Are electronic blind boxes regulated by internet gambling or games? Difficult to define
Author/ IT Times trainee reporter Jia Tianrong
Editors: Wang Xin, Sun Yan
The blind box was originally born in Japan, because the box contains a variety of cute doll figures, and it is "fascinated" by hunger marketing such as drawing limited money.
With the development of the Internet, the form of the blind box itself has also become diverse, all kinds of "electronic blind box" apps emerge one after another, and the gameplay and prizes of the blind box are becoming more and more "outrageous": 199 yuan to draw Apple family bucket, 199 yuan to draw Tesla Model Y... There are even blind box platforms that claim to be "steady profits without losses" and include the income of listed stocks.
Exaggerated publicity, low-threshold business access conditions, and imperfect system definition have made the electronic blind box market chaotic.
Who is "making steady profits"?
"I saw a blind box advertisement on the self-media platform saying that I could smoke the Apple phone, so I smoked it with the mentality of trying it." Xu Qing (pseudonym) said that he spent more than 1,500 yuan to draw a lottery on the "trendy goods" blind box app that claimed to be able to draw high-value goods, and finally only drew goods worth a few hundred yuan, and also needed to pay hundreds of yuan in shipping for this, and there was no reply if he wanted to return it.
The "IT Times" reporter downloaded the blind box App that Xu Qing said, and found that the price of the blind box ranged from 0.01 yuan to 349 yuan, and the prizes covered beauty, electronic products and even motorcycles, among which the most expensive 349 yuan blind box has a total of 119 prizes, the prizes are divided into legendary, epic, rare, ordinary four levels, of which the winning rate of legendary prizes is 0.01%, the most expensive of all prizes is for the alien computer with a price of 34999 yuan, and the winning rate of ordinary prizes is 97.09%, There are various types, such as Bluetooth headsets, AI speakers, heaters, desk lamps, etc., the most expensive ordinary prizes are a brand of lipstick three-piece set with a price of 564 yuan, and the reporter found that the actual price of all these ordinary prizes on the e-commerce platform is only 68~300 yuan, far lower than the "unboxed" price.
The reporter spent 58 yuan to experience the blind box for newcomers, and won a smart bracelet with a price of 293 yuan, and the same style of bracelet was priced at only 19.8 yuan on Taobao, not even 1/10 of the price of 293 yuan. After "winning", you can choose "pick-up" or "exchange 261 gold coins", "gold coins" can be used to exchange the corresponding goods in the App store, it takes 190,000 gold coins to exchange the iPhone 12 that currently costs about 4,000 yuan, and it is estimated that 58 yuan can be exchanged for 261 gold coins each time, and it costs about 42,222 yuan to exchange for iPhone 12, more than 10 times the actual price of iPhone 12.
On the Sina "Black Cat" complaint platform, there have been hundreds of complaints about electronic blind boxes. Some consumers said in the complaint that the minor child deceived his parents by saying that they used their mobile phones to learn online, but in fact, after seeing the blind box publicity on the Internet, they spent nearly 3,000 yuan on the Happy Planet App to buy the blind box, and they wanted to refund after learning about it but never got a reply.
The "IT Times" reporter noticed that there are electronic blind box entrances on many websites and short video platforms, and the promotional pages attract consumers with animation figures and electronic products, among which there are even some Internet giants that have entered the game.
Bubble Mart has previously been questioned about the "overlord clause" due to the quality of the handmade figures in the blind box and difficult to return, and Bilibili (hereinafter referred to as Station B) has also been controversial about the "magic reward" business of blind box positioning: the mouse pad is a "three-nil product", and the popular product will be shipped in 2029... According to Sina Technology reports, the previous 2021 B station "magic reward" has accounted for 80% of the B station e-commerce revenue, the team is about 20 people, B station internal positioning of the project is revenue tools, as well as new tools.
"Magic Reward" belongs to the main section of station B "European gas blind box", the price of "European gas blind box" ranges from 10~662 yuan, mainly anime peripherals and electronic peripherals, some of the pages clearly mark the total amount of prizes and the remaining balance, the prize is displayed as "sold out" after the grand prize is drawn, and there is a winning record on the event page, and most blind box apps do not have such information.
"The electronic blind box is too much like a gambling lottery ticket, I tried it a few times and only bought it offline." 27-year-old Changchun native Qiao Ji is a toy figure blind box enthusiast for many years, she told the "IT Times" reporter, the figure electronic blind box "bubble mart" is quite reliable, as the iconic brand of the blind box industry, bubble mart for each electronic blind box will correspond to the entity number and location marking, but at the same time this also provides an opportunity for scalpers.
