Nintendo Sued For 'Immoral' Mario Kart Loot Boxes (axios.com) 57
Nintendo is facing a potential class-action lawsuit filed by a young gamer and backed by his father, alleging that the microtransactions in the mobile game Mario Kart Tour are "immoral." Axios reports: The suit calls for refunds for all minors in the U.S. who paid to use Mario Kart Tour's "Spotlight Pipes," which delivered players in-game rewards using undisclosed odds. Until last year, Mario Kart Tour players could spend real money to repeatedly activate the pipes, in the hope they'd randomly produce useful upgrades. The suit alleges that Nintendo intentionally made the game difficult to proceed in without paying, using "dark patterns," an industry term for tricking consumers, to steer players toward spending more.
The suit was filed in March but emerged on the federal docket last week after it was moved out of state court. Its plaintiff, identified as N.A., spent more than $170 on Mario Kart Tour microtransactions, via his father's credit card, which was linked to their Nintendo user account. "Defendant's lootbox mechanism capitalized on and encouraged addictive behaviors akin to gambling," according to N.A.'s suit. It states that minors are particularly susceptible to systems that involve surprise rewards. Axios notes that Nintendo "discontinued use of spotlight pipes in Mario Kart Tour last September, switching to a system that lets players directly purchase items offered in its in-game shop."
The suit was filed in March but emerged on the federal docket last week after it was moved out of state court. Its plaintiff, identified as N.A., spent more than $170 on Mario Kart Tour microtransactions, via his father's credit card, which was linked to their Nintendo user account. "Defendant's lootbox mechanism capitalized on and encouraged addictive behaviors akin to gambling," according to N.A.'s suit. It states that minors are particularly susceptible to systems that involve surprise rewards. Axios notes that Nintendo "discontinued use of spotlight pipes in Mario Kart Tour last September, switching to a system that lets players directly purchase items offered in its in-game shop."
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Immoral is usually fine.
Immoral when it involves children less so.
The whole case will hinge around if the judge/jury can be convinced if Nintendo targeted children.
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Fortnite (Save the world) got hit by this a few years ago and now they have to display what is in the loot boxes
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+5
He's the one who linked his credit card to a "Nintendo account" then sat his brat in front of the machine unsupervised.
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I remember back in the day when Android and Apple got hit for this shit. Basically, they make linking the credit card as easy as they can, make putting a card in temporarily or removing permission to charge a card as hard as possible, etc...
So you could put your card in to buy your kid Matlab or such, and next thing you know they've charged a couple hundred for some gaming credits.
Also, kid. Might not realize the difference between real world currency and game currency yet.
Re:And the thief accuses Nintendo of being the pro (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree that it's despicable but I don't see how it's illegal or how anybody is still surprised by it in 2023.
What's needed is a law to force banks to send an SMS every time something is charged to a card. Some banks already do but it should be obligatory.
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I'd probably be drowned in notifications in that case.
It might not be illegal, but to keep companies under control, I think it should be, especially for minors. I'm also not surprised by it at all.
Which is why I think the lawsuit over it is the news, not the practice itself.
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but I don't see how it's illegal
If they depended on the kid's confusion over the difference between real money and virtual in-game money, then it's fraud. Hard to prove, but again - it's not like they go out of their way to make it hard to link a credit card to an account (or make it easy to require a parent's consent to use the card on file).
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but I don't see how it's illegal
If they depended on the kid's confusion over the difference between real money and virtual in-game money, then it's fraud.
1. Gambling, which has a specific legal definition, is illegal. This includes gambling "inside a video game".
2. Specifically designed to entrap and addict children?
3. Dad didn't know there was gambling, much less psychological programming to potentially addicted to it.
4. Even gambling with in-game currency is illegal, unless perhaps you cannot purchase in-game currency and only earn it within the game. The law is not about US Dollars, it's about "things of value". Which includes virtual things and virtual "
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In the US, the gambling laws are both state and federal. And in this Nintendo case, things are far worse because of the allegations of fraud and the targeting of children - a whole other set of laws and liabilities.
Laws like these are the whole reason behind the demise of the Celadon City and Mauville City Game Corners in the Pokemon games. (And those only used the fake in-game currency that could never be exchanged for real money.) You'd think Nintendo would have known better for Mario Kart given how long it's been since the Pokemon changes. (The last slot machine was in the GBA games, well over a decade ago.)
Then again, the idiot parent who lets their kids run around unsupervised with an online device deserves wh
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Your 'phone doesn't let you block/filter SMS by sender? How quaint.
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I'm fairly certain Nintendo has some parental control options available to prevent a kid from running up their parents' credit card. As much as I personally feel IAPs are a scummy practice and have ruined every game they've infected, the fault here lies with the parent for not properly configuring their kid's Nintendo Switch.
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Mario Kart Tour is a phone game, not a Switch game. It's on iOS and Android.
Some levels from Mario Kart Tour were later re-used as DLC for Mario Kart 8 on the Switch.
