Hawaii declares arcade games illegal and shuts them down

[Porcupine]

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/2552 ... st-letters
http://khon2.com/2014/05/12/city-prosec ... -targeted/

I just learned of this today. Hawaii decided that some arcade games count as gambling.

[MentholMoose]

Interesting. There is one of those coin pusher machines at the Chuck E. Cheese's by my house, but it only allows you to win tokens and/or tickets. It sounds like the issue in Hawaii is due to operators setting up games to let people win money, in which case it makes sense to consider them gambling. Those same games should be fine as normal redemption games that only let you win prizes. Otherwise where would it stop? Banning skee-ball and UFO catchers? Anyway thanks for sharing.

[Porcupine]

I think the coin pushers that give out only game tokens were targeted as well. That's the only offender I know of in some of the mentioned arcades.

http://legalpronews.findlaw.com/article ... 4eBzKwVfCY

Chuck-e-Cheese also got the cease and desist order.

I don't think they've targeted skee ball and UFO catchers yet, but it makes sense that they could be viewed the same as coin pushers giving out tokens.

[MentholMoose]

In that case it is pretty ridiculous. It's good that bigger establishments are being targeted since they can afford lawyers to fight this.

[Porcupine]

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/3/8339999/cla ... nes-rigged
http://realart.com/thought-lab/cult-of-the-claw/

Wow I never knew any of this before, but apparently all UFO catchers are rigged to obtain or drop the prize at a predetermined rate that is invisibly set by the owner of the machine. Knowing that, I can't believe these devices are legal. They should be illegal for false advertising, even before they are considered to possibly be illegal for being a form of gambling.

[MentholMoose]

I bet Schooly D and PhantomPhotonX wouldn't be happy about this... IIRC they spent a few bucks at Super Arcade on a machine like this with no success. That machine had some serious prizes (Xbox One, iPad, etc.). It kind of makes sense for prize machines to have an option to add some randomness, otherwise a "pro" player could quickly clean out the machine. Actually on YouTube there are videos of said pro players cleaning out machines, so I wonder if all of these machines have such options.

And I'm reminded of an article I read recently: Claw cranes capturing online players. I wonder if those machines have randomness options.

[Porcupine]

I'm sure they all do, that is the claim in the articles I linked anyway. I think, however, that in Japan the arcade owners are probably more ethical and set the drop rates to be consistent with what the item is worth. Some of the nested links within my linked articles describe specific lawsuits in the USA where the plaintiff claims the owner set the machine to be impossible to ever deliver a prize. I think the linked articles also describe how the makers of these machines love those YouTube videos because they are scams that further their own business. I wouldn't be surprised of those kinds of videos were illegally sponsored by the makers of such machines.

As for Schooly D and PPX wasting their money, well from what I understand Vash some time ago got a free Xbox One by eating at McDonalds or something, so he balances them out.

[Porcupine]

http://nypost.com/2017/05/08/arcade-gam ... gainst-you

Sounds like the UFO catcher lawsuit may have won..