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Star Citizen's 'Everything Pack' Costs $48,000
(kotaku.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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What's illegal about it? Are they committing some kind of fraud? Is there some threat of harm if people don't buy it (i.e. extortion)? Where exactly is the potential crime?
Yeah, it would be pretty stupid to buy this in general, especially if you can't actually afford it, but being stupid isn't illegal.
Fomo is a form of coercion, and im pretty sure that's a crime in this case. The industry uses underhanded and shady practices to get people to spend money on things that have no intrinsic value.
I can see from your comment that its possible you haven't looked into this very much because you sound like me a few yesrs ago when i didnt see the harm as im not particularly susceptible to the ways they pedal microtransactions/in game purchases.
lol it very obviously is not a crime. It's not even a civil action.
I don't support the whale business model for video games, but the idea that it's somehow a crime is a laughable lack of understanding of the law.
Not coercion in regards to shady business practices. But in 2015 in the uk coercian was made a criminal offence. Since im from the uk you can understand where im coming from when i say its a crime.
It does not even loosely resemble the broad, non-legal definition of coercion in any way. There are zero similarities. Let alone the statutory definition, which is not near as broad.
It also is not and does not resemble FOMO, which is also not illegal anywhere and is practiced by every business on the planet.
No, fomo isn't illegal. Coercion is. And although the legal definition of coercion doesnt include the mental distress one feels when feeling like they might miss out it doesnt mean that it cant be argued from a philosophical angle that fomo is a form of coercion.
Your view that it bares zero resemblance is very static.
Only a sith deals in absolutes 😜
No valid definition of coercion has any resemblance in any context to what is happening here.
Some things are absolute, and the fact that you don't even sort of have any idea what you're talking about is one of them. You're not making a "philosophical argument". You're spouting completely incoherent gibberish.
I guess you are entitled to your opinion. If i only you allowed me to be entitled to mine without trying to insult me.
It's not an opinion. You are objectively wrong, completely redefining words to mean things that are entirely different.
You are not entitled to lie with words without being called out for it.
I will say what i have said to another user here.
I did not intend to state that fomo was a crime. I didn't actually say that at any point.
I did say, and mean, that coercion is a crime. That is true from a legal standpoint.
I then gave my opinion, or my philosophical argument, that i believe that fomo is a form of coercion.
It's not complete gibberish, and i wasn't lying. You just misinterpreted what i meant.
I coild have been more clear in my argument, but it's disingenuous and kinda shitty of you to call it complete gibberish when you clearly understood what i was saying.
Stop trying to aggressively argue with me when we could just discuss this like normal people.
This is not an opinion. It is not a "philosophical argument". It's a lie.
And it's absolutely incoherent gibberish. None of the words you are using mean anything close to what you're claiming they do. You make posts, using your arbitrary, completely incorrect definition of words no one but you knows, then need many, many posts of consistently changing your wrong definitions for anyone to even be able to follow. There's no path to a "discussion" when nothing you're posting tracks in any way.
Yes, it is. You are wrong. If you can't follow it, that's your problem. Not mine.
No, fomo is not a form of coercion whatsoever. Here's the legal definition in the federal legal code:
So it requires the threat or implied threat of serious harm or abuse of the law against a person.
And no, not looking cool or being at the top of a game isn't "serious harm," you'd be laughed out of the courtroom and perhaps fined for wasting everyone's time if you tried to make that legal argument.
Im not making a legal argument... im making a philosophical one.
The original context of this chain is a legal one:
Yes, you didn't say that, but you responded in that context. I asked "what is illegal about it?" and you directly replied with the note about coercion. To me, that clearly implies you think this is a form of legal coercion, and now you're backpedaling because I showed that's explicitly not true. You're moving the goalposts.
That completely fair. You can definitely interpret that implication from what i said. I need to be more careful with my choice of words in future.
However, i assure you my intent was not to make a legal argument.
I was saying that coercion is illegal, which is true. And that i believe that fomo is a form of coercion, which would be my opinion. But it doesn't read that way.
Sorry.
No worries, it just gets confusing when terms are used loosely and differently in a conversation.
For the record, I disagree that both that FOMO is a form of coercion (even the regular dictionary definition implies force is involved) and believe it shouldn't be illegal to entice adults with it, but there should be limits on marketing to children. That said, any form of advertising can be considered a form of fomo, so I'm not exactly sure where the line should be. That said, we do have limits on fraud, which covers things like making unrealistic claims (e.g. this cosmetic will make you win). It's disgusting, but shouldn't be illegal.
