All forms of loot boxes are dumb, but this is nothing new, they have been around for many years, probably just as long if not longer than loot boxes in games.
https://boxes.mysubscriptionaddiction.com/most_purchased
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I'd say it's a bit different.
This is more like those CS:GO lottery sites where you gamble for skins, except it's real items.
And rather than a physical mystery box, your dealing with a randomized box, which again is more similar to the video game lootboxes.
Also, you can sign in with your Steam account for some reason.
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great, now im tempted to open one of the $6.99 gamers box :|
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I'd warn against it. They accept that G2A-pay thing which is a red flag in enough itself.
Plus an apparent weird trend with youtubers with large subscriber counts doing videos where they miraculously won expensive things, whereas videos of random nobodies who unpack 20+ crates and the best they get is like... a converter wire for USB to Lightning connections. Or people saying they just straight up haven't received whatever they chose to keep after months and counting.
Save that $7 and put it towards your next big game, or hit up one of the many geek gadget stores with it. :P
Hell that's almost enough for one hit of the Humble monthly bundle, you could wait until one of the featured games takes your fancy and snipe it on the spot. Speaking of which, the next monthly announces in about 7 and a half hours, hmmm.
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I'd rather spend that seven dollars on a fast food meal or some premium kush.
But then again I have too much shit and too many games so.
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Reminds me of that one youtuber who was exposed for faking a CSGO knife skin win on a gambling website. Some people did some digging into the website and found the guy's name listed as one of the owners, and naturally all hell went loose. Unlike the ones who backed out of the scheme, that same guy had the audacity to engage in damage control by posting a video of himself... while walking around in his own mansion.
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Yep, here they are called cat in a bag - both as a saying, and a package bought with unknown content. It is (was?) super popular amongst the kids in markets and festivals. :)
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Oh, is that usually meant to have negative connotations or to be neutral or positive? I ask because it sounds negative to me. It reminds me of the idiomatic warning about buying a "pig in a poke" because you might "be sold a pup", and exposing a secret (or a similar attempted fraudulent sale) is to "let the cat out of the bag". All of these sayings are apparently related to a medieval conman sales trick of misrepresenting a puppy dog or a cat in a sealed sack as a suckling pig.
As a child, lucky dips were talked about (also at fairs/festivals) as positive and exciting - we didn't know about the deceptive world of commerce then, and nobody was teaching us. It was also common to be able to buy mixed bags of lollies at the corner store. At least inquisitive kids today should be able to find out just how bad a deal loot boxes are, although resisting that urge to gamble is another matter.
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As the item it's neutralish (maybe a bit positive. As kids we loved it). Like festivals, fairs or mineral-sales have various little minerals (pretty quartz, amber, bloodstone, hematite, etc) being in a brown paperbag, you not knowing what you get besides some kind of semiprecious stone. - they are named and sold as "Cat in a Bag". They are open about it being random, but it's usually pretty cheap, never part of a collection, just "gimme something random, all okay" Likely didn't worth it though :D
As the proverb goes " I'm not selling cat in a bag" it's the same as your pig in a poke - selling cats in a bag instead of suckling pig.
And as a consequence, when you say that doing something / buying that is "getting a cat in a bag" it is negative, and would be used for lootboxes and such.
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Ah, okay. Thanks.
Yeah, I loved lucky dips, too. :-D
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Mixed bags of sweets are still a thing these days, at least where I am.
And they're actually a better deal than buying normal sweets as long as you don't dislike something that could be in it (or worse, have an allergy to it)
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Hungary. Same in Russia?
(Welcome on Steamgifts, and your first comment here :3 )
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Thank you! Yes, we have exactly same saying in Russia, but no festival thingy, it's just a saying. Honestly, we don't really have festivals at all (the old-timed funfair kind), not that I know of at least...
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Hahaha!
Well, it might just be a hit with the middle-aged Australian demographic.
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I went to read the FAQ and indeed it works just like lootboxes work in games, judging by the way they wrote it it even seems like they're proud of themselves.
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Well, in the case of collector lootboxes which are pretty much a subscription service of themed collectibles/curios, they at least tend to have a degree of fun factor to the contents. Firebox do an interesting themed box thing where they pick items from their stock around a handful of named themes, which is a fun emergency "I have no idea what to get you" gift at christmas.
