Nintendo has announced today that it closing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Fire Emblem Heroes in Belgium. The reason for this is Belgium’s laws on loot boxes and gambling. Both games feature micro transactions to level up or buy cosmetics. The company also says that it won’t be releasing future mobile games in that specific country. In a statement, Nintendo says it will be no longer be possible to play and download the games from Tuesday 27th August 2019.
“Due to the current unclear situation in Belgium regarding certain in-game revenue models, we have decided to end the service for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Fire Emblem Heroes in Belgium. It will therefore no longer be possible to play and download the games from Tuesday 27th August 2019.
“Players who still have Orbs and / or Leaf Tickets in their account can continue to use them until the service ends. In addition, future Nintendo games with similar earnings models will no longer be released in Belgium.
“We would like to thank all players in Belgium for playing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Fire Emblem Heroes.”
I hope they will do this in the rest of EU. Hope they can keep Mario Run at least.
And by “they” I mean the authorities in the different EU countries. Microtransactions only feed on peoples weaknesses.
You can play AC perfectly without spending a single cent on this.. This is just utter bullshit
Why not release a game that’s not build around microtransactions? They game will not tempt everyone, but for someone it’s hard to avoid spending money on those types of games, and that’s the kind of customers these games are aiming for. Mario Run is a great example of how Nintendo showed how to be consumer-friendly.
While I sort of agree, microtransactions are tolerable in genuine free-to-play titles. The cost is no longer monetary — it’s the attrition of your will vs. your wallet. That’s the price you play for F2P games.
There are F2P games with -better- monetization models, to be certain, but I feel the primary issue is when publishers try to have their cake and eat it, too — by charging an upfront cost to a game with a F2P microtransaction economy.
Take out either the F2P or microtransactions, and I think the game’s got a right to exist, at least.
Yeah and remember how people complained that they had to pay to play Mario Run. The mobile market is twisted.
sorry for those guys who love the game.
I don’t know how badly FEH and animal crossing mobile used lootboxes and microtransactions, so I don’t know how to feel about this.
FEH is pretty bad. Yeah, you got a decent amount of in-game currency, but it’s so random what you’re getting it doesn’t really matter. You rarely can get what you want with the currency the game gives you, and a big part of the game is collecting.
I hate the gacha aspect of Fire Emblem Heroes. But everything else is pretty fun. The game’s a bit of a grind sometimes, but it’s a joy seeing various characters from across the Fire Emblem multiverse come together. It’s fun building characters, plus the artwork and voice acting is nice.
Why don’t they just remove the option to buy things with real money? Then make orbs more plentiful and increase the summoning rates. Or be able to just ‘buy’ the heroes you want with orbs. If the devs need money, charge a bit for the game. Or link it to Nintendo Switch Online accounts. Even ads are better than just shutting it down.
I’m glad to see micro-transactions start to get eradicated, but can’t we keep the good stuff in the process?
}{ Death to microtransactions by whatever means necessary… }{
Where in the world have you been
}{ I never left… I speak only when I have something to say… }{
Makes sense I guess
Lmao, that’s so messed up. The players over there used their money and now the game is just shutting down without anything else. They should at least give registered players in Belgium some sort of compensation for just taking their money and shutting down like that.
Happened to the whole world when Miitomo was shut down. It will happen to every mobile game when servers shuts down.
oh, I did’t even know miitomo shut down. I never played it.
This or they could just remove the microtransactions and make the full game purchasable for a fixed price.
Or they could remove loot boxes. Keep the game free and make the items, characters purchasable or buy using in game currency for the gatcha aspect. Nothing should ever make you buy something and not tell you what you are getting. Never understood loot boxes lol.
Oops didn’t mean to reply to you lol. Just meant to comment…
“This or they could just remove the microtransactions and make the full game purchasable for a fixed price.”
The problem with that is idiots think paying one singular price for a mobile game is “too expensive” while a free game with microtransactions is not and I’m on the boat with paying one singular price for a mobile game is better than paying $1,000’s per day on one mobile game.
Every country needs to start cracking down on this, to be honest. Loot boxes & pay-to-win micro transactions need to stop. Was hoping after the Star Wars Battlefront 2 bullshit that people would wise up, but we quickly went back to the same shit of rewarding this type of shit from companies as people STILL buy this bullshit. I don’t like the idea of having the governments of the world get involved but it’s bloody clear at this point that most customers will still support this crap.
Lootboxes are an issue for games, but why are trading card games not? Is it the tradeability? The fact the item received is physical?
Either way I do love the items that come out of Pocket Camp and I hope there’s some way they make it into ACNH. Every new fortune cookie leaves me dreaming of what I could do with those items if I had a real full-size town to work with.
As much as people don’t want to pay for items in console the game, I think as long as it releases with a ton of new content equivalent to a normal game if not more (looks like it’s gunna add a lot more content than previous games did), then I don’t mind post-launch content being paid, provided there’s no randomness involved.
For example, if you paid somewhere between 2 and 5 dollars for a fortune cookie item set which provides you with the recipes to craft all those items in game as many times as you want, it’d be completely fair, and provide players with a constant flow of new content as opposed to our current situation which is waiting upwards of 8 years for a new game to get more content…
Also having some kind of stable income from the game would allow them to throw in free updates such as new holiday items every year, so players that don’t want to pay past the initial purchase can still get some new stuff. Pocket Camp’s holidays in my opinion are far better than the console games. The items are top notch and getting them throughout the month instead of the day of the holiday is much better. Who decorates for Halloween ON Halloween? Nobody I tell you!
I think a Happy medium for holidays would be to have a Pocket Camp inspired month-wide event to get items and decorate, then an event on the holiday itself that involves exploring your decorated town. This would encourage players to get together and explore each of their friends’ towns.
For example, a Halloween event could involve decorating your town all month to make it as spooky as possible and unlocking more spooky decorations along the way, and the day itself would give you bells/miles/more items by going house to house in as many towns as you can, so you can your friends get together and go through eachother’s towns one by one, hitting every house you can and seeing how everyone decorated their town along the way.