And if the rules becomes so restrictive that Blizzard cant earn a buck, they move out. It doesn’t matter if the market is 460 Mil, 900 mil, 1 bil. If they cant operate it in and earn a profit, its useless to them.
See what happened to Lootboxes? EU banned those. So is OW2 better now with a battlepass? if some law or regulation causes a financial lose, Blizzard will try to recuperate it via lower quality(aka features which are only available in the US but not in EU because Brussels said No) or extra monetization. If they can’t then they will move out. They are not in the EU for charity reasons.
They can also outright move psychically away from EU, and settle their EU servers in non EU but European countries. EU is no longer the “worlds Garden” as you believe it is. So they can just settle in a nearby “jungle”.
Blizzard have a PR interest in banning botters, because putting out a press release saying that they’ve banned thousands of bots in a banwave is good PR and makes their fans happy.
But on the other hand, then Blizzard have a lot more interest in botters just farming a ton of gold and injecting it into the WoW economy so it keeps inflating. The more the WoW economy inflates, the more dependent do players become on acquiring increasingly larger sums of gold. And Blizzard’s WoW Token is always going to be the primary benefactor of that, because that’s the go-to if a player needs large sums of gold.
So Blizzard will ban some bots here and there for PR. But they’re not going to try and ban botting outright. The work the botters put in is greatly beneficial to Blizzard’s sales of WoW Tokens.
You’re making it sound as if Blizzard are barely able to keep the lights on as it is, which is far from the case.
Besides, you can produce good games and earn a profit without being an absolute money-sucking leech (see Clair Obscur: Expedition 33).
If Blizzard’s business is dependent on exploiting their customers in order to reach arbitrary financial targets and appease their shareholders with endless dividends, then that sounds less like a company with a focus on making quality games and rather like a company beholden to corporate greed.
And if that is the case, then their hypothetical (but absolutely never going to happen) departure from our European shores will not be a tragedy to anyone but themselves.
Besides, China is far more heavy-handed when it comes to unfavorable laws and regulations imposed on American corporations than the European Union will ever be, and Blizzard have bent over backwards to appease their Chinese overlords for close to two decades by now, because in the end they will do just about anything to earn an extra dollar.
So I wouldn’t worry about the European position on imposing regulations on the gaming industry. It is well overdue.
No they didn’t. Individual nations have passed laws that forbid them. I gave Belgium as an example. Blizzard’s course of action was just to pull their impacted games from Belgium.
The reason why most games have transitioned away from loot boxes is simply because they’re not the best monetization system anymore. The shops with currencies and sales and exclusives and pop ups and time-limited purchases and super deals and so on, is just way more profitable. Ergo most games have opted for that monetization model now.
No one does this.
European players didn’t go to Korean servers to play Lost Ark.
Lost Ark had to come to Europe to get European players to play it.
I believe that’s called market expansion and market penetration. It’s hard to run a large successful business by omitting both of those.
That would be great in an ideal world, but they will never give up the main reason for token sales.
What if the carry was so the person could get a mount they had no hopes of being able to get otherwise?
It’s not for you to decide what I have a stance on or not. I can have a stance based on any opinion I have. You are allowed to disagree, but you don’t get to decide what my stance can or cannot be.
But yes, it’s semantics. What I basically said was: I think someone who buys a carry is just as much responsible for the outcome as the one giving the carry - they are both responsible for this activity taking place.
Same story as above, really.
And look: If it was a ‘charity carry’ by some community or a bunch of friends or guildies, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. It’s the paid aspect that drags it into the ‘not done’ category for me personally.
What are you loling about its an actual fact that the gold is moved via a token from player A to player B without any 3rd party being invold and done in a safe way so people’s accounts are not risked its simple logic.
Ofc blizzard make money from it i never said any different so please as usual stop making things up.
Its the distinction between fact and opinion. You dont get to redefine facts. Even fake tah gets this, you argue the toss over it…
So what is the difference between a carry to get a mount and buying a mount from the store?
I see you don’t like a carry to get a mount for a collector, yet you support store mounts?
The thing is, you paid for the gold, gold was delivered. What you do with that gold is not on Blizzard. For all they care, you could’ve gone to undermine and bought a bunch of those 500k gold wine bottles.
Their service was you getting the gold for 20€, and gold you got.
Boosters are using WoW as a marketplace in much the same way marketplace sellers use Amazon. If you were scammed by an Amazon Marketplace seller, you’d expect Amazon to reimburse you.
At the moment there isn’t much regulation around in-game currency, but if this becomes a big enough problem maybe it’ll change. OP, maybe write to your MEP or your country’s government representative about this.
Where have I claimed it’s fact? 
No, not at all in the same way. Not even alike.
Honestly…this is starting to feel like trying to talk some sense into “flat earthers” and the likes with all this token gibberish and completely unrelated real world comparisons… 
Woah! 
I always thought that everyone who is selling boosting or any of such services like for 2m+ gold are scammers.
And it’s understandable, when scuffed lvl10 dk pandaren-spammer offering you a service - this already looks like a cheap trick.
Boosters need to work on their image or something.
You don’t. Blizzard owns everything.
Your subscription only allows you to “rent” your toon. It doesn’t belong to you.
Its in the small print when you open a new account.
We just own the memories.
They’d more likely add ‘convenience’ micro transactions.
Think bigger bags, more characters slots. Buff to get more xp rep etc.
Any problem gets solved by a micro transation.
I dont care if people buy boosts in pve where it does no harm for other people but in pvp boosting harms others when there is multi r1 awc player either carrying guy in ratings where he should not really be or the multi r1 awc player pilotes someones account which is most popular way of boosting SS/blitz and against rules.
These are competitions player versus player, some lower exp guy initially having match against same level opponent but instead of playing fair, they pay mike tyson to beat the rookie boxer in his place via account share (which is permaban according rules) or they have some rookies 2v2 tennis match but other side paid selena williams to play in her team in the noobs league.
It will rob fair game from the other sides players and trivialize the games match making system (mmr). Only in pvp boosting has negative effect cause how it affects other players experience having to play unfair match, when in pve I see no harm in paying better people to carry someone when it does not harm other people if they gain something via the boost.
Looking its effects in competitive settings they are robbing the other side a chance for fair game and rendering the match making system for these particular matches not make much sense when difference between the players are so big that other is noob and other is world best, whether its piloted or self play with carry is also irrelevant and both rob the other side a fair game.
Please do explain how the two are not alike? I get that Blizz don’t officially support boost sellers, but in practical terms what is the real difference here? Blizz makes money, the boost sellers make money, the customer buys a 3rd party service. Sounds pretty similar to me.
That doesn’t matter tho.
In the end Blizz always had the stance that they support players trading legal gold for any kind of service.
But they always said if you do trades of any kind not through the officialy supported ways. Trade and the auction house.
Then the risk is in you.
And that’s ok.
Blizz would have so much trouble if they also would need to control if people hold up there end of the bargain for every thing.
If they would protect you what stops people from buying a boost and then complain that they don’t feel boosted enough?
Cause an item didn’t drop etc.
Sure that would be quick cases to dismiss but the sheer mass of those would clog Blizz even more