well, who cares anyway. VPNs are legal and common to use anyway. Lots of people use it as a pingbooster.
GL on Amazon to try and enforce that.
Nope
Yup
^This
It would cost them more to hunt for VPN users than letting them play & spend money.
They will just take the money and if you have any issue at some point (missing item, quest bugged, got scammed, etc), they can simply tell you that you’re playing from a non-supported region and can’t do anything to help you. VPN users are the best users for them after whales, take their money without having to provide customer support.
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the saltiness lol
It depends on the volume if it is worth the cost to block VPN users.
Network wise, it is pretty easy to identify where users might be coming from:
Each user will login to the game from a public internet IP Address, either from their home, public internet, or VPN service.
1-4 users on the same IP = home/apartment users?
20-50 users on the same IP = public/internet cafe users?
100+ users on the same IP = VPN/botters?
Assume there are no servers over population or issues with bots, there’s no reason to start blocking/banning.
Use at your own risk.
You need to learn to read bud.
5.2 Geographic Restrictions. Due to technical and other restrictions, the Games may be available only in certain locations. We may use technologies to verify your geographic location and restrict access to the Games from other locations. You may not use any technology or technique to obscure or disguise your location.
Mate,i would love to use VPN because the latency Playing from Australia is horrible getting 200-250ms average sucks balls! But at the same time CM has given clear message.
If AGS do reinforce this VPN banned then better be safe then sorry. The release date draws near so their focus will be on the server opening. In regard of VPN I won’t need it until end game anyway, by that time there will be more case study of other players who use VPN
This guy knows what he is talking about 
It’s an automated API so they don’t even need to do anything manually 
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Their vpn banning is automated but their naming system is manual. And you believe that? I dont think AGS even has the tech to see VPNs
Yea thats why they were able to build AWS infastructure lol… Please go away 
I think that is incorrect no? you are not allowed to just go ahead and release a product that doesnt meet the standarts of some european countries and then just geo block them? fairly sure that releasing digital services (Video games) in europe all need to meet every countries local laws aswell as they are part of the european union?
I would be salty in their position as well… And to be fair I also hope that EU will band together against abusive lootboxes in video games (some are fine, some are not) because this is the only way to force the hands of greedy dev/publishers to tone down this practice.
Yes they need a source of income, I’m not 100% against lootboxes, some are fine, some are not.
the abusive lootboxes are the issue, there are some that are not.
No need to wish people these kind of things though thats why.
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I don’t think you are required to make sure any service complies with the local laws of all the countries. That would be insane. If you release a service in a member state, people from other member state must also be given access, unless the service does not comply with local law. I think this even has precedent, as some games were blocked in Germany due to Nazi symbols, while these games were available in other EU countries. Same situation I would think.
That is true, but that was wolfenstein the new order right? that was a game launched in 2014, before the EU commision made GEO blocking illegal in 2018?
That is a good point.
Took me 10seconds to look this up:
An EU-based trader can no longer block or limit a customer’s access to its online interface (such as a website or app) based on their location and they cannot redirect the customer to a different online interface, without their express consent. This increases price transparency by allowing consumers to access different national websites. This also applies to non-audio-visual electronically supplied services such as e-books, music, games and software. However, geo-blocking is permitted where it is necessary to comply with EU or Member State law, but where this is the case, a clear and specific explanation must be provided.
So yeah they can just block people from these countries.
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My point is: Do they know for sure their games runs afoul of gambling laws in NL and BE, or do they just think they might, and don’t want to spend time and resources to figure this out. And just not release the game there to be sure. In that case you could argue they are breaking the Single Digital Market law, because the gambling mechanics do no conflict with local laws.
To date, not a single loot-box game has been banned in NL. A few have gotten warnings and they have updated the mechanics. This would be the first game that would not be released in NL due to loot-boxes.
Edit to add:
I looked up the decision of the KansspelAutoriteit on the Fifa loot-boxes and it comes down to two things:
- The player has no influence on the chance of certain content (so it’s completely random).
- The contents of the loot-box can be traded (sold) for real money, so the content has monetary value.
Games have been blocked before. And there are loot boxes like the card box and the box which gives you crystals that are both tradeable. All games I know with lootboxes that were already published blocked certain countries from purchasing them and that fixed the issue. This is the only thing Amazon/Smilegate has to do and we should be fine. But yeah I guess its too much work. Even in the half a year of delay they couldn’t even do this basic thing for us so don’t get ur hopes up.
ad2) it’s actually “can be traded” and “does hold a real money value”. Doesn’t mean “it can be sold for real money”. Even if it may never be possible to sell it, but that’s the exact difference between NL/BE and the ROW.
Every* country has the same laws as NL/BE. But all the rest have reason and go with “it stays in the game, so it’s the game”. While NL/BE interpretation (not laws!) says “but someone would be willing to offer the money for it so it’s not just a game anymore”.
That’s the core difference.
And the ingame issue… almost all games I’ve seen that “solves” it by making an exception do it because they really sell lootboxes for real money and are able to do the checkout check for country (they need to do that anyway for taxes, so they know).
In LA it’s more convoluted as you buy “the lootboxes” (that would be legendary outfit thingy) for ingame currency within a game where you do not do the checkout and it may be simply “impossible” to check the country of character doing the shoping. At least easily.
They could do it through Steam for our version for example. The shop leak with nowhere-seen-before USD prices in the ingame shop as well as the microservice payment Steamworks already in place seems it may be possible in the future. It’s just probably not the priority for the start, that’s all.
Unfortunate NL bureaucrats are so active in this. Something usually triggers those. Some public havoc. And every country has some “weird” laws that make no sense to the others but they are just trying to solve some problem that already randomly appeared.
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