Routine?

Massively were, up until 3 weeks ago, Cryptics biggest PR machine. Not seen all the gushy articles about the recent visit to Cryptic?

Still doesn't detract from the message.

As I understand it, the EU is just an economic confederation. Nothing like the US's federation.

"Lock boxes in Star Trek Online -- love them or leave them, right? Well now it may be more of an issue of Cryptic leaving you if your country has an issue with them.

When a discussion on the Jupiter Force forums noted that certain countries may have legal issues with lock boxes in the game, STO developer @borticus chimed in that the "most likely course of action here, if any is taken, is that STO becomes unplayable" in that country. When the conversation turned towards the loss of revenue from losing said countries, @borticus replied that probably less revenue would be lost from losing a country than abandoning lock boxes.

Could lock boxes be making enough of a profit that losing an entire country's player base is a worthy trade off? It sounds like it. Anyone hoping that lock boxes were a temporary fad may want to stop holding their breath."

this is exactly why ive been playing BGO the past few days, theyve admitted that the 3 $500 spenders a month matter more than the 300 $5 spenders in their fourms, but at least they are not this corrupt. Lock Boxes are POISON and if this keeps up youll have to pay lobis to replay all missions, and dilithium to accept missions for the first time.

You are assuming there is a viable alternative revenue source. That is a huge assumption.

The other alternative is that they simply shut down entirely. I am not sure that is the result people are looking for.

All they'd have to do is code around it, I suspect. Modify the C-Store so that certain items (Master Keys) aren't available to certain accounts. Denial could be IP-based and/or based on any billing information in the account.

Keys could still be obtained via the Exchange, theoretically, removing money from the equation for those users. Keys aren't bound, afaik.

The real question is whether the loopholes would give PW enough plausible deniability.

Agreed if i wanted to read that sort of non sense carp i can get a local rag.

the j-man is called TRON in the cryptic hq cause he fights for us but he aint going to be for much longer if carp like this get published and ranted about.

how about we get back to the point like content stfs and pvp

Champions Online has had "grab bags" in their store before, but hasnt recently and most of their store items are regular purchases. There are other F2P games that have normal game store purchases as well rather than randomized purchases. As I said before, I'm not denying their total revenue would decrease. However a decrease in revenue does not mean outlawing the game itself. It would still be PW's choice whether to pick a drop in revenue or lose a country of players.

PWI has had packs for several years now, ever since they realized how popular they were, and are. Lock Boxes ARE here to stay unless some other company offers to buy cryptic for some amount even PWE and thier greedy accountants cant refuse.

Oh, that's easily explained - company inertia. The money is there, but they need to hire staff (which they are doing apparantly), and train the new staff. It can be weeks or months for a software developer to be up to speed with an entirely new software systems. And then, they still have to actually make anything, which also takes time on its own.

The EU is now much more than a economic confederation. We have cross-border laws that do not only apply to economics and trade.

While yes, we are technically not one country or union wich a goverment like the US, theres still a possibility that the EU council could potentially pass a law that would effectively prevent the use of grab bags throughout the union.