As I understand it gambling is illegal in certain US states. If you provide a service where you have the ability to purchase a random assortment of items, and sell them back for a price that potentially exceeds the original purchase cost (e.g. if you get a rare or valuable item), then that service can be used to gamble. This is particularly the case if the items are virtual, and can be bought in effectively unlimited quantities. I don't know what the legal definition of gambling is, but being able to get under certain circumstances more hard cash out of the system than you put in should probably qualify. To answer the original question - I would prefer a payment method that allows me to play a single player mode offline, even if those characters were not transferable to online play.
Then I believe that I understand you. I also think my initial response still applies. Every "grab-bag" purchase anywhere on capitalist Earth could be called gambling. Even claw cranes; which, as you can see in that link, actually have their gambling-ness under debate. It sounds like a joke, with it "not being gambling" if, in one example, "the wholesale value of the prizes inside is below a certain threshold." But the conclusion is that things on this scale are not, at the present time, banned in all shapes and forms for being hideous dens of gambling sin. Likewise, collectible cards are not universally banned for their "random value." Nor are holiday/get-together games where folks give gifts of unidentified value to random people. Nor, to take my examples into the truly ridiculous, is buying real estate that has unknown lost jewelry in the walls or unknown mineral wealth below the basement. So I doubt that Card Hunter is at any risk of breaking laws, unless they do something truly stupid like implementing a "poker" mini-game or, worse, dispensing actual cash after play.
I don't purport to understand the contortions of the judicial system. However, I can safely say that, at least with the lawyers at my previous job, certain things were simply not allowed in combination with selling card packs: a store where players can directly purchase, with real money, individual cards that appear in those packs giving away, as prizes for tournaments, individual cards that appear in those packs having any portion of the pack be static (i.e. Simple Thrust is always in the packs from Expansion 1) though of course rarities are allowed, as long as the result is that there is never a guaranteed card in a specific slot And more... Pretty much they mostly come down to not allowing the equating any dollar value to any specific output of a random pack; the key here being the confluence of randomness and specificity. It could have just been our legal department being overzealous, but that's the way it was, and it is their job to protect us, even if we don't like the restrictions they imposed.
Well, that all sounds manageable for a business. It also sounds absurd, of course. Business A is advised to never admit that their "random packs" can grant "specific values." Business A just sells the packs, and it's okay. And then Business B opens next door to sell "specific value" cards but not "random packs." And it's okay, because neither of them sells both at once. Neither one provides "gambling"! Whee! I hope this makes the absurdity clear. I imagine, though, that someone could come back and argue that my example isn't quite right: because Business B changes the environment in which A functions, A's sales are now gambling. Costumers of A are being informed of the "specific value" of their "random" purchases, so this one scenario cannot be allowed. Then I would counter-argue that the very existence of "specific value" lists in public consciousness and on the all-pervasive internet means that Business A always has an omnipresent Business B around. Which is what I've been arguing since the beginning here. The rules you gave may be manageable, but they are a joke. Technicalities without any bearing on real-world product use. I believe that the Card Hunter people will be able to avoid problems with enough care. Though I still don't think the concerns even apply here, because there's such a disconnect between virtual cards and actual cash. Money goes in, cards move around, no one is ever dispensed cash after play. You could make a killer deal getting a hundred in-game cards for pennies, and you still wouldn't make a "profit," as your cards never turn back into pennies.
Well, the game I used to work is an online CCG, and I imagine the model may be similar here. It's why I mention it. I, too, think it's absurd, by the way, but when Sony Online Entertainment's legal department says, "No, you can't do that," your hands are pretty much tied. ~ As for turning cards back into profit... this is a bit unrelated, but as long as trading exists, the black market emerges. In the game I worked on, you have cards going for hundreds of dollars there; the fact that they are virtual doesn't change the fact that they have value and people will buy/sell them if there is a way to do so. That isn't really what legal is concerned with though in regards to randomness in packs and such... I honestly don't know how much of it is just paranoia and fear on their part, or based on real precedents in court, but like I said, it's their job to protect the company.
This is fascinating to me--while Sony's legal department might have been overcautious with their statement, offhand I think I understand their reasoning pretty well. Within the past year American online gambling laws have undergone huge changes.
The hammer came down on online poker sites this year in what the poker industry labeled "black friday" with the US Justice Department seizing domains and generally locking out US players from all the major poker sites. This page seems to be following the whole process pretty closely, while here is a NYT blog post which sums it up a little cleaner. I'm a law student with a keen interest in technology (and specifically video game) law, so when this whole thing went down I got interested pretty quick, particularly in light of how it might scare off future endeavors. Like Sony's point of view, until the dusts settles on what is ok and not ok for online gambling, I wouldn't try to risk it.
