Major publishers sued for using "addictive psychological features"

Especially mobile publishers have a serious research-development over addiction. If you ask me it should be illegal to exploit psychological weaknesses of individuals.

This is one of the stupidest claims I have ever heard - they should have no chance

I kinda understand if its games that has lootboxes or pay2win etc.

There are plenty of games that use psychology to trigger people in purchasing stuff.

Mostly the loot box/ microtransaction type games.

There are several videos out there where people explain what the strategy is in certain scenarios.
Like countdown timers on an offer, starter packs for a "discount" the first 24 hours you play the game.
The flashing presentation when you open a loot box etc.

It has all Psychological triggers used in it.

Roblox, Fortnite, Call of Duty ok, but Minecraft ???

First let's be clear. Some of the "games" mentioned are not just games. They are almost literal gateway drugs, using all the tactics of drug dealers and they are targeted at very young "gamers" in the hopes of creating, developing and fostering habits that lead to addictive mentality.

And then you have Roblox, which is an entire ecosystem of exploitation, abuse and money making for which FOMO and drug dealing tactics are really just scratching the surface of the problem

So yeah these should be sued, possibly bankrupted and made examples out of so that this kind of BS doesn't happen again.

Now if we were talking about games, and entertainment, I'd say it's BS but we're not.

I love it when this subject comes up, cause its fascinating to me, especially as a gamer.
Are games addictive? sure they are. they have been addictive since Pong. But that ain't saying much. That's like asking if fun is addictive. I think a better question is how much harm can a game actually do to you? Can it make you depressed, broke, anti social, unhealthy? Some have claimed all that stuff.

Don't forget that big game companies are as amoral as any other money making organization, they want to sell product and don't care much about how their customers effected by as long as more people buy more product. Holding these guys' feet to the fire once and awhile is a healthy thing.

This is like suing Baywatch for using too many large breasted actresses in bathing suits.

There is an issue with mental health and balance, same as there is an issue with nutritional health and overeating.

If they're not suing sugar manufacturers and producers of sexually explicit media, they shouldnt be able to sue video game manufacturers.

People need to be responsible for their own mental health, and at the most companies should institute a similar prompt to what Nintendo did on the Wii or what my ebook reader uses as well, after a set amount of time, it reminds you to take a break. At that point it is up to the person to make good choices.

It's on community and society to inspire more mental and social health amongst the people.

FINALLY
But... Minecraft? I don't know about Call of Duty, so I can't tell, but Minecraft? Ah, maybe the Bedrock edition...
But, YES. Lootboxes and stuff are a form of gambling, they're just a way to dodge legislation. Just a pity they didn't sue major mobile game companies, as well as gacha ones. They should sue Google/Apple too to have a better filtering/curation of their stores.

At that point it is up to the person to make good choices.

But we're not talking about adults, here, we're talking about habit forming tactics used and aimed at kids to create a permanent state of imbalance. Kids are not responsible for their own well being. Parents are. But parents are often at a loss as to what is really going on in those games.
They think it's harmless fun when it actually hides a lot of scammy psychological traps to create addiction in young easy targets.

If the lawsuits get news coverage, that should at least warn parents that there are more than one kind of online predators they should be worried about and that not all of them are taking care of by cybernanny software.

The degree of abuse varies. But all games take advantage of human psychology.

Any new form of entertainment gets the same response. Novels, Radio, many other things had the same complaints.

For a modern example see Jack Thompson

Also see the The Columbine kids (trigger waring: mass shooting) Doom was blamed for making them killers when the reality was that they were baby fascists.

Should be children be allowed to gamble with real money? No. I don't think anybody disagrees with me.
It's only allowed on a technicality as it is. You could still have random loot, just legally require there be a disconnect between RMT and the random element.

Some of this is parents that won't accept responsibility for raising their children. The parent in question let their kid play for six years before they turned eighteen. They have some part in this. Don't abdicate responsibility to society.

Years ago there were news stories about people who played Everquest for 30-40 hours straight and then fell over dead.

Are people still doing that?

Oh defintely, the 'compulsion loop', keep playing, keep spending. They have game mechanic designers with majors in psychology studying analytics of human behaviour. What used to be considered novel and gimmicky and replay-value in games these days would just be considered lazy bad game design and a reason why I have fallen out of love with the industry in many respects. Its a sociopathic scale of manipulation.

At last something begins to happen with this crap. I surely hope, that it will finally get the ball rolling and some standards (or at least ratings) for online games will be established. Addictions to particular games, which publishers try to induce as much as they can, have certainly caused a lot of harm to countless players.

