/v/ - Video Games

You're going to get swarmed with shills telling you to take your meds.

No you stupid nigger, they're taking advantage of the "it's totally not a good goyim" horseshit and they hire psychologists to most efficiently take advantage of people with addictive tendencies, because it's easier to make a slot than it is to run an honest business and make decent games.

While it's not completely beyond the scope that these retards are laundering money, you'd have to be actually retarded not to realize that this selling shit you already own to you is not just abuse of a broken copyright system and not being held accountable to regulations specifically for gambling.

>>16485522

Yeah,sounds reasonable.

For fucks sake you stupid retard, this shit is literally why the first sale doctrine exists.

Thanks for explaining this, seriously wondered what people meant when they said this shit is money laundering.

Maybe a part of it is money laundering, but most of those whales are socially isolated businessmen, NEETs or young people with otherwise disposable income and low impulse control. One of my gf's friends asked her for 110$ for fate Grand order because they wanted a lootbox hero that was a timed exclusive. They spend all 110$ and still didn't get it. They paid her back but it's ridiculous.

I genuinely want to know what kind of person becomes a whale for any online game. First World/Third World? What kind of job? Why would they become a whale? What age?

>>16485599

It's usually people that have addictive tendencies that run through the family. It's kind of hereditary but some people just end up losing at the genetic lottery and end up haplessly prone to addiction.

Step 1 - We find the names of all the major vidya CEOs and the people / organisations funding them

Step 2 - We're just gonna kill 'em

To launder money, you have to convert it into legit currency. Is having skins and emotes in fortnite currency? Spoilers : no.

I'm kind of amazed by the amount of clueless fuckers who will spout money laundering without a single shred of understanding of what it actually is.

you need to buy that shit with a credit card genius, how are you going to put dirty money on a bank account

>>16485614

>>16485613

You can funnel it through with prepaid cards bought at a third party and most of these games you can sell off the items to a third party for real world money.

I don't doubt lootboxes are used for money laundering. Most of those absolute trash UE4/Unity asset flip haunted house simulators and CounterStrike clones on Steam also have been made for money laundering for the Russian mafia (almost all of them are made by slavs or turks).

However, don't forget that real people, who aren't even rich, have spent thousands on jpgs for Scam Citizen. So even with ridiculous shit made for money laundering, there are mentally ill people who actually spend hard earned money on them.

Hey retard, money laundering requires a way for people to get the money back out, which your scenario doesn't allow.

Why is /v/ full of retards? It wasn't always like this. Everyday I have to talk to sub 80 IQ subhumans on here and it hurts.

>>16485522

If there weren't countless videos of dumbasses pouring thousands into this shit, I'd believe you.

>>16485522

Yes, they are.

As all entertainment is.

The whole entertainment industry exists exclusively to be money laundering schemes.

That is why you must never support any form of entertainment and the companies that create them.

>>16485608

Literally this.

Start with this one:

>>16485657

>money launderer working for one of the criminals/game companies

>>16485522

That’s not how money laundering works you retard, too many stupid people will spout ‘money laundering’ at businesses that (they wondered) have never gone bankrupt yet. Like that Mattress Shop that popped up a year back, i mean for fucks sake go watch a few Mafioso movies if you still don’t know how it works.

>>16485599

I want to say that they are mostly weebs with a upper-middle income bracket. The lower rung folks usually avoid weebshit and stick to cheaper alternatives, like actual gambling. I’ve met alot of people and it is always the ‘trendy’ weebs that spend the most. All of them are also male

However, none of them have any debt from the money that they had spent, so alteast they have disposable income to cover their whaling habits.

>>16485779

Why do TORfaggots always make the shittiest posts unironically? The leafs are a step above TORniggers and that is saying something.

>>16485811

Yeah but it's not like only gachafags are whales, what do "trendy" weebs and say Star Citizen whales have in common?

>>16485599

I doubt the first/third world distinction is that important. It could happen to anyone with access to the games, which will mostly be first and second world, but give third world people those games and they'll get hooked too, I think. A bigger factor might be the availability of other gambling methods, like casinos. My country's been cracking down heavily on both casinos and online casinos, too, so they might be more susceptible than others. There's a reason it was big in Japan, too, since casinos were very restricted there.

>>16485599

The same people that fall for heavy gambling.

It's nothing but virtual casinos masquerading as entertainment, it's literally digital pachinko.

>>16485522

It can work.

But why bother when art auctions exist?

Gaming works with relative small sums, you need to establish rows of fake companies persons and its to much of paper trail. Art scam allows you to absolutely legitimately slap million price tag on any shit.

Also making games is too much of legit work. In this scheme cash owner is game company and cash owners usually are no ready to do work.

