British government must rule on ‘loot boxes’ in games

Citizens in the UK have filed a petition calling on the government to change gambling laws to regulate the provision of loot boxes. According to the submitters, loot boxes are strongly aimed at children.

The petition has been signed more than ten thousand times; the UK government must therefore respond within a few days. If there are more than 100,000 signatories by the end date of the petition in April 2018, parliament will debate it. The initiators are not very clear about what exactly they want the government to do against loot boxes, but they do point to Chinese legislation on this. In China, there are legal rules that require game makers to disclose how likely it is that loot boxes will appear. The initiators believe that the practice of loot boxes in games has too many features of gambling and that gamers can lose money as a result.

The Interactive Software Federation of Europe, in charge of assigning the PEGI age ratings to games, recently stated that it does not consider loot boxes in games to be a form of gambling. The gambling label is only awarded to games that simulate real gambling. The organization thus aligns itself with the position of its American counterpart, the ESRB. He said earlier that he saw the principle as comparable to collecting cards. The ESRB recognizes that there is an element of chance, but the player always gets in-game content, according to the organization.

A loot box is a virtual stock in a game from which players who pay for it can randomly pick up virtual items, such as extra weapons. Loot boxes originally appeared in mmorpgs, but they can be found in more and more games. In recent weeks, Forza 7, Middle‑earth: Shadow of War and Star Wars: Battlefront 2, among others, have been criticized for implementing loot boxes, which in some cases can give players an advantage.