Seasons (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Monday, October 23, 2017, 10:26 (2380 days ago) @ squidnh3

Great masses of people seem to have no problem with this kind of thing when it's in the guise of a state lottery, which preys on the innumerate (and often poor) disproportionately. I do, but that's mainly because it's state-sanctioned.

The microtransactions in Destiny aren't really gambling because the stakes are nothing of value - they can't be bought or sold. I feel like this is an important distinction, and that comparing buying a random object of zero value to gambling is disingenuous. For an example of how microtransactions can be implemented in an actually dangerous way, I found this article from earlier this year very interesting: Gambling in Counter-Strike.

Is that really part of what makes it gambling?

You would need to make MTG booster packs count as gambling then. After all, you can sell your cards, and the value contained in the pack is random.