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The Advertising Standards Authority in the UK has issued new guidelines ꦐfor microtransactions. While these new mandates aren’t thwarting in-game purchases, their purpose is to ensure that game advertising clearly states the moneta♋ry value of any purchases a user may make.
As noted by , under the , any in-game ads featuring premium currency would have to clearly show how much money you’d have to spend in order to purchase it. So, say Silver🎀 is the premium currency of a particular game, an ad listing 100 Silver must clearly state that you’d need to spend $10 to get it.
The advertising must also make it clear that the user is purchasing a virtual item for a certain amount ($10 for example) which is worth less. Ads must also refrain from baiting customers via timer based deals and ‘best value’ offers.However, the ASA noted that there is a difference between games where premium currency can be earned, and ones wher𒁃e premium currency can only be purchased via real world money. These new guidelines target the latter.
Advertisements must further clarify if the game contains lootboxes via a notification on the store page. However, the ASA did state that it does not have the jurisdiction to decide whether “random-item purchasing is a form of gambling”; that is up 🍌to the Gambling Commis𝔍sion.
In order to ensure that developers and marketing teams adjust to these new guidelines, the ASA has stated that it will deal with all complaints on an informal footing for six months💞. After that, it will continue with its usual procedure and act on complaints in a formal manner.
It’s clear that these new guidelines are in no way trying to curb microtransactions, but have been put in place to ensure that customers do not fall victim to predatory marketing tactics. Pokemon Unite has recently come und༒er fire for its microtransacti𝄹ons. 𝓡It has multiple currencies which can be used to buy cosmetics, Pokemon, and most ♕controversially, upgrades for battle items.
This has also resulted i꧟n a dip in the game’s Metacritic score. The critics average sits at 69/100, while the user score 👍has dropped to 4.1/10, with a majority of the complaints being about predatory microtransactions.