Comment by rendaw
1 month ago
I'm not sure the legislation is good, but I'm not sure I follow some arguments. FWIW the ideas you're referring to are these I think: https://www.forbrukerradet.no/report-on-virtual-currencies-i...
> Bigger purchases give more, because the percentage lost to fees are lower.
Encouraging bulk purchases seems like an orthogonal problem to allowing users to choose the amount. You could always allow users to choose the amount and just include the transaction fee.
> after the purchase is made, it's not real money, and if it were, I'd be a financial institution and break the rules of all major card networks
If card networks are operating in the country, they'd have to abide by the country's rules too.
But also, I don't think that's how it works. It says "Developers must be obligated to provide an equivalence in real currency clearly and transparently next to the premium virtual currency before each transaction." (translated to English, but) - IIUC this means that if you sell a skin for "10 coins" you have to show the cost in real world money at the same time, e.g. maybe $1.9 one day, maybe $2.2 another day, based on the cost to purchase said coins. Or you could change the skin price from 10 to 11 or whatever if you want to keep the real money cost the same. It's not forcing any financial changes on you, just making you display a number.
> You could always allow users to choose the amount and just include the transaction fee.
I'd be happy to do that, but it's not really as simple as it seems. Multiple of my payment providers have fees I'm not allowed to disclose, and the same Norwegian Consumer Council has also repeatedly stated that they do not want payment fees to be passed on to the consumer as that might be unfair to those who can't use specific payment options. They are passed on to the consumer either way, so... That's the only reason I don't provide tiny purchases, as the fees will result in negative value of the sale. But again, I'd be happy if I could just add fees to the price so that people could just buy exactly the amount they want.
> If card networks are operating in the country, they'd have to abide by the country's rules too. Yes, but currently the laws are not compatible. You can't follow one without breaking the other.
The problem isn't displaying a price, but how to do it in a way that makes sense. It doesn't really make anything more clear when it's called the same thing as the currency in game and has no fixed conversion because of fees making up a larger cut for small purchases. The Norwegian Consumer Council want's users to be able to buy the smalles unit of currency if thwy want, but that must be relatively very expensive because of the fees. They alsy want prices to reflect the most expensive method of acquisition of the currency. This will 100 % result in totally unrealistic prices, that are easy to confuse with the in game currency. It's clearly easier if you buy a fixed bundle of 1000 "gold coins" for $10, and the price is listed as "Buy a $500 paiting for 100 gold coins" instead of "Buy a $500 paiting for 100 gold coins($50 real money)".