracen]

The amusing thought that just popped into my head while reading would be if kickstarters and crowd funding campaigns would be classed as gambling?

You can put money into a project that may not return anything

Asking as a semi serious joke!

Good example of terminology bejng slippery.

I would suggest that in the parlance of the man in the street, that is certainly a gamble, but it the eyes of the gambling laws, isn't gambling.

[Ttaskmaster]

Gambling isn't so much that you can win more, but rather you can end up with nothing.

It's the aspect of chance and random reward that makes it gambling.

Whereas the above examples mean you will always end up with something. This would also (unfortunately) include loot boxes by that definition.

But with the above, the idea is that you do get what you want through trading, which is the actual game element. Buying the packs is just establishing your random starting position, which a lot of strategy computer games do.
The issue with loot crates is that you may never get what you want.

I think in some games you can, sort of. You can "recycle" them into a virtual currency and then use it to buy something you actually want.

If you always end up with the same amount of currency that you could buy with the Loot Crate purchase price, then fine, but I bet you it doesn't work that way...

I agree, with a caveat that some DLC's are done properly and are actually expansions of old.

If it's a free expansion, devised and released a while after the game, then fine. But the vast majority are either bits purposely removed from the game and sold separately, or have been designed alongside the main game as things to be sold as DLC.

The amusing thought that just popped into my head while reading would be if kickstarters and crowd funding campaigns would be classed as gambling?

That's investment, not gambling. The latter has no loss-mitigation strategies, whereas the former usually has something that you or someone else implements. In the case of Kickstarter, there are some legal protections, while with crowd-funding the money is usually considered a 'donation'.