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United States Government The Almighty Buck Games

Should In-Game Currency Receive Federal Government Banking Protections? (yahoo.com) 59

Posted by EditorDavid from the playing-with-real-money dept.
Friday America's consumer watchdog agency "proposed a rule to give virtual video game currencies protections similar to those of real-world bank accounts..." reports the Washington Post, "so players can receive refunds or compensation for unauthorized transactions, similar to how banks are required to respond to claims of fraudulent activity." The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is seeking public input on a rule interpretation to clarify which rights are protected and available to video game consumers under the Electronic Fund Transfer Act. It would hold video game companies subject to violations of federal consumer financial law if they fail to address financial issues reported by customers. The public comment period lasts from Friday through March 31. In particular, the independent federal agency wants to hear from gamers about the types of transactions they make, any issues with in-game currencies, and stories about how companies helped or denied help.

The effort is in response to complaints to the bureau and the Federal Trade Commission about unauthorized transactions, scams, hacking attempts and account theft, outlined in an April bureau report that covered banking in video games and virtual worlds. The complaints said consumers "received limited recourse from gaming companies." Companies may ban or lock accounts or shut down a service, according to the report, but they don't generally guarantee refunds to people who lost property... The April report says the bureau and FTC received numerous complaints from players who contacted their banks regarding unauthorized charges on Roblox. "These complaints note that while they received refunds through their financial institutions, Roblox then terminated or locked their account," the report says.

Should In-Game Currency Receive Federal Government Banking Protections? More | Reply

Should In-Game Currency Receive Federal Government Banking Protections?

Comments Filter:

  • Sure (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    And make it taxable income also

  • Misleading (Score:5, Interesting)

    by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Saturday January 11, 2025 @03:50PM (#65081409)

    This has little to do with in-game currencies. This is entirely about real world money being used to buy in-game currency. The gist of it is that games like Roblox will sometimes take your money and then refuse to give you what you purchased. If you ask for a refund, they will say no. If you complain to your bank, Roblox will cancel your account. This is essentially theft.

    This happened to me several years ago when I bought Robux for my young child gamer on his Android tablet, and the Robux were never delivered to his account. I contacted Roblox, and was told tough shit. I complained to Google, and Roblox canceled my son's account. I send dozens of emails over the course of a week, and Roblox finally relented.

    So hell yes, this needs to be regulated. The blight on humanity called Roblox is why we can't have nice things.

    • Re:Misleading (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Local ID10T ( 790134 ) <ID10T.L.USER@gmail.com> on Saturday January 11, 2025 @04:17PM (#65081463) Homepage

      eh. These kind of things are already regulated.

      If you do not get the in game $ you purchased, you file a chargeback with google (as you did) or with your credit card company. If they retaliate by terminating your game account, you file another chargeback for the purchase of the game. (They do not have to keep you as a customer, but they do owe you a refund for termination without cause -and your CC company will likely take your side so that it is not you vs game-corp.)

      The FTC, and your state Attorney General's office will take consumer complaints and can pursue further action if multiple people complain about a companies behavior.

      I don't see that we need to apply federal banking regulations to virtual world transactions. It just adds more layers of oversight and unnecessary paperwork (Know Your Customer?) to things that are already regulated by consumer protection laws.

      • There have been a few cases in the EU where in-game currency was likened to gift cards: you spend real money to get credit for purchasing items in a specific store. That card may have an end date on it, it may not be refundable... but it does represent a value. Some cases were about game currency being stolen, and the court would order an equivalent amount of real money to be paid by the thief to the victim. But at no time the suggestion came up that the game company would be on the hook for fraud commit

      • A chargeback is not a regulation. It is a gift provided to you by a credit card company.

        Anything you depend on a chargeback for is an example of regulatory failure - specifically the failure to implement appropriate consumer protection legislation.

        • It is not a gift. We know this because for profit corporations don't give gifts to their customers. But beyond that it is mandated by federal credit regulation laws such as the Fair Credit Billing Act.

    • No it shouldn't be regulated. We should live in a world where dealing with in game currencies purchased through real money should be unsafe. People should get burned, and when they do that they should learn to stop this fucking industry wide cancer that is in-game purchases.

