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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday November 23 2017, @04:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the microtransaction-fail dept.

Video game gambling schemes known as "loot boxes" or "loot crates" could be banned or restricted by regulators:

We learned last week that Belgium's gambling authority was investigating loot crates in Star Wars Battlefront II over concerns that they constitute gambling. Now, the decision is in, and the answer is a resounding yes, according to Dutch-language publication VTM Nieuws. The commission claims that purchasable add-on boxes, the contents of which are randomized, mix "money and addiction" and thus are a form of gambling.

Belgian Minister of Justice Koen Geens added: "Mixing gambling and gaming, especially at a young age, is dangerous for the mental health of the child." The commission will now reportedly work through the European Union's process to execute a total ban. We've reached out to Belgium's Gaming Commission for more details on its next steps and the legal implications of the ruling.

The country isn't alone in its stance on loot boxes. Just hours ago, Rep. Chris Lee (D) from Hawaii denounced EA's "predatory behavior" in a speech uploaded to YouTube (first spotted by Kotaku). In the clip, Lee also talks of the detrimental affect micro-transactions have on children, with specific reference to Battlefront II, which he describes as a a "Star Wars-themed online casino, designed to lure kids into spending money".

What Are Loot Boxes? Gaming's Big New Problem, Explained

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Star Wars Game in U-Turn After Player Anger


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  • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @09:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @09:25PM (#600833)

    I don't like it. And it *IS* gambling, so if that's sufficient to get it banned then, yes, that's great.

    Excellent! How principled, wanting something banned by any means necessary. It reminds me of the people who claim to want to protect us from terrorism by any means necessary, even if doing so involves violating our rights.

    I'm for much strong consumer protection laws in general

    I don't want your authoritarian "protection" anymore than I want the drug war.

    And I say this as someone who despises most game companies and gamers for being addicts who feed proprietary software developers while frequently defending or ignoring their unethical practices. A comical example of this is an instance where many people said they would boycott a certain game and then most of them were later found to be playing it. I just don't think the right way to go about it is to have the government ban things.

    Where not everything can be turned into a "subscription" contract, or a "license agreement" and then open you up to having to submit to pretty much whatever terms of use they can think of, from binding arbitration if they fuck up and harm you, to suing you if you make this thing you bought and paid for work without connecting to their servers... and dealing with 'loot boxes' could be quickly dealt with under such a regime -- run a game server with them disabled, mod the game to remove them or automatically unlock them... whatever.

    I don't think binding arbitration clauses should be enforceable at all, since people need to be able to get recourse in a neutral court. This is, however, quite different from banning gambling in video games.

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