Though the site you linked is way different to those kinds. A big red flag on mysterbrand being that it accepts G2A's pay service and seems to runs on the 'hot random key' ethic of promising chances at great things and claiming its pure random chance, but choose not to elaborate on the weighting they use and whether the boxes become unavailable when the big prizes are taken. That's a common 'fuck you' from HRK style gambles, where they have a massive amount of filler garbage items they can restock almost indefinitely, but a very limited pool of cool things that they won't restock, meaning that you could actually have zero chance of getting something above pure trash because you didn't buy within the first hour (and are them falling for a lie of omission). Hell, even GoG who genuinely seem honest in their practices would naturally be subject to this if the chaff/wheat ratio was off by enough, though IIRC when GoG did random purchase offers they at least let people know when they restocked, marked it with a note to say the prizes are all above a certain price from their catalogue, and claimed to use an algorithm that added a little weight towards your wishlisted items and games you didn't already own. Plus you weren't in danger of shovelware / bundle resale stuff.
A brief google into mysterybrand seems to point towards people just straight up not having their wins delivered after months of waiting, and how oddly enough certain youtubers with very large subscriber bases threw out tooooootally neutral videos where they just happened to win iphones and expensive stuff (meanwhile videos from other randos show that in 40 box openings the most they won was a beanie, with most boxes giving them just stuff like adapter cables for hardware, phone cases or cheap novelty watches).
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G2A expanding into the 3D market lmao
based in Poland
no company info, addresses etc. whatsoever, real "MysteryBrand" right here
G2A Pay
Looks trustworthy. I should give them my money.
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Probably a limited liability company aswell so when shit hits the fan the owners can f off with ease haha
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G2A or not, Poland has a thing for company's that have no locations. Heck, there were a few controversies of a large scale about it a few years back.
So honestly, not surprised something as pathetic as a lootbox site would opt for that route.
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Rig it for the owners to win & keep both the cash and the expensive prize.
Now that is a win win.
("But how could they even do that?")
(Answer: just buy one stupid box as the owner and send it to yourself/henchmen of choice with the package/voucher you yourself stuffed in it)
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Some shady website with poor spelling & grammar offering a (chance for a) 250 million dollar mansion... Sounds legit. Even if they make enough money off of people losing their money gambling to afford the stuff, It looks like the type of place that wouldn't actually giveaway any iMacs & Lamborghini's if you somehow did win them by chance (If that's even possible, obviously not probable. How do we know it isn't 100% rigged?).
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I see nothing wrong with that ,let people decide if they want to buy it or not, also why are you watching youtube drama ? pathetic
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They were already a thing, weren't they?
What about Loot crates and Gachapons?
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When I was a child the irl loot boxes were called Wundertüten ("bag of wonders").
According to Wikipedia, these were around since ~ 70 years.
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we had lots of them too here in Northern Italy and I loved them in the '80s/'90s when I was a kid!! they were always so big and full of things and it was every time a thrill =P
we followed generally the French tradition - they call them "pochette-surprise" ("surprise packages/bags") and we called them usually "buste-sorpresa" (where "busta" stands for "box/package/envelope", actually it has the same root of the English "box" =P)
definitely not a "new thing" xD
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I thought that was the whole point of pirates...arghhh!
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Ahhh, the site offering the 250000000$ realty. Good memes.
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Amazon is doing loot boxes now as well. I got an email about monthly curated surprise subscription boxes.
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shitlord Jack Paul is promoting the site
How do we even know he's not a secret owner. Wouldn't be the first time something like that happened.
Also, kids don't do lootboxes stay in school.
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Big surprise, maybe you never heard of CCG or many other stuff even before them. Heck, buy the mystery item was a concept for pretty much from the dawn of the marketpalce.
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It's nothing new.
You have those trinket boxes you can get for whatever the most popular shows are (mini mystery boxes with figures, some of the figures are so rare that the box is only worth 3 dollars but the figure inside is worth 300 dollars) advent calendars are the same thing when they're not the chocolate ones.
This is the way the market is heading because it makes more money. Don't ever forget that your video game developers/retail store is a business and you're the customer. They'll take advantage of you if it means they can make a few extra dollars.
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you are promoting it too. considering you just wrote 2 sentences and put up the link....
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