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I don't know about iOS, but on Android I can turn on Purchase Authentication for in-app purchases. That means for any payment method, including credit cards stored in Google Pay, I can require PIN/biometric confirmation for use in any app.
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Also, kid. Might not realize the difference between real world currency and game currency yet.
It doesn't help that a lot of this stuff gets charged in game currency or company scrip. You generally buy a season pass, in-game items and keys for loot boxes with V-Bucks, Crom Coins, Apex coins and what have you. If you don't have sufficient coins, you might get a pop up offering a number of coins for RL cash, kid clicks OK, and dad gets a charge on the linked credit card.
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+5
He's the one who linked his credit card to a "Nintendo account" then sat his brat in front of the machine unsupervised.
The point is that the father didn't realize it was an illegal gambling machine (and as if that wasn't enough, one designed specifically to entrap and addict children).
Second Life had to remove their gambling machines (created and operated by users) when the feds noticed them. And those were for adults! I bet other games have had this issue before, and that things will especially not go well for Nintendo with the "children" angle.
Re:And the thief accuses Nintendo of being the pro (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, I remember back when Android and Apple got busted for this sort of thing.
1. Air Jordans - this requires dad to pull out the card. To be similar to what happened, the dad took the kid in to get some sensible school shoes, and the kid went back to the store later, they pulled up dad's credit card and THEN sold the kid a half dozen pairs of Air Jordans.
2. The kid is a minor. We don't know how young, but he could be young enough that the concept of "money" is still shaky, much less taking without permission, and all that. There's a reason why we generally protect minors more in contracts and such. It's just that game and other companies these days are preying upon them under the idea that most parents will just pay the bill. Do you really want to introduce little Timmy to the US justice system as a preteen? I don't.
3. Who says that he didn't face him? He might have sat "little Timmy" down and given him an education on that stuff. Doesn't mean that Nintendo didn't deliberately target Timmy in what amounts to a scam operation to get Timmy to do it. I mean, if some adult convinces your kid to sell illegal drugs in school, do you just punish your kid, or do you make sure that adult is never seen again as well?
Nintendo, in this case, was very much an active participant, deliberately engineering their game to encourage this sort of behavior.
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Did the kid go grab the credit card and key in the number? Or did dad buy a single game for $3.99 a year ago and Nintendo "helpfully" stored the card on file automatically? Because I think they can share the blame for that behavior. Modern systems are designed around tricks like this. And then games have "virtual" currencies that you earn in-game. Kids are not always aware that real money is involved in any of it because it's a game.
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Kids are idiots. Nobody is born with an adult sense of morality, they have to learn it. And its entirely possible theyfather has been lacking in that respect.
That does not abborgate the fact that Nintendo have been lazer targetting gambling advertising at children. I've seen how pernicious these loot boxes are with kids. They go absolutely mental if you wont buy it for them, and theres a huge amount of peer pressure amongst peers to have the latest shiny things. (Fortnight is insidious for this, but with th
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So if a toddler approaches you and wants to buy a cookie with a $1000 bill, you'd happily sell - fair transaction according to your logic. Then declare the toddler to be a thief of their mommie's money. What a criminal. That's a pretty narrow view of morality you have there.
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There are several $1000 bills in existence, some of which are no longer being printed and in some cases are worth more than their face value due to being rare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"There are several $1000 bills in existence,"
Yeah, but one thousand Zimbabwean dollars won't even buy you a cookie. If you're talking US Dollars, they don't print anything bigger than $100 these days.
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They do exist, just not in US circulation. That said, just drop a zero and it makes sense.
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Well if a kid walks into a store with a credit card, you'd expect the store to refuse the purchase because they can see it's a kid who shouldn't have a credit card. Online it's not so easy for the company to do that, and they had no reason to know it wasn't the father directly using his card.
But you're right, the kid stole from his father and the father is responsible and should be dealing with it. Blaming nintendo is stupid.
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Blaming Nintendo is SMART, actually. The kid doesn't have any money. Nintendo does. You go after the parties with money.
It's like how parents have actually had their minor children sue them before. IE the parents hired a lawyer in their kid's name to sue themselves.
Why? It was a tactic to force the insurance to pay out.
Also, could be dealing with the kid for other things, and in a lot of countries, if the kid is young enough, they're considered to be "below the age of criminal responsibility" and they c
Pay to win (Score:3)
This kind of deliberately addictive microtransactions while sneaking in paid boosters has been going on for 10-20 years. Is it immoral to prey on people's weaknesses or ignorance? I'm not sure that it is in a capitalist society. In fact much of ordinary advertising is based on that model. But clearly it is honed to a fine edge in a lot of games and that does seem iffy, especially when the prey are young people who can't be expected to know better.
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...especially when the prey are young people who can't be expected to know better.
Have you seen the shoppping channel with all those junk "collectables", etc.?
How about all those junk abdominal exercisers that are filling the nation's wardrobes and garages?
That's older people falling for the exact same shit, just a different medium.
