Gambling mechanics and predatory practices have infected videogame culture and prey upon those who are easily addicted. As gaming has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry, game publishers have developed a variety of tactics to hook players.
Strategies include using loot boxes, or throttling, in game rewards to entice players, a common practice among major publishers. Another method, employed by Actvision, a leading publisher, is matching players who have paid for micro transactions with players who haven’t in order to subtly convince them to turn from players into payers.
While most have self-control over spending habits, the gaming industry’s tactics, much like casinos, rake in billions of dollars from “whales.” These are people who have gambling and addiction issues and have tendencies to spend thousands of dollars on a product that isn’t even worth a dime.
A “lootbox,” is a blanket term that is used to describe randomized rewards given to players for their ingame progression. Through this gameplay loop, however, games such as “Overwatch” have made it to where the only thing you can earn in game via progression is cosmetics that you can obtain through loot box. Once you reach a certain rank in game, earning loot boxes slow down to a crawl. This leads players to purchase a bundle of loot boxes to gain a greater chance to obtain rare items. With some games, the cosmetics obtained via loot boxes can be gambled on third party websites in order to obtain real world money. According to The Gambling Commission, a British Government agency that regulates the gaming industry, items that can be traded for real world currency is considered gambling and whoever offers the items should have a gambling license.
As more people spend thousands of dollars on loot boxes, more publishers are getting into the act. For example, when a game called “Star Wars: Battlefront II,” which released in 2017, tied game progression directly with loot boxes, it caused an uproar in the gaming community.
When a game becomes “pay to win,” the only way to progress through the game is to buy your way though it. The idea that loot boxes are merely optional additions to a game becomes invalid once you have to obtain them to get better at the game. Players who do not have time to spend hours playing the game will then purchase loot boxes to gain an advantage against other players.
According to the Young People and Gambling Report published by the British Gambling Commission in 2018, around 31 percent of children ages 11-16 have paid money to open loot boxes and 71 percent of those children ages 11-16 have not been told to stop gambling because of their age. As these children grow into young adults, they will drop thousands of dollars on games with loot boxes in order to progress.
While the U.S. and the United Kingdom have yet to crack down on this practice, Belgium has gone so far as to threaten game publishers like Electronic Arts due to their use of loot boxes in games such as “FIFA.” Belgium charged Electronic Arts with committing underage gambling, which could result in an 800,000-euro fine and up to five years in prison for the publishers.
While the U.S. as a whole has not seen the idea of loot boxes as underage gambling, Hawaii State Representative, Chris Lee, believes otherwise. When “Star Wars: Battlefront II” was released he called it a “Star Wars-themed online casino designed to lure kids into spending money.” Since first fighting against loot boxes, Lee has also proposed two bills to prevent the sale of games with loot boxes to children under the age of 21.
Predatory practices in games are present and ever evolving. If the gaming industry does not self-regulate, it’s possible that the law will come to regulate it. Meaning that gaming evolve into less of a pastime for individuals and more a constant minefield of trying to avoid the next get rich quick scheme.
