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Do you think EU server will get shut down - like china/russian with upcoming EU lootbox law?

LorddrewLorddrew Posts: 297 ★★
in General Discussion
For me this is a legit concern, since 4th is on the way and I am a casual spender.
Some games are also not being released duo to the new lootboxes changes required by law in EU.
Any clarification would be nice and assuring.

I hope my question is correctly formulated, no finger pointing i want to be informed on the way the contest may move for us EU MCOC players :)

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    DemonzfyreDemonzfyre Posts: 21,039 ★★★★★
    Link to what you're talking about?
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    LorddrewLorddrew Posts: 297 ★★
    DNA3000 said:

    Lorddrew said:

    For me this is a legit concern, since 4th is on the way and I am a casual spender.
    Some games are also not being released duo to the new lootboxes changes required by law in EU.
    Any clarification would be nice and assuring.

    I hope my question is correctly formulated, no finger pointing i want to be informed on the way the contest may move for us EU MCOC players :)

    Two things. First, I don't believe there are "EU servers" any more than there were/are China or Russia servers. The game was made unavailable for download or update in Russia and China to comply with regulations in China and sanctions in Russia. There are still players who play this game in China and Russia. They just have to download the game or updates from "somewhere else." But I don't think any servers were "shut down." That seems to be a point of confusion out there.

    Second, at the moment I'm unaware of any EU law prohibiting lootboxes. There were two separate local cases in Belgium and the Netherlands, and both cases are still somewhat vague in how the law applies to lootboxes in video games. For example, while I believe the legal precedent was set in Belgium to apply gambling laws to video game lootboxes, a similar decision in the Netherlands was eventually overturned on the technicality that Dutch law governs whole games, and not individual components of games. Lootboxes are a part of a larger video game that is not itself classified as a gambling game, and lootboxes cannot be regulated as a separate "game" because they aren't complete games of chance on their own.

    The latest thing linked above in @TheBair123 's post above is a coordinated move by a set of consumer groups to pressure lawmakers to change the laws in individual EU countries to define lootboxes as (illegal) games of chance. Implicit in that act is the fact that at the moment, they are not considered so in most countries in the EU.
    Thank you once again for giving me some insight, I can conclude from your statement, it will be playable just connecting would be a research matter.

    Second, one game i was intresting in was Diablo immortal, whom is not being released in the netherlands duo to lootboxes, any google search will give more information on this matter.



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    LorddrewLorddrew Posts: 297 ★★
    Rillian said:

    The EU is a much more compassionate place. If such a law really takes such games off phones, I’m sure there will be loot box rehab clinics where you’ll be able to go once or twice a week for your habit.

    Thank you for your helpfull comment, you must be a joyfull person :)
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    LorddrewLorddrew Posts: 297 ★★
    Demonzfyre said:

    Link to what you're talking about?

    I don't know if it's allowed, but here is the link:
    https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/1/23149771/diablo-immortal-loot-boxes-belgium-the-netherlands-gambling
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    LorddrewLorddrew Posts: 297 ★★
    Cangaceiro said:

    Very Problematic News… ..

    take the first letter of those 3 words above and learn about it, and your problems will be solved
    Thanks bud
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    BeeweeBeewee Posts: 533 ★★★★
    Vendemiaire said:

    Nuuu, my addiction!

    Ohhh wait... I live in Japan where gambling is prohibited yet we have Pachinkos and all games are literally loot boxes. Heck, Japan invented Gacha.

    Loopholes will always exist
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    DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,687 Guardian
    Rillian said:

    For iOS, I believe the games are on apples servers.

    The game clients are distributed on Apple's and Google's servers. That means that's the (official) way for us to download the game and update it. However, the game itself resides in Kabam's cloud hosted systems and in some Google's cloud systems (the game uses Google services - not the same thing as being in the Google Play store, by the way). Kabam doesn't (in general) have regional servers for regional versions of the game.

    The exception was when they launched the Chinese version of MCOC originally, which you could tell were hosted in completely separate servers because those players were invisible to the rest of us, lost access to the game completely when those servers were shut down, and had to be migrated to our servers by a manual migration process.

    For us to play MCOC, we need to be able to reach the systems the game uses to function. But to even *possess* the game requires (at least officially) downloading the client from one of the two officially supported app stores (Apple and Google) and to maintain the clients requires downloading mandatory updates from those two app stores. If the game is blocked on an app store, the players can continue to play, until they need a mandatory update they can't fetch. At that point, they need to find an alternate way to update their game clients to continue to play.

    Separately, you could have the ability to download the game clients but be unable to actually play, if you are in a place where the game systems themselves are somehow blocked or unreachable. Getting and maintaining the game clients and actually playing the game are two separate, and almost completely independent processes.
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