PS: This young person doesn't even have his own credit card. It wasn't him who connect the Nintendo to a live bank account.
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That's older people falling for the exact same shit, just a different medium.
My grandfather fell for that sort of thing more than once. However, it was only after he started suffering from dementia. So something of an excuse there. We ended up having to take his cards and such away from him, before the end.
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That's why they target children, who don't have a fully developed understanding of gambling and the value of money.
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All you're saying is that old folks are also vulnerable. So what?
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All you're saying is that old folks are also vulnerable. So what?
What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
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Is it immoral to prey on people's weaknesses or ignorance? I'm not sure that it is in a capitalist society.
Yes it is. In fact the ultimate goal of capitalism is to extract maximum wealth from those willing to part with it. This is textbook level stuff for businesses: in an ideal world you have perfect information about your customer and know exactly the maximum they are willing to pay and able to charge them such. In the real world we don't have such information so we treat customers as a group and determine the maximum that group is willing to pay, ultimately leaving something on the table.
Lootboxes and progres
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Another goal is honesty: When there's easy money, there's little incentive for the seller to be honest. It's why we have laws against deception and wilful omission. (Although, the seller doesn't have to correct your assumptions on 'fit for purpose'.)
Re: Pay to win (Score:2)
Technically this isn't related to capitalism and it is how markets function. Capitalism would be an economic system to raise money from private investors in order to acquire the necessary resources for a business venture. Such as hiring a ship and crew to move sugar and cotton across the ocean.
Ripping people off is an art older than capitalism, and it is possible to have businesses and gambling without capitalism.
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This kind of deliberately addictive microtransactions while sneaking in paid boosters has been going on for 10-20 years. Is it immoral to prey on people's weaknesses or ignorance? I'm not sure that it is in a capitalist society.
Does the US have a capitalist society or is it a mix of different systems?
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Good question, it can be argued that the US is a mixed economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"In mixed economies, which are almost universal today, markets continue to play a dominant role, but they are regulated to some extent by the state in order to correct market failures, promote social welfare, conserve natural resources, fund defense and public safety or other rationale."
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Yes. Very much so. But it doesn't seem to be illegal, so unless this caused grievous mental or physical injury to the child in question, I sincerely doubt that this lawsuit has any chance to succeed.
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Since Nintendo doesn't give any cash value, it's *technically* not gambling (although is actually is).
Same way Pachinko gambling works in Japan; you put cash in the machines and win a worthless stuffed toy, plastic thing, or whatever.
You can keep that toy, or you can take it down the street to a fellow who will conveniently pay an unusually high price for it.
https://www.japan-guide.com/e/... [japan-guide.com].
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I imagine part of the loophole is that you pay $5 and always get at least some tiny nothing ("not gambling") with a 1% chance of the gold mushroom whatever. I believe it's how baseball cards/etc get to do it.
But I was under the impression JP had passed some gacha laws, a fair while back, which in addition to outlawing TFA's "undisclosed odds" (perhaps only for certain conditions) had some weird bits like "You cannot grant rewards piecemeal", ie. the reward cannot be a useless goldmushroom "piece". Which is
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Since Nintendo doesn't give any cash value, it's *technically* not gambling (although is actually is).
Same way Pachinko gambling works in Japan
I don't know the laws in Japan, but in the US the gambling laws are not about cash. It's about any "exchange of value". And it's not just illegal for minors, it's illegal for everyone. And there are both state and federal laws about it.
In-game currency is obviously an exchange of value; and you obtain it with US dollars. Money is money. And even if money is not involved, gambling is defined as where you spend "something of value" and might recieve "something of value"and that's illegal. Often everyone and t
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Suing someone doesn't require illegality, merely "harm". If the game creates harm to users, that would be sufficient to launch a lawsuit. Doesn't mean they will win, but that's always a gamble, based on who has the better lawyers among other things.
Certainly if online gambling is controlled in a country, then gaming that supplies a form of online gambling via loot boxes is of questionable legality.
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Immorality compounds. It doesn't cancel out.
Nintendo, a card game company (Score:2)
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Baseball cards also. As a kid in the 90s, it definitely was addicting to buy a pack of cards and hope for a high value card. I even used my allowance money to buy Becket baseball card monthly price guide. A friend and I used to sell cards in 4th grade. We'd have a binder with cards marked with prices, packs supposedly put together at random (though we'd make sure they were all common players except every other or 3rd pack we'd put something decent so buyers couldn't say we ripped them off). The other kids i
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"...and card game packs are essentially gambling."
Not traditional card packs, which are not collectible and are complete sets sold in one piece, which is what Nintendo started out selling.
Now, *using* those cards can be gambling, but Nintendo wasn't involved in that end of it.
Gambling (Score:2)
Sounds like we need regulation because this kind of thing has been going on for years & it doesn't look like the games industry is going to stop voluntarily.
Weird (Score:2)
I've been playing various free-to-play games for years and never spent a dime on DLC or loot boxes. Am I doing something wrong?
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This is why I don't play these sorts of games any more.