Aside from American movements (plural!), even CD Projekt RED did a bit of mic drop.

Last year, Chris Lee, Hawaii’s representative, already caught the Internet’s attention regarding his staunch approach against loot boxes, and since then, he and his team introduced four bills. They would require publishers to label any game that contains randomized purchase systems prominently, as well as to disclose the probability rates of all loot box rewards. Also, they would prohibit the sale of any game featuring paid loot boxes to anybody under 21, which means it would be a category higher than the AO (Adults Only) 18+ games.

Maggie Hassan, Senator of New Hampshire, also asked ESRB and FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to look into the subject. She’s serious about the subject – she even sent a letter to ESRB:

„The prevalence of in-game microtransactions and loot boxes raises several concerns surrounding the use of psychological principles and enticing mechanics that closely mirror those often found in casinos and games of chance. The potential harm is real. […] While there is a robust debate over whether loot boxes should be considered gambling, the fact that they are both expensive habits and use similar psychological principles suggest loot boxes should be treated with extra scrutiny. At a minimum, the rating system should denote when loot boxes are utilized in [games].

I respectfully urge the ESRB to review the completeness of the board’s rating process and policies as they relate to loot boxes and to take into the account the potential harm these types of microtransactions may have on children. I also urge the board to examine whether the design and marketing approach to loot boxes in games geared towards children is being conducted in an ethical and transparent way that adequately protects the developing minds of young children from predatory practices.”

ESRB responded: „We received Senator Hassan’s letter and appreciate her confidence in and support of the ESRB rating system. […] As the industry evolves, so does our rating system, and we will continue to make enhancements to ensure parents continue to be well-informed. We will also continue to provide information about additional tools, including parental control guides, which help parents set spending and time limits and block potentially inappropriate games based on the ESRB-assigned age rating.” It sounds like ESRB is going to do some changes shortly. Hassan also asked a question from the FTC nominees: „children [are] being addicted to gaming – and activities like loot boxes that might make them more susceptible to addiction – is a problem that merits attention?” The nominees said that they’d look into the subject if they were confirmed by the committee.

CD Projekt RED’s (The Witcher, Gwent, Cyberpunk 2077…) CEO, Adam Kiciński, shared his thoughts with PC Gamer: „’Conversation’ sounds way too nice to describe what was happening last year. I would rather call it community backlash, and this time around, it wasn’t just the hardcore community, there were a lot of really pissed off gamers out there, and they decided to speak up. Where we stand is quite simple, and you could see it with all of our past releases—most recently The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and GWENT. If you buy a full priced game, you should get a big, polished piece of content, which gives you many, many hours of fun gameplay.

The definition of ‘many’ may vary on a title-by-title basis, but in our case, it was always 50-60+ hours of the main story-line, with up to a couple of hundred of hours of side activities—if you really wanted to max out the title. To me, this is a fair deal. You get what you paid for, plus we are always trying our best to overdeliver. There is no better PR than a happy gamer recommending your title to their friends.

Then there’s additional paid content. What we call Expansions (not DLC, mind you). Things like add-ons way back in the Baldur’s Gate era. We released two Expansions like that, and each of them was a meaningful piece of content delivering many hours of new story and gameplay. Finally, there are the DLCs. For us, they’re small pieces of content which should be available for free (and that was the case with TW3).”

And there you go: they are not supporting this approach and seeing their gamer friendly method to games, it looks like a good idea for us, too.

Source: WCCFTech, WCCFTech,PC Gamer