
Loot boxes are obviously gambling - Tuldok
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/05/op-ed-game-companies-need-to-cut-the-crap-loot-boxes-are-obviously-gambling/
======
kossTKR
Seems to me like we are in a race to to the bottom in all parts of the
software and entertainment industry.

When behavioural economics and data mining became all encompassing we lost all
that was positive and good in this field.

This modeling of the human psyche has existed in PR and the commercial
industry for a century, but the incredible multiplier that lies in the
constant connection and the advancement of fast and agressive interfaces has
now made us all like rats pushing levers in a Skinner box.

Hordes of psychologists, data analysts and digital designers has become like a
mercenary army that whores itself out to the global-internet-consciousness
that itself has become like a cancer that eats up peoples last moments of
clarity.

We now stand completely naked and exposed as the irrational, animal, mamalian
ape that we are in front of the extreme exponential technological whirlwind
that has made everything so complex, fast changing and exploitative that we
have no option but to completely drop out or ride the tiger.

~~~
ramblerman
Or as with most new things it gets a bit out of hand and it takes a generation
or two to find a balance. But don't let me deny you the pleasure of your
apocalyptic rantings :)

~~~
saintPirelli
That's right, but it doesn't mean that you have to be a consenting victim in
these developments.

------
m12k
I think there's a pattern here: 'Highly talented company makes highly praised
product but eventually realizes there is much more money in exploitative
products instead'. Valve made the amazing Half-Life series, then later seems
to have come to the conclusion that their return on investment is just much
higher if they focus on multiplayer games with loot boxes (plus selling other
people's games and taking a cut). Blizzard went through a similar
transformation from e.g. Warcraft 3 to World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm
and Hearthstone (these days WoW is probably even the less exploitative of the
bunch). Facebook went from being 'the place to hear about what my friends are
up to', to just trying to show me as targeted ads as possible. I don't blame
them, per se - these companies are just following the economic reality, but I
just wish being exploitative wasn't so damn profitable.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I would easily argue Blizzard has the most generous/least exploitative loot
box models. Cosmetic only with a fairly regular/healthy rate of freebies, not
to mention the currency you get that lets you acquire the ones you actually
want without relentlessly "rolling". Heroes of the Storm steps it up even
further with a reroll mechanic you can use for disappointing boxes. Compared
to the others in the industry, Blizzard is downright pleasant.

~~~
SmallDeadGuy
HotS and Overwatch really aren't exploitative sure, but Hearthstone is
incredibly exploitative. Unless you are so good you can go "infinite" in arena
(always make your gold entry fee back and then some, on average), you have to
buy packs for every expansion that comes out. Or you have to play with lower-
tier cards, which some people do successfully, but to get the most out of the
game or be "competitive" they will need the best cards eventually.

Out of the 3 games, I probably played Overwatch the most, followed closely by
Hearthstone, but the amount of money I invested in Hearthstone is easily 3-4x
the initial price I paid for OW. I got fed up of the "pay or fall behind"
nature of Hearthstone and stopped playing a long time ago though.

