Although it is painted relatively negative in the article, I feel it's a good thing. Of course, EU is known for its overregulation, but consumer rights are not to be neglected.
GMOs in and of themselves are fine. It's just a technology. Banning something just because it's a GMO is stupid policy, and definitely over regulation. GMOs are a technology. One can modify a plant or other organism for many purposes. Furthermore, concerns over intellectual property rights over GMOs are a question for how to regulate this technology, not a reason to ban it.
This appears to be the main difference between the EU and the US.
In the EU you need to prove your thing won't be harmful before you launch it. In the US you launch it, but then if it's proven to be harmful it might get banned.
I refer to that form of regulation as "closing the door after the horse has already bolted regulation".
This is the American position. “If you can’t prove it’s bad now, it should be legal immediately”.
Europe food regulation runs on the precautionary principle. You have to prove it’s safe first.
Turns out most GMOs were fine but they actually allowed for a huge increase in the use of Roundup.
Roundup is wildly aggressive pesticide and a lot of GMOs were called “Roundup ready” crops, so they could absorb (in theory!) huge amounts of Roundup without being affected.
But the huge increase in the use of Roundup in America might be behind (according to some) the increase in neurocognitive disease.
Like how "piracy" in the context of software licence violations is equated with raping and pillaging on the high seas, and the phrase "drugs and alcohol" appeals to those who might feel uncomfortable with alcohol being a (first class, world's most popular after sugar) drug.
Leaving aside the weird categorization of sugar as a drug - yes, I know it's addictive, but not all addictive things are drugs - caffeine is considerably more popular than alcohol.
If I told you a consumable substance is mind-altering, habit-forming, pleasurable and difficult to quit, very bad for your health in the quantities most abusers take it, but they continue to do so anyway- what would you call it?
I've always maintained that most "drugs" are just drugs other people dislike, and everyone is apparently happy to go along with this cognitive dissonance; hence the common phrase "drugs and alcohol", "drunk driving" vs "drug driving" etc etc.
> If I told you a consumable substance is mind-altering, habit-forming, pleasurable and difficult to quit, very bad for your health in the quantities most abusers take it, but they continue to do so anyway- what would you call it?
Turns out most GMOs were fine but they actually allowed for a huge increase in the use of Roundup.
Roundup is wildly aggressive pesticide and a lot of GMOs were called “Roundup ready” crops, so they could absorb (in theory!) huge amounts of Roundup without being affected.
But the huge increase in the use of Roundup in America might be behind (according to some) the increase in neurocognitive disease.
Turns out most GMOs were fine but they actually allowed for a huge increase in the use of Roundup.
Roundup is wildly aggressive pesticide and a lot of GMOs were called “Roundup ready” crops, so they could absorb (in theory!) huge amounts of Roundup without being affected.
But the huge increase in the use of Roundup in America might be behind (according to some) the increase in neurocognitive disease.
In the US this was never a thought.
Nobody’s perfect, but not allowing GMOs without long term impact assessments was seems like the right decision.
It might have the saved the EU tens to hundreds of billions in fixing the after effects of glyphosate on human food, which the US is now dealing with.
It’s quite simple - protect your food source, protect it from any change whatsoever that’s not 100% necessary, and you are likely protecting the health of hundreds of millions.
How about companies like Google and Apple collecting 30% off the top the last 15 years? They're the ones not providing that oversight and boy is *doing nothing* profitable: in court Apple revealed 75% profit margin on their fees!
If the lowest package you can buy is 100 shinies = 4 EUR, then an item costing 1000 shinies gets shown as 40 EUR. This is independent of whether you can get 1000 shinies for 35 EUR as a bundle deal, or you can earn 10 shinies per day from logging in and completing other in-game tasks.
Ah, so we can display the in-game amount, along with it the full-price you would have paid without the discount, and the “savings” because you bought more and oh look how much more you save when you buy more!
Of course that is how it should be done, but that is least-likely to be implemented by the greedy games industry, is it? They'll interpret it differently as with "cost when saving the most by our fancy bundles".
As I understand, there is also a rule that you must be able to buy an exact amount of premium currency for a specific thing you want. So if that's also enforced, clearly the price shown would have to be how much it costs to buy that exact amount of premium currency.
That’s exactly the problem. The discounts are there to make you buy larger packs and the process of items are designed to not fit neatly into the pack sizes.
Guild Wars 2 doesn’t do that. 5$ is always 400 gems and items cost multiples of 100 gems usually. You can also convert gems into gold (the ingame non store currency) and vice versa.
It’s basically an abstraction over the real life currency to decouple the real money aspect from the actual store. Nothing more.
In comparison, most mobile games try to make this as obfuscated as possible to squeeze as much money out of customers as possible. Basically following the patterns that I was warned in school about regarding drugs. First hit is cheap or even free but once you’re a regular things get more expensive.
>The price should be indicated based on what the consumer would have to pay in full, directly or indirectly via another in-game virtual currency, the required amount of in-game virtual currency, without applying quantity discounts or other promotional offers
You divide the price by the number of imaginary game coins (IGCs). Purchasing 2250 IGCs for 100 USD means 4 cents/IGC; 7000 IGCs for 150 USD means 2 cents/IGC.
They just need to also make it illegal for Apple to take more than the credit card fee on in-app transactions and it might make some sort of economic sense to comply with this grab-bag of stuff in Europe.
EU can't stop regulate everything. Last week they say they should regulate a lot less but that was the same EU bureaucrats that talk talk, promise and don't do anything good, just make impossible to do anything in digital space.
When you have companies using every dirty trick in the book to generate more revenue from microtransactions and their product is specifically targeted to minors, I can't say this is surprising. [1]
If by “impossible to do anything”, you mean “anything that’s deeply anti-consumer”, then yes you’re right.
However having worked at several EU companies of various sizes, I can tell you that it’s very easy to operate in the EU if you don’t choose to exploit your customers.
This has the same vibes as BP talking about the co2 footprint and personal responsibility.
Like… why are you defending the companies that took the hobby of millions of people (video games) and turned it into the equivalent of selling drugs to little kids in the school yard using every dirty trick in the book you make them purchase something in their games.
