Genshin Publisher Cognosphere Pays $20M, Will Age Gate Features After FTC Accusations of Kids' Priva

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Genshin Publisher Cognosphere Pays $20M, Will Age Gate Features After FTC Accusations of Kids' Privacy Violations & Misrepresented Prize Odds | MMORPG.com

The publisher of Genshin Impact, Cognosphere, has settled with the US FTC for $20m & agreed to age-gate some features after accusations of misrepresenting prize odds and violating kids' privacy.

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sabrefoxx

They never agree with the accusations. I have not once seen a company admit to wrong doing and then compensated for it. Always, "I admit no fault, but I'll pay just to make the problem go away so long as the settlement is 1% of our annual revenue or less"

Scot

""They say cases where children and teenagers have spent “hundreds or thousands of dollars” for a chance at offered prizes.""

I find it hard to believe that the Trade Commission would just make this sort of thing up and Cognosphere would have fought back on this if it was a fabrication.

This is where gambling in gaming has got us, for those of you who are fans, hopefully you can understand that your experience is not everyone's experience. Especially if they are far younger than you.

Slapshot1188

Scot said:

""They say cases where children and teenagers have spent “hundreds or thousands of dollars” for a chance at offered prizes.""



I find it hard to believe that the Trade Commission would just make this sort of thing up and Cognosphere would have fought back on this if it was a fabrication.



This is where gambling in gaming has got us, for those of you who are fans, hopefully you can understand that your experience is not everyone's experience. Especially if they are far younger than you.

Its been my point all along

Scot

I am starting to get the feeling that Zenjelly is a fan of the game, go and play it mate, we aren't stopping you.

Talin

All these Gacha systems should just use a reasonable pity system. I.e., if the desired value of a game asset (character, outfit, weapon, etc.) is 15 USD, make a range of expenditures that range from 5-25 USD (assuming $5/draw and pity at 5 draws). This way some people can be lucky and others just accept their luck sucks and they have a max output to get what they want.

These games can still be hugely lucrative with the number of assets they pump out over time and they would increase the average spend per user this way. I get the whale factor but let them make that up with breadth of spend instead of depth of spend on assets.

LTBK

Scot said:

""They say cases where children and teenagers have spent “hundreds or thousands of dollars” for a chance at offered prizes.""



I find it hard to believe that the Trade Commission would just make this sort of thing up and Cognosphere would have fought back on this if it was a fabrication.



This is where gambling in gaming has got us, for those of you who are fans, hopefully you can understand that your experience is not everyone's experience. Especially if they are far younger than you.

That was precisely my entire argument for not liking the paid side of the gacha, as I explained several times, despite being okay with the system itself from a mechanical point, and liking the games in general. There are people with issues, both adults and kids, for whom the option to pay without limits for this is just a no-no, since they can't restrain themselves and it can cause serious problems for them and those around them. Especially if they have no one really looking after them.

But let's not be naive here either. This is not an exclusive issue of gambling, since we all know that gacha, lootboxes, etc., are not the only parts of gaming were some people mindlessly waste thousands of euros/dollars. There should really be a limit to how much you're able to repeatedly pay in a game before it can be considered potentially predatory and exploitative. This goes from certain games having a nearly infinite list of inconsequential DLCs, to certain other games charging a kidney for a skin, to our "beloved" P2W games where some people have "invested" their whole bank accounts. And I could keep going with this list if I wanted to be even more strict on things that I would like to see gone.

Talin said:

All these Gacha systems should just use a reasonable pity system. I.e., if the desired value of a game asset (character, outfit, weapon, etc.) is 15 USD, make a range of expenditures that range from 5-25 USD (assuming $5/draw and pity at 5 draws). This way some people can be lucky and others just accept their luck sucks and they have a max output to get what they want.



These games can still be hugely lucrative with the number of assets they pump out over time and they would increase the average spend per user this way. I get the whale factor but let them make that up with breadth of spend instead of depth of spend on assets.

Exactly. The problem here is that it can currently cost up to 200€/$ to "buy" a character, and some people will just throw their wallet at the screen to get it ASAP. This should be reduced, and I agree with your solution: The cost of buying currency should be reduced. And even with that, I still think that there should be a limit to how much you can buy over a certain amount of time.