Qiao Ji introduced that the bubble mart drawer prop field has the function of "through the box", by buying the box to accumulate "lucky values", you can see the figure style without opening the box, and scalpers can get a large number of lucky values by buying in bulk, and record their numbers after the box is opened, sell through the box data to consumers who want a specific style, and profit from it.
"199 yuan Tesla Model Y drives home", this is a grand prize called Liduoduo Blind Box App. The blind box prize page shows that the largest prize is Tesla Model Y one-year use rights, worth 100,000 yuan, with a winning rate of 0.1%, and the page information shows that more than 70,000 people have purchased the blind box.
The reporter noticed that compared with other blind box platforms, this electronic blind box platform with "consignment mode" as the slogan focuses on "steady profit and no loss". According to official information, the blind box can be opened online after purchase, the obtained goods are not satisfied can be resold and fully refunded, the opened blind box resale and refund are 24 hours to the account, the unopened blind box can be directly refunded, immediately arrived. In order to protect the rights and interests of users, the value of goods in the blind box exceeds the price of the blind box, and the goods opened can make money through online consignment, and the consignment price is greater than the blind box price by 1% to 2.5%, and the 24-hour unsold commodity platform will be recovered in advance, that is, consumers can earn the difference by consignment of blind box items.
In addition, another "gameplay" of this blind box is more "profitable", each new user invited to participate in the blind box activity can get 20 yuan reward, monthly invitation users up to the specified number can also get additional cash rewards, invite 500 people to an additional 10,000 yuan. When the invited user spends more than 10,000 yuan, the inviter will also receive an additional commission of 0.2%. On the Liduoto App, there is a dedicated "Team" page that displays the cumulative number of valid people and the total number of team members.
In this regard, You Yunting, a senior partner at Shanghai Dabang Law Firm, said: "The App has obvious commission rewards and other measures to calculate remuneration, which are close to the characteristics of pyramid schemes that pull people's heads and calculate remuneration through multi-layer upline and downline relationships, and there is a legal risk of being identified as a pyramid scheme. ”
According to the provisions of the Regulations of the State Council on Prohibiting Pyramid Schemes, if an organizer or operator, through development personnel, requires other personnel to be developed to join in forming an upline and downline relationship, and calculates the remuneration of the upper limit of payment to seek illegal benefits based on the sales performance of the downline, it is a pyramid scheme.
Internet betting, gaming?
Difficult to define
Search in WeChat mini programs with "blind box" as the keyword, most of the main companies of electronic blind boxes are "technology" or "culture and entertainment" companies, is there a threshold for making an electronic blind box?
The IT Times reporter contacted an electronic blind box platform software developer as a buyer, who said that the cost of building a mini program or H5 application is about 9,000 yuan: "Compared with the app, the web page and the mini program are the fastest because there is less information to provide." ”
"As long as you ship to the winner in good manners, there is basically no legal risk." The developer said that to launch the blind box mini program, you need to register a WeChat merchant with the main body of the company, open a payment channel, and then hand over the relevant information to the developer to complete the development and launch, and there are no special qualification requirements. In addition, the prize probability of the blind box can be controlled in the background.
You Yunting pointed out that at present, offline physical blind box operation, there is no qualification restrictions, and online electronic blind box, has certain online game attributes, whether it needs to be regulated according to online games, but also need to be defined by the General Administration of Press and Publication, "But at present, the version number of online games is very small, if these electronic blind box companies are required to take the version number to operate, then it is estimated that the vast majority of enterprises will not be compliant." ”
"This is very similar to the 1 yuan purchase that many Internet companies have engaged in before, and there is a certain gambling nature." Li Xiang, a lawyer at Shanghai Zhengce Law Firm, told the IT Times reporter that whether the electronic blind box belongs to Internet gambling depends on whether its input value and the value obtained are equal, "whether it obtains a great return in a very small probability with a lower investment, and whether it obtains these prizes in the form of cash and an uncertain proportion is one of the keys to defining gambling." ”
Li Xiang said that another feature of the electronic blind box is that its real winning rate is difficult to disclose, and the calculation parameters and winning algorithm are mastered by the platform itself: "If the algorithm is opaque or reaches a certain level, it may be like Internet gambling." ”
Electronic blind boxes are hidden on the Internet
Legislation is still on the way
Data show that from 2019 to 2021, the size of the blind box market in mainland China will increase from 2.5 billion yuan to nearly 10 billion yuan, with an average annual compound growth rate of nearly 75%. Riding tens of billions of blind box express trains are not only trendy play, beauty, stationery and other goods, but also a group of outlaws.