Fair enough.
What the everloving fuck?
What?
Google tells me "fomo" is probably an acronym for "fear of missing out" (it'd probably help make your points clearer if you didn't obfuscate them behind acronyms the people you're talking might not be familiar with, by the way).
Supposing that's the case... what is there to miss out on in Star Citizen..? Any package above the base ones (which get you the games for about $40) give you absolutely nothing that you can't get in-game (with the arguable exception of a few limited edition ships, which in any case shouldn't offer any in-game advantages and can probably be considered cosmetic)... you're not missing out by not buying them...
I guess it's a good thing you used such a common word as obfuscate when making a point about clarity then....
Fomo or fear of misaing out iant exclusive to items or skins etc that can only be gained via purchase.
I could go deep into this, but i want to try to be concise here to save on massive paragraphs
Fomo applies to any situation where someone could miss out on the player experience that other people get. So, being behind other people or everyone else in a game increases the likelihood that you will make a purchase to catch up.
A good example is the battle pass in overwatch 2, which gives you instant access to the newest character. If you dont owm the battle pass, you have to grind for weeks to get a character that everyone else seems to have, and you have to play against that character whilst you sit there feeling left out.
So if you want the character now, you have to buy the battle pass. This creates alot of pressure to make the purchase in people who are susceptible to fomo or peer pressure.
Did you know that in schools, kids thst play fortnite get bullied for being a "default" because they only have the basic default skin which adds pressure on.
It's not only kids who experience this. Adults do aswell and the evidence is quite clear when a game company can price a pack at 48k because of a precedent set by whales and krakens (players thst spend obscene amounts of money on in game purchases) that legitimises that price point.
I've never noticed "obfuscate" being an uncommon word, but English is my third language, so what do I know. At least you can find it in a dictionary, I suppose, which won't be the case with some obscure acronym. 🤷♂️
As for this fear of missing out you're obsessively trying to shoehorn onto Star Citizen... we're not talking about a race here, there's no getting behind, there's no winning other than having fun and achieving whatever objectives you set for yourself (talking about the Star Citizen MMO specifically here, not Squadron 42, but the ships they're selling now won't be playable on the single player game, so it's mostly irrelevant to this discussion, other than as yet another way to weaken the missing out argument, since it very evidently doesn't apply to that game).
This isn't some microtransaction ridden malware like Fortnite or Overwatch (and I'd say any comparison to that crap is ill informed or disingenuous), this is a fucking space sim... There's no microtransactions, there's no pay to win, there are no season passes, there's no such thing as a better ship... it's a rock paper scissors situation, some ships will be better for some things, some better for others, and no matter how many you own you won't be piloting more than one at once (and the larger ones you probably won't be able to pilot or defend alone, so they'll be worthless to you if you don't have a group of friends to help man them).
If all you care about is fighting other players (personally I have no interest in that, but to each their own), sure, maybe having a better combat ship (which you'll easily be able to obtain in-game anyway) will make a difference... but not as much as your piloting skill (same if you want to be a racer), and much less than being part of some player organisation.
But there's so much more to do... you might want to explore (in which case the main "missing out" factor will probably be how early you get into the game... which, since all beta progress will be reset before release, you can't buy into no matter how much you pay), you might want to be a trader or smuggler, or miner, or whatever.
Is CIG preying on people with too much money and too little sense..? Possibly (though if I'm not mistaken they asked for this particular everything package, and they seem to be enjoying their ship collecting, so if that's what they want to waste their money in, let them, I say)... but that won't give them any significant advantage over players who just bought the basic game, and they're well aware of that.
If there's any pressure here it's from the whales to CIG, asking for more new shiny ships for their collections, not the other way around.
Obfuscate is not a commonly used word. English is my 1st language. So im pretty confident about that. And the point isn't that the word isn't common. It's that you were trying to say i used an uncommon word and described it using an obscure word. Which is really ironic.
Fomo isn't obscure just because you haven't heard of it. It also isn't nonsense just because you aren't affected by it. I'm not affected either, i dont buy things with real money in games. But i can see that it's real.
The shortest way to counter you here is to simply say: it's clear from your reply that you accept fomo exists. Its also clear that you agree that CIG are employing predatory tactics to squeeze money out of gullible people. But mainly its clear that you missed the part where i mentioned that skins in fortnite are a massive money maker in the fomo market. They dont affect your gameplay (basically your entire countrr argument) but they are a huge money maker for epic games because its all about peer pressure.