>>16485657

>>16485613

Supposedly it works this way:

1. Game company has illegal cash.

2. It sell digital goods to their friend/friends with legit source of money.

3. Game company gets legit money, their "gamer" friend gets illegal cache+laundering fee under the table.

>>16485522

>Loot Boxes in video games are fronts for companies to launder money.

correct

<Create shell company or persons. Funnel dirty cash through them into your bank account via buying cosmetic items no one would ever pay for.

correct

<Tell other criminals that you can launder their money for them. The masses wonder who the fuck is actually paying to keep these games afloat.

and now you see why the whole AAA industry went through the period of massive horizontal integration/assimilation

no competition?

no snitches

but becoming huge monolithic corporations means FUCK HUGE tax liabilities and absorbing some possibly bad debt.

solution?

pump out shovelware garbage, claim it cost $"x", then when it falls flat, or is cancelled, scrap the whole thing as a tax write off. presto, you just essentially made whatever the claimed cost of development for the game read: fuck huge liability from borrowing too much disappear off of this years taxes. also, since corporate debt is all interest, and no principal, and really just a huge game of kick the can; so long as the rest of the studio stays afloat, none of this bad debt ever needs to get actually paid back anyways.

some of these games dont get cut tho, and are strung along with these weird zombie communities like you outlined in your OP. these are some of the ones that become laundry machines.

the vidya industry is now valued at ~$140B/yr globally. around half that is mobile im remembering these figures, dont quote me. the mobile side is saturated in sketchy CCP-owned chink scam companies who no doubt already are involved in money laundering and the like. now, with the casual/mobile market making up literally half the total market share *~$70B/yr, well, you can wash a lotta fucking shekels with that. and the chinks, with these companies as well as half their own gommie party being their own clients when it comes to laundering are well set up to have their own companies look the other way while they wash their own money for essentially free. whatever the difference is can then be bounced over to whatever intl clients need laundering, at a rate of course.

TL;DR

look into CCP owned mobile game companies

>>16485850

>But why bother when art auctions exist?

theres always more dirty money that needs to be washed my friend. art auctions are huge no doubt, but they need more.

especially certain recently industrialized nations with massive new oligarch classes that developed over the last few decades cough china cough

saige for dubble post

>>16485929

this, there's guys that will buy winning lotto tickets so they can be like "see the lottery is how i got my money"

>>16485522

I buy it

>>16485522

Sounds plausible, I'm sure some of these games are doing it at least.

again, saige for e-celeb jibberish, but this vid is semi relevant

apparently US senators are proposing a bill that targeting children with obvious unregulated gambling mechanics should be reguated.

a couple problems though

>this wouldnt effect countries outside the US

>the lobbying forces are already hard at work to gun this down

>it makes no mention of the obvious laundering which is synonymous across all types of gambling based institutions potential

>seems to me like this is just US polis trying to drum up money for the state while looking good for saving "teh children" from eeevil corporashuns

>been playing mobile gacha garbage for 2 years now

>haven't paid a single cent

>but can't quit it and know it's a waste of time compared to playing actual games

It's a real shit-show

tinfoil thread

Honestly OP I don't think you're too far off. Basically, every art industry can be abused this way.

>>16485613

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what money laundering is. In this scenario, people aren't exchanging money for the purpose of getting skins; the money transfer is occurring for something completely unrelated to the game. But the person receiving the money can say they got the money by selling skins.

It's like how in regular money laundering, people aren't actually paying cash-only laundromats to do their clothes.

>>16485990

>he can't articulate an argument

npc post

>>16485522

The internet has been a Golden Age for criminals and con artists. Those who adapted to it of course.

>>16486139

I don't think you know what money laundering is.

>>16486081

You’re moving the goalpost you dumb monkey nigger, anons are arguing that the game companies themselves are a front for money laundering NOT about video games themselves can (especially the ones with Microtransactions) be used for that. I repeat, They are talking about the business itself NOT about how vidya games can be abused to launder money.

Money laundering in video games have already been a thing since WoW anyway, but most people gloss over that shit since there are better ways to do it. Answer me this if you’re so knowledgeable, who is the party that buys V-bucks with Bitcoins?

>>16486097

Okay cum guzzler.

>>16485990

>>16486055

>>>/cuckchannel/

>>16486188

>>16486188

>>16486176

>anons are arguing that the game companies themselves are a front for money laundering NOT that video games themselves are a front for money laundering

devs make the game, and the laundering doesn't work without dev participation. the money laundering is what pays the devs. these "whales" supporting 95% of the game is a group of launderers not 1 person

>>16486211

>Devs are liable for the end users doing something unlawful within the game

That's stupid. That's like saying Walmart is at fault if someone deals drugs in their parking lot.

