In the good old days, unlocking new features in a video game or getting the best scores required a lot of skill, which could only be mastered through a ton of practice and a lot of patience. Fast forward to the past couple of years and game developers have introduced gamers to models that allow them to skip the grind required to master the video games and instead pay to get ahead by purchasing the so-called loot-boxes. Loot boxes, as the name suggests, are simply virtual chests, boxes or vaults that contain valuable in-game items like weapons and tokens.
Loot boxes have been growing in popularity and this growth has been accompanied by concerns regarding whether they not only offer an unfair competitive advantage to players who can afford them or if they constitute gambling. In the United Kingdom and most of Europe, the latter seems to be the biggest concern since children are the majority of video gamers in these regions. The United Kingdom, for instance, has been grappling with several issues related to underage gambling and the very idea that loot boxes could be exposing minors to gambling is enough to warrant a probe by regulators and other relevant authorities in the country. Already, in countries like Belgium, loot boxes have been declared to be illegal with video game developers being forced to remove them from their games or risk being excluded from participating in those markets.
The Core Issues
Loot boxes, which are, in most cases, premium in-game purchases have been likened to gambling simply because their contents, otherwise referred to as the “loot” are rarely enumerated. This, in essence, means that purchasing loot boxes is a gamble even in the case that the player gets what they want from the loot. Furthermore, many game developers have been found to set the price levels of the loot boxes to encourage the players to spend more money in the game – again, this is very reminiscent of gambling.
In response to these concerns, in December 2018, the UK Gambling Commission announced that it would be teaming up with other European gaming regulators in a bid to better understand the concept of loot boxes and if they indeed promote gambling among minors. In addition to that, the UKGC and its new partners declared in a jointly-signed agreement that they would also look into gambling-related content in video games after which they would hold “constructive dialog” with the game developers.
Now, it will be quite difficult for the concepts of loot boxes to be completely phased out and therefore other solutions are going to be needed. In fact, some operators are safe from the probe simply because their implementation of loot boxes have been tweaked to comply with gambling laws. This is probably the best way to go about it.
