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USA and Europe declares lootboxes gambling
Has now been declared as gambling by Belgium gaming commission. Specifically, all games that revolves around loot boxes or chances to gain "strength" is label as pressure to minors and gambling and therefore must have a permit in Europe. USA is well on its track with declaring it as gambling with games such as Overwatch and EA. This does not limit just Blizzard or EA. games, but all games that revolves around chances and paying to gain an "up," which means Maple Story will be also under the gaming commission radar.
This is a good sign for gamers. It means no more "pay to win" and predatory practices targeting minors to pay for a chance to get stronger or to gamble their life savings away because they feel the need to gambling on loot boxes (chance.)
Here's a video from Chris Lee, in the House of Representatives addressing the issue.
Comments
No.
Some attention-seeking officials in the USA and Europe made speeches. That's all. So far.
"Oi you got a permit to spend NX on cubes m8?"
It's not an actual law in Belgium, let alone the EU as a whole, and certainly not in the US. Certain European countries (such as the UK) have even ruled previously that loot boxes do not constitute gambling. It'd be extremely easy for the law to fall flat on its face before it ever reached approval by Belgium officials, and even if it did pass in Belgium, the remainder of the EU would have to pass the law for it to have any sort of real impact in the gaming community. Even assuming the law did pass, it would primarily require the company in question to purchase a license, pay some extra taxes, and require an 18+ label (which many games already do, and which people ignore blatantly and without consequence). It wouldn't explicitly ban loot boxes or really mandate that the game companies change anything unless they wanted to.
In short, what's happened is the equivalent of a state-level legislator making a speech about how they'll be investigating whether or not advertising for fast food plays a crucial role in obesity, and declaring that they'll have fast food advertising banned across the US; if it did happen, it would mark a revolutionary shift in legal policy, although the odds of it actually happening or having a significant impact are rather slim. Not to mention, any changes would be years or even decades down the road, again assuming they happened at all.
Most people just happily eat the story up because of the recent debacle with EA and anti-pay-to-win attitudes in general, however in reality it's rather mundane and lackluster.
I have my own personal opinions on it, namely that I think people are overreacting (but so what else is new?) and not taking the issue of pay-to-win/loot boxes seriously (it sounds a lot like those people who declare that "video games cause violence", which is patently and repeatedly proven false). I hadn't particularly said anything when the threads came up because any comment that doesn't explicitly agree the game community's feelings on the subject seems to be rather taboo at the moment.