There's large sections of the economy that you would never think would work, but somehow they do anyways just because humans are much stupider than you'd expect, and being stupid doesn't necessarily prevent you from having a lot of money.

>nafarious

nefarious

Man I need sleep

>>16486176

Let's also not forget the verifiable FACT that it's not just about potential money laundering but, as that '07 article warned, ID harvesting, or rather data mining.

vid related mentions just snippits of news reports on 1st and 3rd party phone apps secretly monitoring everything from your location to your web searches, etc. PRISM from the NSA is just a small part of what the government has been and continues to do.

But PRISM isn't the only program dedicated to cataloguing your data, and what better way to obtain data on your accounts and behavior than through lootboxes and gacha trash.

skip to 0:55

>>16485657

>which your scenario doesn't allow

It does if the game publisher is complicit.

>>16487046

There was supposedly an actual large-scale money laundering scheme attached to Fortnite. It was reported on by the major journos bloggers so we aren't really talking about a conspiracy theory here

>>16487046

anon, why do you have a naked guy saved on your hardrive?

I was literally saying this shit like two years ago. Also I suspect Steam might be a laundering front as well. Nobody listened then, nobody'll listen now.

>>16487438

he has like a 6 inch flaccid

literal chad god among men

>>16485821

Star Citizen is fairly unique in that it's primarily middle-aged manchildren indoctrinated into a moneyhole cult. They tend to dip into retirement funds and at least one even mortgaged his home.

Many of them are also then divorced, though, so their whaling is a finite resource since they'll end up borderline bankrupt and paying alimony.

>>16485657

>>16485613

>two one and dones pretending this is not possible

Interesting. Anyway, not too sure if a digital only transaction would be good for laundering money, isn't it normally done with cash sales? Digital sales would mean the government could track the purchasers whereas with cash sales that's not really possible.

>>16487390

>why bitcoins? Because cryptocurrency spooky?

Probably, just like why they added the spooky dark web.

Not really sure how back in 2007 wow could be used for money laundering though. Trade your partner some gold, then claim you sold it for $X? Seems like you'd have better options that wouldn't involve spending $15 a month or grinding to get things to fake sell.

>>16487000

Only if you believe that software is somehow not ownable.

>less than 5% of the playerbase for a game are spending so much money that it pays for the game for the other 95%

That's because those 5% are the ones actually making money (from streaming and such) so have the justification to pay for that cosmetic stuff. You can't say, for example, a huge Apex streamer is a "shell person" because they clearly exist; and it's people like them who are the ones buying EVERY SINGLE THING. They do that because they have to, because showing off those cosmetics is part of their business model of appealing to the kiddies who watch their streams and want to see the new shit.

I don't think anyone would attempt to launder money $20 at a time. It's just inefficient.

>>16485613

>>16485657

I just looked up "buy csgo skins" and got about a dozen relevant results. They claim to sell below the Steam Marketplace price and can afford premium google ads placement. This business model makes no sense without involving hookers and blow.

>>16488066

>I don't think anyone would attempt to launder money $20 at a time. It's just inefficient.

There was a time where we thought vending machines weren't capable of turning a profit vending a freshly baked burguer on the spot and yet here we are.

Automation is one helluva drug.

>>16485581

>They spend all 110$ and still didn't get it

>for grand order

$110 US only gives you about a ~36% chance of getting a timed exclusive character during their rate ups, so it's no surprise they didn't get it. And grand order has relatively high rates compared to a lot of other gacha games. Only absolute retards actually spend any money at all on gacha games. Even if you spend $1000 you still have about a 1% chance of not getting a single copy of the character, and some retards, like the reddit and cuckchan fgo players, are actually stupid enough to just buy more premium currency and keep gambling when they don't get their waifu after spending that much because of the sunk cost fallacy. And the best part is, you need 5 copies total to max the character's ultimate attack out.

And this is all assuming it's a solo rate up. Some limited time characters share their rate ups with other characters, so you're only half as likely to get them, or possibly even less if they share it with more than one other character.

>>16485522

There is an element of truth to this, much like the prices of older art, whose painters died dirt poor but whose paintings are now sold for a million.

That said this does not mean that whales do not exist. They are very real and probably more than the money laundering guys.

cashing out and laundering are 2 different things. you are confusing turning fraud related digital income aka "stolen" money into cash and laundering cash from violent organized crime aka "blood" money into clean and crisp digital fiat.

>>16488320

>how much money you can push through at any given time

with it being electronic you can pretty much automate it, since you already need people on the inside to get the money back out (unless it's more than straight up laundering service) you can even make it easier circumvent the protections and possible stats.