~~~
dtech
That is very much the nature of a CGC though. Hearthstone seems less
exploitative than Magic the Gathering, Pokemon TCG or Yu-Gi-Oh because you can
trade in unwanted card and those have been around for a long time.

~~~
oblio
Hearthstone is digital. Biiiiiiiig difference.

Hearthstone should be compared with other computer games, not with MTG & co.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I've played digital card games that sold digital card packs for real money
like ten plus years ago. Decipher did the Star Trek CCG online the same way.

I always thought a much more modern scenario would've been if they put like a
code or something on physical packs so you could buy them once and have the
same cards in both digital and physical form.

------
Jaruzel
There are different classes of gambling, and in the UK at least they are
regulated differently:

1\. Proper full-on skill-based gambling; Poker, Blackjack, type games, plus
arguably Horse Racing and other sports where you learn the starts and make
judgement calls.

2\. 'Luck' based games; Pay money, get 'prize' \- this is where loot boxes
fall into, and in also in the real world, CTGs and LEGO Minifig bags (for
example). You always get a prize no matter how small.

3\. Raffles; Buy a ticket for a fixed sum, win a prize. The prizes on offer
are known up front. Viewed slightly different (for some reason) - most non-
business places can run one of these without a licence. However the nationwide
Lottery does require a licence, even though it's basically just a raffle.

Types 1 and 2 require different licences if you want to operate them, type one
definitely has to have all the GambleAware[1] stuff prominently shown.

You'll see on many daytime and light entertainment programs on TV that they
run 'competitions' for the viewers where the question is stupidly simple. They
do this to step around the 'gambling' licence issue. By asking a question (no
matter how simple) it legally occludes the fact that the text-in/phone-in
competition is basically a Lottery.

Back to the point of Games... All games publishers have to do is get a
gambling licence (for the region they want to sell the game in) and be up
front that their game contains 'some gambling'.

Of course though, if they do that, then they can't sell their game to
minors...

\--

[1] [http://www.whenthefunstops.co.uk/](http://www.whenthefunstops.co.uk/)

------
Jedd
> There will definitely be economic harm, and games companies will have to
> figure something out to fill the monetary gap.

Regulation painted as 'economic harm' is hard to defend in an industry that's
been around a long time without these kinds of practices being so widespread,
and so user-hostile, that regulators are actually starting to care.

Games companies long ago figured out how to fill the monetary gap -- sell a
game for money. The transaction is straightforward, transparent, and aligned
with the expectations most people have for most goods and services exchanges.

What that kind of traditional transaction does _not_ lend itself to is
changing the contractual arrangement _after_ the exchange (to the purchaser's
disadvantage), or to orchestrate a situation where the vendor can continually
identify, manipulate, and abuse the weaknesses of the purchaser.

~~~
GhostVII
I think the difference with games now is that the expectations are much higher
- games cost far more to produce than they used to, and are much more complex
and have better graphics, so it is harder to recoupe development costs by
selling a game at an upfront cost, especially when the expectation is that a
game should cost $60 or less. Maybe we need to change our expectations of how
much a good game should be worth.

------
FrozenVoid
The lootbox mechanic can be easily disguised without making it seem like
gambling: 1.Buy lots in-game currency with cash or grind X hours for it. 2.Buy
"A ticket to dungeon Y" with in-game currency. 3.The dungeon has a boss that
is essentially a easy to kill walking lootbox. Tada, all gambling regulations
bypassed. If you want to play loot-centric games this is your choice. All MMOs
that revolve around items and loot will bypass the "lootbox" ban with a system
as described above or better. (for the record, this system is actually in
widespread use in Asia-based MMOs)

~~~
Nullabillity
So.. single-use dungeon tickets are gambling too?

~~~
Drakim
Game Publisher:

Oh no, We wouldn't dream of having gambling in our game! That's why we don't
have single-use dungeon tickets (which is just gambling with one extra step
between).

You can do our dungeons as many times as you want, they aren't single use. Of
course doing a dungeon run costs five purple crystals, which costs five bucks.
After an epic story focused (cut-scenes that you can skip) showdown with a
boss (that you can take down in one attack) you get random loot from a loot
table, just like in good old games like Diablo (functionally the same as a
lootbox).

Of course, the fact that it works out to 5 bucks for a random item is not
gambling, since we now have __two __steps instead of just one.

~~~
pas
In both WoW and Diablo2 doing instas required nothing but the game itself (for
WoW it was the monthly subscription, for Diablo2 it was a one time purchase).

Of course, if there's a freemium model, it's very hard to argue that it's not
gambling, if people buy in-game-something to speed up grinding.

But in that regard simply wasting time for a low-probability-drop item is also
gambling.

The problem is that in the direct microtransaction lootbox model there's just
an insane feedback loop, to get that nice knife/gun/armor/breastplate.

It should be treated like addiction - which it is. People like to play hazard
games, so gambling will be with us forever, and some people will not be able
to handle the accompanying mental draw to that dopaminergic feedback loop.

------
Cub3
I still haven't heard anyone take on physical vs digital card games as part of
this. Typically cards are sold in random 'packs' (see Hearthstone, Gwent and
Valves 'up and coming' card game) which should fall under this definition. But
blind card packs (Magic the Gathering, Pokemon) physically are not banned by
any government, nor, have I ever heard them talked about in the same umbrella
as gambling?