You can pretend that people other than youself arent affected by fomo in star citizen but it won't make you right. Cosmetic items are one of the biggest factors in fomo and making it work. Most games dont offer advantages that you can pay for.
I am happy to accept that i dont know much at all about SC as i dont play it. But what im "shoehorning" is not fake just becauee you dont see it and it doesn't affect you.
Im not even trying to prove a point here. Fomo and game companies use of it is a fact. And it applies here.
Really? I'm a native speaker and I use it a lot. Maybe not in casual conversations with friends, but I use it a ton in a workplace setting and when discussing current events in a more than passing manner. Looks like it's gotten steadily more popular in texts since the 50s.
And yeah, fomo isn't obscure, but it is an acronym that's relatively recently become popular (Google trends says the last 10-ish years).
Regardless, arguing about whether words are uncommon is silly, English usage varies by region, and people who speak English as a second language can have a really odd set of vocabulary.
Doesn't the graph showing the use of the word obfuscate show that it's 0.20 per million people that use it today? Is that a percentage? So i would need 5 million people before i find 1 person that says it? And has it only risen in use since the 50s? That's fairly recent in the grand scheme of things, considering it's such a small rise in use.
Anyway, your use of the word is anecdotal, and after 35 years on this planet, i find it amazing that its maybe the first time I've ever seen the word used outside of a book. So if we compare your anecdotal evidence to mine, we arrive back at zero.
You even said you dont use it casually, only in a professional setting.
I happily accept that non native speakers do end up with an odd vocabulary. But that doesnt change that the word isn't very common.
It's 0.20 per million words in books on Google Scholar AFAIK. So it has been getting steadily more popular in books that they track, in terms of word frequency. It said nothing about colloquial English (not sure how that could be tracked).
And the 50s isn't recent as far as modern speakers is concerned. Someone who would've been a kid at the time would be in their 80s today.
FOMO as a term is much more recent (like 10-15 years), though as a concept it's much older (very similar to "keeping up with the Joneses", which is >100 years old).
Well yeah, if I'm talking about dinner plans or something, it's not an idea I need to convey. It comes up a lot at work though.
It's not a five dollar word where there's a handy, more common replacement. I guess conceal or obscure can work in some cases, but I'd only so that if the listener doesn't understand the initial word. I work with a lot of non-native speakers, so I'm used to providing short definitions if I use something they haven't come across (even for relatively common words).
Isn't it what regulations are for?
Plus a lot of micro transactions and all kinds of bullshit like this are targeting the adolescents so at least they should be bound by law that whoever purchases those virtual goods is above 18 at least.
Microtransactions in games mainly played by minors should be illegal, yes (and in some countries they are), as they're basically a form of gambling... but people giving CIG money are mostly those who played Wing Commander back in the nineties and want a modern version of that, so there's little risk of kids being involved, at least until the games are properly released (and, even then, they're PC exclusive, and most kids are probably on consoles or mobile devices), at which point as I understand it these ship sales are supposed to stop... and there's nothing micro about them... if I recall correctly the smallest package (which would get you a base ship and the two games) goes for about $40...
I don't think $48k still counts as a "micro" transaction...
Exactly, there's no microtransactions in Star Citizen.
Whatever we call the way it's funded, and regardless of what we think of it, it's not microtransactions.
Lootboxes are gambling.
Buying specific known digital items is a gross business model, but has no resemblance to gambling.
No, but it should still be banned for minors since they're particularly sensitive to peer pressure. They can make decisions for themselves when they're adults.
I agree, that part might be illegal because adolescents cannot legally consent (in most cases). So there's a chance there, but my guess is that an adolescent isn't going to be making a $48k MTX purchase (they aren't old enough to legally have debt, and probably not old enough to earn that much).
In general though, I can't think of any law this violates.
What's fraudulent about it? Here's the definition of fraud:
The legal definition is either an intentional or (usually reckless) negligent misrepresentation of fact. From what I've seen, every manipulative MTX game never misrepresented any facts (you will get X if you pay Y), they just create an environment where you want the thing more than you normally would (e.g. the thing won't be available tomorrow). That's not fraud, it's just FOMO, the crux of advertising.
There's a difference between being "a fraud" and being unsuccessful. Development continues, and people seem to like the direction it's going, so it's not like they abandoned the project and ran off with the money.
I think it's part scam, part poorly managed game, but I don't think it fits the legal definition of "fraud" since they've largely delivered on their promises, just incredibly slowly and inefficiently.