      No one should help legitimise this destruction of gaming culture through corporate greed.

    • That's not a matter for the FDIC though. FTC? Sure, maybe. Or the FBI. Offering to sell a product (Robux) and not delivering the goods afterwards is fraud.

  • Gift cards, companies live those because they are so profitable.

  • While I never spend money unless it's for actual new levels, my kids love their Robux...and the Robux corporations should have the same laws as any other company dealing in currency. It's a fucking plague and children...while I can say no...and I severely limit how much they buy, their friends spend tons of money and often get scammed. I would love to see regulations regarding refunds or forcing companies to allow you to cash out. They're preying on the mentally ill and actively researching how to make t
    • I agree you have to be mentally-ill to piss your money away on whatever-the-fuck Robux are.

      • I agree you have to be mentally-ill to piss your money away on whatever-the-fuck Robux are.

        You piss your money away buying alcohol.

    • And if you are this worried about the money you are pissing away, maybe pissing it away is not the best idea.

      • And if you are this worried about the money you are pissing away, maybe pissing it away is not the best idea.

        while I am sure it makes you feel better about yourself to put down others, it's not about me, but my children and their friends. Although I assume you'd follow with the typical incel response of "well, if you can't tell your kids 'no', it's not our fault you're a shitty parent"...or something to the extent of saying it my fault and my kids suck.

        I understand why you'd feel that way, but it's a profoundly ignorant view made by folks who have never had children...or come from cultures where the dads are

        • What really annoys the fuck out of me is that my medical school daughter is going to pledge an oath to actually take care of your seriously shitty generation. Lucky for you I must have accidently done something right, cause she seems to have no issue with it. I would tell you to GFY, but you seemed to have already done that.
        • Stand up to your kids? Jeezes. You are correct in that I do have a severe lack of empathy. It's not entirely my fault. I had a kid who you never even had to ask if they did their homework, she just did it. Even as a teen-ager, she was low drama. I guess I didn't know how lucky I was. I mean, it couldn't have actually been anything *I* did.

        • I wonder, if some drug dealers have caught your children and their friends in their addiction nets, would you be so tolerant of them as you seem to be to the game companies sucking your money.

          Is this some kind of Stockholm syndrome? They have you by the balls, you defend them.

  • it is just a game (Score:4, Insightful)

    by renegade600 ( 204461 ) on Saturday January 11, 2025 @04:17PM (#65081465)

    next they will want to tax it.

  • What you should have, if necessary to make the courts care, is a law designating in-game transactions as covered by fraud law.

    Those transactions affect the value of the game to the player. If the transactions are not properly controlled by the entity responsible for providing the service, that's fraud. They promised you an in-game economy that would provide features... then they failed to maintain it, causing loss of value of the game to the player. They failed to provide what they promised.

    Courts will g

    • No. That is insane. Part of the point of gaming is that you get to vicariously do things you could not, or just would not, do in real life. We all know this. And it's been the case since forever. Remember the Guiding Hand Social Club? How about the assignation of Lord British? To the perpetrators of those virtual "crimes" all belong in prison? Hell, I scammed more than a bit of ISK back in the day off people who didn't pay close enough attention to the decimal point in the marketplace. Should I hav

      • I think you have completely misunderstood the topic. This is about spending real currency to buy in game currency which is then used to buy in game items. It has nothing to do with actions taken by game characters.

      • I'm all for ultraviolence in games, but only when the ultraviolence stays in the game. Also, I'm all for Monopoly money, but only when they have no value in real life.

        Games should have the freedom to do whatever they want inside the game setting. But when they start spilling into real life, like that stupid AR Pokemon game, there must be consequences. And indeed, regulation.

  • The National Bank Acts of 1865 and 1866 imposed a 10% tax on all payments made with alternative currencies. The government should be getting 10% every robux transaction. Also, it should be getting 10% of every bitcoin transaction but it's still unclear if bitcoin is a currency or a security. Looks like bitcoin is dodging the tax by pretending to be a security, for now.

