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Are Loot Boxes in Games a Violation of Gambling Laws?

posted by cmn32480 on Monday January 08 2018, @03:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the 1-in-365,214,231-chance-of-getting-the-good-stuff dept.

Bill Dimm writes:

Loot boxes in video games give the player a random item, perhaps a weapon or a skin, typically in exchange for payment. Should they be viewed as a legal sweepstakes or as an illegal lottery? This video examines the legal issues and explains how loot boxes could be structured to avoid running afoul of gambling laws (which vary by state) in the U.S.. The video concludes that many current implementations of loot boxes are really illegal lotteries, and conjectures that major game companies use them anyway because the risk of being prosecuted isn't enough to dissuade them.

Previously: Belgium Moving to Ban "Loot Boxes" Throughout Europe, Hawaii Could Restrict Sale to Minors

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 08 2018, @11:44PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 08 2018, @11:44PM (#619773) Journal

    I had mentioned prisons and threw padded cells in at no additional charge. We seem to do it today. We decide that someone should get a padded cell as an alternative to prison if they are doing things that the rest of the population they must live with thinks that their exercise of their freedom is too harmful to everyone else. . . . but mooooom! I want to be a cereal / serial killer and enroll in AP courses for it!

    So why are you equating libertarianism with AP courses for serial killers? I'm not quite seeing the connection myself. I'm pretty most libertarians would be on board with keeping serial killing illegal.

    I wasn't thinking about civil asset forfeiture in anything I was writing. But that is a great example of a law having very unintended consequences. (Or were they perhaps intended?)

    The point is saying that laws protect us, when they often don't is part of the problem. Just like speaking of governments as competent and not corrupt when they often aren't. Libertarianism and similar philosophies would be nonexistent, if the world were good enough that one didn't have to worry about these sorts of things.