I don’t believe government regulations can ever truly be effective. Over the past three and a half years, we’ve all seen how grey imports work (I am speaking about Russia getting the high tech elements for its weapons) — but in reality, there’s a loophole for almost every law you can imagine.
Take my own field — games. Everyone knows that mobile games make money from microtransactions. And the best way to hide the real price of an item is to put it inside some kind of loot box. Your “Sword of a Thousand Truths” might drop from a box that costs one dollar — but the chance is 0.00001%. You can simply omit that number or bury it on the tenth screen if you’re forced to disclose it.
Governments — like China — try to ban loot boxes. You can’t sell them for real currency! You can’t even sell in-game currency for yuan if that currency can be used to buy loot boxes! So what do developers do? Easy. I’ll sell you gold for yuan, coupons for gold, and boxes for coupons. Then I’ll add ways to earn gold and coupons for free — and voilà, we have a completely “free-to-play” game. Sure, you can now try your luck ten times instead of one, so your odds of getting the sword have increased to a whopping 0.0001%!
Let’s say the government somehow manages to ban any kind of paid randomization altogether. Fine. You know what I’ll do next?
I’ll show the player exactly what’s inside the box. Literally: the box costs one dollar, and inside you’ll get a tin spoon shard and a Winnie-the-Pooh extract. Want it? Great! The next item that appears will be different. Maybe we’ll even offer you the Sword of a Thousand Truths for the same dollar next time.
See what’s happening? The player technically pays for something known — but what they’re actually buying is still the chance.
The truth is, governments can’t possibly invent as many solutions as businesses can find loopholes. There’s a simple reason for that: a bureaucrat writing legal definitions gets paid whether or not he covers every edge case. But a business has to find a workaround — or it dies.
In the end, governments are doomed to remain reactive. Which means, frankly, they might as well do nothing at all.