Imho there are two aspects why gaming can get addictive: escapism and social pressure.
While new types of media have always been attacked by rather conservative people and thus it's easy to counter those arguments, we have to admit that no book, no music album, no movie captivated its audience for hundreds of hours. Books can be immersive, too, and since fantasy is limitless, the medium has advantages. Yet I haven't seen anyone being called out as an addict, because they read all disc world novels within a week.
But there are games as a service now and there are ways to break the player's urge for new content: PvP, RP, grind, creativity, socialising. These parts only need a framekit and tools, be it Minecraft blocks, endless prestige levels, player event tools, individualisation or chat. MMO(RPG)s have been using these long-term motivations for two decades and they don't even need the immersion single player games or even virtual reality could provide. That would increase the risk of escapism and potential addictive behaviour, but it's not required.
Important is that you can leave your real life problems, weaknesses and anxieties behind, build a new more successful "you" and find companionship, often people in a similar situation like yourself. You easily find new "friends", maybe even a love interest and you suffer from FOMO when busy with RL.
Now even if you were in a good shape when starting to play, being somewhat successful within or helpful towards the community, can lead to social pressure: a group or community relies on you. As an important part of the regular raid, as PvP group member for real life or online friends, as a crafter for your clan or as an event organiser for RP. Even worse in P2W games, when you're supposed to be or stay one of the spenders. Some of your playmates might have become actual friends and express worries about your playtime, but it's easy for you to lie about your situation and find excuses.
You can only get out of it by yourself (finally realising what you neglected or even lost in RL) or through the intervention of parents or real life friends. There's the responsibility. Are P2W and loot boxes bad? Sure, but there are capitalism, lottery and gambling in the real world, too. There are workaholics and gambling addicts. And similarly it can only be avoided by education, self-reflection or worrying people around you.

take advantage of the chemical reward system of a user's brain (taken from the article)

A pretty smart online game friend of me and becoming psychologist back in the days (like 2005, when gaming or internet disorder only existed for the victims, but barely for doctors, psychologists and not for regular people) replied to me regarding this topic: "The worst drug is love, but noone would ever ban it."

There certainly needs to be some proper regulations put in place when it comes to how publishers design and market their in-game transactions, I personally think that governments should start enforcing some sort of verifiable age check so that minors can't access any loot box or similar gambling mechanics, if big publishers being repeatedly sued helps to bring about regulations then I welcome this.

i mean, they have literal teams designing the game to suck you dry as much as they could, it's literally in the game design.

lootboxes should have their own law,
games that only sell skins should have their own law,
and games that have micro transactions should have 10 laws so you could sue them if they fuck up.

here is a law, you can only charge your account 500$, then 1000$ then 2000$ then 5000$ then 20000$, no more micro transactions, only macro transaction so you can see how dumb you are lol.

the voice in league of legends uses a tone to aggravate people and make them mad at the other team. when kills are achieved by the other team. mad people play the game more. stupid toxic community
turned that bitch off

It's clear some mobile games exploit psychological traits in people in order to maximise their revenue. There are experts whose job it is to advise people on how to design their game in order to suck as much money as possible. And nowadays a design decision in a AAA studio is often made using potential revenue graphs instead of enjoyment focus group playthrough results.

And then there are people who make games because they enjoy playing them. Those are the ones we should support.

It's tough. I don't think you should gameify purchases via lootboxes etc. But at the same time people need to take care of themselves.
I have an addictive personality. I dropped too much money on browser games for no reason. I feel like it's up to me to avoid things like that.
But at the same time there's no reason for any company to exploit that. No one would suffer if lootboxes weren't a thing, people like buying anyway.

Many games are addicting because they are just very fun. Other games are addicting because they use gambling tactics. And still others use manipulative FOMO tactics like daily challenges and rewards. Games shouldn't be punished for being fun. They should be punished for unregulated gambling, especially for letting children gamble. FOMO tactics may be unethical to varying degrees but I don't think they warrant punishment.

I think for the majority, that have been in the industry for a long period of time, yes. They know what they are doing and their intention is quite evident.

We do get some Indie devs that hit the nail on the head with a gameplay loop or mechanics that surprise even them for the major success, and you can tell the difference in what they write.

A wholesome, yet interesting story, was with Flappy Bird, remember that mobile game? The dev was so shocked at how out of control and addictive it got that he decided to delist the game from the store, regardless if it was a massive success.

Sure, other similar games arose but, that's one in the few stories I heard that don't abuse human psychology for their own benefit to milk people of time/money.

I think they do. I also think there is not a problem, since you can just stop playing games if you find it bad for your lifestyle. Like other addiction.