~~~
belorn
Last time this topic was discussed I saw a very similar question so I had a
theory: What if physical card packs is such a small market that government
have simply not noticed enough to care to regulate it. I then went and look up
the numbers and checked. If I recall right:

Magic the Gathering and Pokemon sat around $500k in realy global market sales.
Sport cards a few millions. Game with lootboxes is estimated around a half a
billion. Regular gambling estimated around $400 billions.

This make in my view a rather simple answer why Magic the Gathering might not
be a big concern for government but why regular gambling really is and why
loot boxes currently sit in the middle. To simplify: 1x, 1000x, 1000000x.

~~~
oblio
Yeah, but the question is: is gambling ramping up at the same rate as games
with lootboxes?

Also, gambling is usually restricted, either by location or by age. Are games
with lootboxes 18+?

~~~
Spellchamp
I think the big reason that Magic never ramped up so much is because of the
fact that it's a physical pack. You can only buy however much is in stock (at
most) and even when you order a booster box or fat pack online, it still has a
delay before it arrives. With the online model it's really easy to just keep
pulling the lever over and over again and getting an instant response.

------
gkya
Maybe nit-picky, but this is one place (the title here I'm talking about) a
properly choosen dash would've saved me a couple seconds or so. When I was
reading this, I thought first to myself, what is a crap-loot box, only to
understand later that the endash there stood for a semicolon. But endash is
for word pairs (i.e. black--white, on--of); here, an emdash would be more
appropriate.

~~~
radicalbyte
There's nothing wrong per se with using the dash, at least if you get the
spacing right. If you use a dash as a punctuation you should either use spaces
or - as you said - the correct glyph.

~~~
gkya
I'd say otherwise. It's not like it's really important here, but in a book,
that would be a very bright sign of amateurishness to me. Just like with sans
serif dotless `i', `n' and `m' the only difference is not the number of the
loops, the same with the hyphen, endash and emdash, they mean different
things. Hyphen compounds words or breaks them across the line break, endash
connects them in logical relations, and an emdash can stand for a colon or a
pair of parantheses, indicating a subordinate clause that serves as an aside,
generally. When these are mixed up, parsing the text becomes harder. It's not
much of a trouble here in an internet title, but when this kinds of misuse
appear in a long, difficult period in some rather complex text, it can end up
consuming too much time.

------
tounu
I found myself spending so much cash in Dota 2 loot boxes... It's very
addictive. Yet I wasn't opening those boxes to grab something valuable in
order to make money out of it, and that's probably where the use of the word
"gambling" is confusing people.

I was just looking for those ultra-rare unique cosmetics in order to feel good
and unique as well. There is a social dimension to this problem, if Dota 2 was
a solo game, I wouldn't have spent a dime on cosmetics.

------
jmiserez
The same arguments could apply to physical card packs (e.g. MtG cards) sold at
tabletop gaming stores. Yet nobody seems to mind there?

~~~
usrusr
But card packs are random at least. The very rarest card will be equally rare
for every buyer, any time. Loot boxes can be much worse than gambling on a
random number generator: game servers know the inventory of a player and can
tailor box contents to always keep the inventory close to one of the many
thresholds that are usually designed into game rules. Maybe some operators are
voluntarily staying away from these dark patterns, maybe using them could
theoretically get you into legal trouble, but it would be very difficult to
prove anything.

Basically my point is this: it can be perfectly reasonable to allow one form
of gambling-like transactions where it is easy to ensure that the house is
playing fair while outlawing a superficially similar one were making sure that
the house is not cheating would require enormous regulations and oversight
efforts.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Couldn't you prove operators were doing it by running a large number of
accounts, checking the distribution of inventory and figuring out what the
likelihood of distributions?