I mean look at fortnite or any other successful game - they are all shit, no one in their right mind would spend money on them, let alone several digits, but here we are. who's gonna question if a certain number of accounts make a high amount of purchases? who's gonna look where the finally end up profits going?

if anything the whole MUH LAUNDERING angle could work out better than anything else. who cares if some kids deplete their parent's credit card? that just makes them better and more desperate wage slaves. but possible tax evasion and terrorism funding? that's gonna clench a few asses.

>>16485522

>And grand order has relatively high rates compared to a lot of other gacha games.

Holy fuck atleast do some goddamn research, FGO has absolutely atrocious drop rates for SSRs to the point that it’s some sort of weird pride for the community itself. The drop rates are so bad that they dip into below 3 percent, the usual ‘golden standard’ of drop rates for other gacha’s Five Star / Legendary / SSR / Moneysink jpegs.

>>16488364

SMT and KH are the only other gacha games I know anything about, and they're the two I usually see as examples of other gacha games having worse rates than FGO. Sorry for the misinformation.

>>16487046

>But most developers are legitimate,

How do you know?

>>16486081

>random articles from bloggers mean proofs

[insert link of article about drumpf being in bed with russia and a litteraly SSnazi]

>>16485522

You misunderstand Money Laundering.

Money Laundering is to make the money appear legitimate.

When you funnel money into a P2W game, the source of the money is still questionable , but no action be can taken against the people who receive the money.

A cartel funneling a million dollars into a game is not going to get a direct recoup out of it. Now, if they had stock options - The large influx of cash can easily manipulate the market into believing that the game is doing well for the quarter, boosting the stocks. Once the investors are no longer afraid of dumping money, they will. Then, the cartel can sell the stocks they have to make a massive clean profit that nobody would question.

Well, except the people asking why these companies stay in business.

Now, there's economies where normal people can launder.

When you funnel money into a virtual economy, like Lindendollars, Gaia Dollars, TF2's Key's and Metals. Then you can set up a valid exchange .

Step 1. Steal a credit card.

Step 2. Make a 1000 dollar key purchase on an account you can afford to lose.

Step 2a. Trade those items on to a semi-new account.

Step 3. Trade those keys for 2000 worth of metal.

Step 4. Trade that 2000 metal for $ keys.

Step 5. Withdraw your now cleaned money into a new account via a fast sale.

The steps have to be done fast, within the first 3 steps someone can file a claim against you. At Step 4, you can withdraw your money out of the system and profit.

Note: Crypto is the odd duck out as both these strategies are primo for fucking with the value. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.

>>16488734

I forgot to mention, this is exactly why Steam revamped the entire trading system. Too many people that were not involved with Valve/Steam were getting rich over night and the sheer number of complaints from credit card companies being unable to reverse the charge.

It only took almost a decade of scamming for them to do something about it.

>>16485907

Tell me anon, explain to me how you think tax write offs work.

>>16488743

>revamped their trading system

More like fucking over their customers by forcing them use a gay 3rd-party phone app if you want to trade / sell / buy items up to a fucking week. Holy fuck i hate their shitty fucking trading system now ever since they decided that they have to play the role of a parent to cover up a dumbfuck kid’s mistakes. Retard normalfags will be the fall of everything since they demand ‘inclusivity’.

>>16488734

You get it backwards.

Not illegal money going into game developers pocket and legit money out.

Its opposite. Illegal money go from developers pocket out and legal money go in.

>>16486203

Really reminds of all the "ANITA ISN'T TAKING AWAY YOUR GAMES QUIT COMPLAINING" shit, doesn't it?

>>16494536

When a society become too homogeneous and insulated they just end up blaming everything on an out-group. The jews used to be treated the same way in the west.

>>16485599

It's the same type of people who get hopelessly addicted to gambling. Could be first or third world, could be a rich guy or a guy who just spent his last paycheck on the game.

>>16494552

Can you blame the Japanese, though? China's been breathing down their necks forever, and America dropped two nuclear bombs on their heads for virtually no reason out of the goddamn blue. If I was a Nip, I'd be wary of anybody that didn't look like me, too.

>>16494845

>virtually no reason

>>16494969

>muh purrl hurrburr

Surely the greatest ally to the Soviets was justified in fire-bombing everything then dropping not one but two nukes for losing one fucking forward outpost out in the middle of the sea, at least they freed China and Korea from Japanese oppression so those could blossom into wonderful democratic nations.

>>16497859

Don't start shit if you don't want shit. Seems pretty simple to me.

Ever notice how /intl/ desperate tries to derail any thread that sheds light on their corporate masters?

>>16494552

>implying there's literally anything wrong with treating foreigners differently than your own race

Get out kike.

>>16498665

>or stop selling in Australia.

I am thinking STEAM is fine with that. More dishonest company can even "officially" pull out but still run businnes in country letting players "illegally" breach their country ban and buy games. (those Australian hackers, bad hackers, bad)