    • A Security is a Tradeable store of value. Most cryptocurrency is engineered to be deflationary in nature, therefore a store of value. A fat cats wet dream of a store of value outside of any risk derived from being tied to a nation. DOGE does seem to be inflationary in design, as opposed to deflationary, and therefore explicitly not a security.

      I do read cryptocurrency as a Tulip Scam. To hold value in a post-apocalypse, there needs to be something worth having. A digital token is of no worth on its own, a

  • If the game currency is redeemable in real currency, then yes. They are essentially acting as a bank. The online "currency" is just their way of tracking your balance.

    If the currency is entirely for use within the game, then no. Its essentially just a purchase like buying monopoly money to play monopoly.

    Of course, if your goal is to prevent competition, then creating regulations that make it more difficult for someone to enter the market suits your interests. Suddenly creating an online game requires com

  • A better, more sane initiative would be to ban in-game currencies all together. i.e. if a game has a pay to play aspect then the game should require real money from the player's real jurisdiction to pay for it. Direct, immediate payment. No more Gold, or Doubloons, or Gems, or Smurf Berries, whatever the fuck disassociative bullshit a game wants people to spend in-game. No more boosters, or loot crates, or anything else either. You pay with money or you don't.

    • Yup. They clearly can take real currency. I can only think of two reasons they do it, one they hope you will leave unused currency out there such as with a lost gift card. The other is it cuts down on the transactions they have to track. Just ban it. I'd ban gift cards too, they are a massive profit maker for reason #1.

  • Pissing your money away?

  • all the stuff it's SUPPOSED to be doing, and therefore has reduced taxes to unheard-of low levels, and it has spare time and money and employees, then PERHAPS it's time to consider letting it regulate financial transactions related to computer games. ... um ... nope ... no, I still don't really see it. If government has the time and money and manpower to have ANYTHING to do with regulating computer games in ANY way then there's too much government and taxes are too high.

    The founders of the United States re

    • and not being able to steal and murder the natives for their land and resources, then being expected to pay for the cost of protecting them from those natives , when enaged in stealing and murder,

  • Purchases of game currencies or other value made with legal tender, by whatever method, are subject to banking, credit, and financial law. Some payment processors do not honor or accept transactions intended to facilitate purchase of such digital assets. This is more obvious as restrictions on cryptocurrency purchases or redemptions, NFTs, and a few other 'risky' transactions. Many processors do not support casino/gambling purchases, though legal sports books*
    have enough power to defeat this.

    No new law need

    • They should just ban in-game currencies. They are an unnecessary layer of obfuscation from real currency purchases.

      >I think online sports books are the second worst thing ever. Their promotional deals tell the story. Ugly business.

      Agree 100%. Online gambling is a great way for people to piss away their life's savings. Massive sports gambling is going to poison sports too.

  • The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created as part of the panic over the Great Financial Crisis. It has no good reason to exist; it should just be abolished.

  • Pretty simple. Don't buy if you want protections because you aren't buying anything with value and it can be pulled back at any time. Just ban in game currencies and while we are at it ban gift cards. Anything that acts like a middle man to real currency.

    • The ostensible reason for in-game currency is to spread the cost of one real-world transaction across multiple in-game transactions. Otherwise, enjoy Visa/MC's 0.30 USD swipe fee on top of the 0.20 USD price of a cosmetic for your character.

      And one ostensible reason for gift cards is to let unbanked and underbanked customers purchase in-game items with cash. Otherwise, enjoy paying 1.50 USD for a money order and a postage stamp.

      • Nothing requires them to hold a balance in Bullshitbux instead of real currency. No idea how you got to the idea this would force you to not be able to transfer more than you'll immediately use. You think gift cards are only good for one specific item at a specific price too?

  • And that's never going to happen.

  • Stay in your lane bro - games are not banks, brokers, or financial institutions.

    If someone is stealing your money or selling something you do not get, that is theft and fraud. Hell, call the FBI because it is wire fraud and theft across state lines.
  • considering that the incoming administration has already discussed dismantling the FDIC.
  • WTF do in-game currencies have to do with banking regulations? The remedies already exist for disputing fraudulent charges with credit cards. There is no role for the federal government in fictional gaming economies.

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