Gambling has been in the public eye for quite some time now as a long of changes have been happening very quickly to slow the growth of what is being deemed as a growing gambling pandemic – particularly amongst younger users. Many operators for online spaces have had to change their approach as some initiatives have been granted increasing authority and users look to utilise services located elsewhere as American casinos accepting UK players for example have become more popular – but the big news in gambling for gamers has been around loot boxes, and changes that might be seen in the future.
The biggest news came earlier this year as Dutch courts ruled that EA must pay fines of up to €500,000 per week until the loot box mechanic, or player packs, in the game FIFA were removed. Whilst EA tried to argue stating there was no market for these packs or players outside of the game itself, this largely went ignored – big YouTube content creators and popular streamers may be part of the problem here by glorifying the loot box culture more whilst spending huge amounts of money, and in some instances have been cited as part of the issue.
EA hasn’t been the only one to face criticism though, Valve, the developer behind popular esports title Counter-Strike fell victim to this way back in 2016 a few years after launching their own loot box system and have often been targeted as one of the big movers to start this space off – the cosmetic skins in Counter-Strike did have some difference to player packs in FIFA however, largely in how the market created from these loot boxes became enormous – in 2016 it was suggested that the trading and betting market from these cosmetics had reached an estimated $7.4 billion, and went a long way to show the problem with loot boxes in general as for some it held the promise of potentially receiving something worth tens of thousands, and with a younger more impressionable audience, many fell victim to this false promise.
Other countries have already started to build cases against loot boxes with the UK asking for all evidence to be submitted by those who feel they’ve been negatively impacted by the gambling experience of these systems – since many currently aren’t regulated outside of the requirement of showing win percentages, there’s a lot of grey area in how they’re able to operate. They have become a larger problem now however with many drawing clear links to gambling amongst younger players – whilst it’s unlikely that loot boxes will be removed in their entirety, the systems behind them may be tweaked to replicate a slot machine less, and perhaps even offer players more ways to obtain and obtain these boxes without paying the currently associated real money fees for doing so. Either way, change still has a long process ahead of it, and it’s difficult to tell where it may all end up – but given there has been so much attention paid to these systems, its almost guaranteed at this point that they will change.
image from polygon.com
