[HN Gopher] Key principles on in-game virtual currencies in the EU
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       Key principles on in-game virtual currencies in the EU
        
       Author : speckx
       Score  : 22 points
       Date   : 2025-04-11 20:52 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (tiendil.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (tiendil.org)
        
       | littlecranky67 wrote:
       | > "The price in real-world currency must always be displayed next
       | to the price in in-game currency."
       | 
       | how would that work? Basically all games use a discount scheme
       | were the price for X of ingame currency depends on how many
       | tokens/gold/coins you buy.
        
         | devrandoom wrote:
         | Price means price without discount.
        
           | jagged-chisel wrote:
           | Ah, so we can display the in-game amount, along with it the
           | full-price you would have paid without the discount, and the
           | "savings" because you bought more and oh look how much more
           | you save when you buy more!
           | 
           | They're gonna need a rule for that.
        
           | littlecranky67 wrote:
           | Of course that is how it _should_ be done, but that is least-
           | likely to be implemented by the greedy games industry, is it?
           | They 'll interpret it differently as with "cost when saving
           | the most by our fancy bundles".
        
           | tbrownaw wrote:
           | What about showing the actual real amount that that
           | particular user paid for those tokens?
        
         | benoau wrote:
         | Yes but part-of the point of those discounts is to obfuscate
         | the value of that currency when you are spending it.
         | 
         | This is like nutritional information on food, it will be "bad"
         | for some companies if there is transparency.
        
       | gabaix wrote:
       | Cannot come soon enough. Companies like Voodoo Games have made a
       | killing scamming gullible people with no oversight.
        
       | albybisy wrote:
       | EU can't stop regulate everything. Last week they say they should
       | regulate a lot less but that was the same EU bureaucrats that
       | talk talk, promise and don't do anything good, just make
       | impossible to do anything in digital space.
        
         | zimza wrote:
         | Yeah, who needs consumer's rights. Right ?
        
       | jwlake wrote:
       | They just need to also make it illegal for Apple to take more
       | than the credit card fee on in-app transactions and it might make
       | some sort of economic sense to comply with this grab-bag of stuff
       | in Europe.
        
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       (page generated 2025-04-11 23:00 UTC)