Li Xiang believes that there is still a certain concealment of electronic blind boxes on the Internet, which may lead to the derailment of supervision and actual business formats: "If the platform party removes the non-compliant lottery page at the first time, it will be difficult for non-professionals to find traces of its illegality." ”
"With the emergence of new Internet formats in recent years, many new industries are not so timely at the legislative level." Li Xiang told reporters that there is still a certain lag in the legislation of electronic blind boxes, but there are already some relevant provisions for the operation of physical blind boxes.
In August 2022, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued the Guidelines for the Specification of Blind Box Business Activities (Trial) (Draft for Comments), which intends to stipulate the content, form, and sales targets of blind box sales. The Guidelines stipulate that those engaged in blind box business activities through the Internet, physical stores, self-service sales equipment, etc. shall publicize their business licenses in a conspicuous position.
The Guidelines require merchants to clarify the rules for blind box extraction, and put forward advocacy suggestions for specific blind box business activities. In addition, a protection mechanism for minors has been introduced, requiring blind box operators not to sell blind boxes to minors under the age of 8.
On January 14, 2022, the Shanghai Municipal Administration for Market Regulation issued the Compliance Guidelines for Blind Box Business Activities in Shanghai, which provides a standardized development guide for blind box business activities.
The guidelines clearly state the price of blind boxes and the people who sell them. The actual value of the goods in the blind box should be basically equivalent to its selling price, and the selling price of a single blind box should generally not exceed 200 yuan, and at the same time, blind box operators are required not to carry out financial-related marketing, must not intervene in the secondary market market-making behavior, and must not carry out sky-high speculation, excessive marketing, and hunger marketing.
Wu Yandong, deputy director of the Anti-Unfair Competition Division of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Market Regulation, introduced: "The basic attribute of blind boxes is mainly entertainment, and the value is too high to deviate from the entertainment attribute. The reason why we set the 200 yuan price recommendation is based on some restrictions on small consumption in relevant policy documents, as well as the pricing standards for entertainment activities such as WeChat red envelopes. ”
"If every new business model needs to be legislated to set entry thresholds, the freedom of operation of society will be gone, so the key depends on whether the operation violates the current law." You Yunting also said that at present, whether the electronic blind box industry is compliant depends on whether it violates the current laws when it operates, such as the product name, commodity type, commodity style extraction rules, commodity distribution, hidden amount of commodity placement, extraction probability commodity value range and other key information in the electronic blind box, whether it is publicly announced in a significant way, or whether the relevant platform manipulates and changes the extraction result through the background, arbitrarily adjusts, extracts the probability, and induces consumption in disguise.
In the face of tens of billions of blue oceans and chaos, a healthy and orderly market is not only conducive to protecting the rights and interests of consumers, but also creates a good development space for enterprises, so as not to let the "surprise" expected from the blind box become the "shock".
Reporter's Note:
"Internet + blind box" must be very careful
By investigating the experience of dozens of electronic blind box platforms, electronic blind box platforms can be roughly divided into three categories:
The first is that apps such as trendy goods blind boxes and surprise blind boxes can easily earn considerable profits by using the huge difference between the list price and the actual price through exquisite pictures such as trendy figurines and electronic products, and it is also easier for minors to consume unreasonably due to the lack of review mechanisms.
The second is from Bilibili, Bubble Mart and other Internet blind box manufacturers, after several reshuffles and rectification in the market, its relevant information on electronic blind boxes is more comprehensive and transparent, the box drawing process to a certain extent to achieve openness, fair, but its product quality and after-sales service is still difficult to guarantee, and because the audience of animation products is more vertical, it also gives scalpers the opportunity to disrupt the market. At present, Bilibili's most expensive "magic reward" is as high as 662 yuan, which is also inconsistent with the "Shanghai Blind Box Business Activity Compliance Guidelines" "the price of a single blind box generally does not exceed 200 yuan".
The third is like the Liduoduo blind box, in the name of the blind box "develop the head", in the edge of violations of the law, the impact is wide, the harm is great, hope to attract the attention of the market supervision department.
Blind box book is a new consumer behavior, even leading a fashion trend, deeply loved by many consumers. However, the game of "Internet + blind box" needs to be extra cautious, because the Internet can amplify the "blindness" of blind box by a hundred times or a thousand times, and the consumption risk of consumers has also increased exponentially.
Therefore, the Internet should not become a shield for blind boxes, and the emerging blind box industry, which should follow the trend, also needs to usher in healthy and orderly development on the basis of supervision in place, self-discipline of merchants, and self-made by players. The "Internet +", which belongs to the blind box, must be cautious.
Typesetting / Ji Jiaying
Photo/ Bilibili Liduoduo WeChat
Source: IT Times public account vittimes
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