~~~
usrusr
How many non-free transactions would you be willing to pay for?

Ps: Also, a manipulative pretend-random drop function could easily be made to
adhere to defined overall droprates without sacrificing any individual
manipulation. Detecting "bad luck" that only strikes when the system detects
willingness to keep rolling the dice until some local goal is achieved would
not be easy even with a complete dataset.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
I agree the non-free transactions thing is a problem, however some
organizations might be willing to do it as part of an investigation?

However for the second point, given what I know about programming as a
discipline, I'm not sure that the probable bad actors have gone through a lot
of effort to hide their gaming of the system, or that if they have made the
effort to make said function that it actually works as envisioned and does not
leave its own telltale traces.

------
staticelf
> Regulations that tightly restrict or absolutely prohibit loot boxes will
> definitely hurt the gaming industry and will hurt, perhaps even fatally,
> games I love.

Maybe actually charge for the game that companies used to?

I hate free 2 play games because I am a whale and I know it. When I get hooked
I can easily pay hundres of dollars of digital shit. Much more than I would
ever have if I had just purchased the game.

Fuck loot boxes and fuck companies trying to defend the practice.

~~~
saintPirelli
I agree with this. I wish more consumers would pressure game companies into
practices like CD Project RED displays. Those fellas keep some integrity in
the industry.

------
warcher
Hey uh, I don’t do a lot of mobile gaming, but what’s a loot box and why
should I care if it’s gambling or not?

~~~
zeta0134
A loot box is specifically an item that can be purchased in-game that offers a
random reward, typically from a loot table and with set odds known only to the
game maker. They come in many forms; one of the most obvious is found in
Overwatch right now, typically awarded to the player after they level up in
game. Overwatch's loot box animation is _very_ pretty.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdB17umeKB0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdB17umeKB0)

If this sounds kind of familiar, it's because a similar concept exists in many
Arcades already, in the form of capsule machines. Japanese Gashapon are the
oft-cited inspiration, but countless variations on this idea exist. Here in
South Texas, they're a common sight in grocery stores and restaurants.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gashapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gashapon)

On their own, random rewards in a video game sound tame, but where this gets
questionably ethical are games which (a) accept real money for in-game
purchases, and (b) offer loot-boxes as an in-game purchase. This enables game
players to pay real money to receive a random reward, and it's not hard to
draw comparisons to real life slot machines. Unlike real-life gambling though,
loot boxes have been popping up in games that are often targeted towards
minors, making the issue even more complicated. I won't weigh in on the issue
here, I just wanted to try to clarify what they _are_.

~~~
ng12
I think Overwatch is a bad example because you can't turn the loot into real
money. Valve's games are a better example because you can sell the loot
directly through Steam -- in some cases for hundreds of dollars.

~~~
dharmab
Overwatch is also a bad (good) example because the developers have a policy
where only cosmetic items are available through the loot boxes, while all
gameplay features are free for everyone.

Many other loot box games offer items that increase player power or change
gameplay in loot boxes. For example, the prerelease version of Star Wars
Battlefront 2 (2017) had a backlash because of items such as "Deal 30% more
damage with ship blasters." Other games may have items such as "Deal 20% more
damage, but reduce health by 30%" which open up additional strategic options.

~~~
zeta0134
Right, Overwatch is a relatively tame example where it _starts_ to feel
potentially manipulative. I forgot about the Battlefront scandal, that's a bit
more obviously bad. Again here, the presence of random boosts isn't inherently
a bad thing, but making them purchasable is already questionable ("pay to
win") and putting them in real-money loot boxes is certainly sketchy ("pay to
win _but only sometimes_ ")

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> The loot box mechanism is straightforward: you buy a box for a fixed price,
and you receive a random reward. Some rewards are commonplace and low value;
others are rare and high value. So far, so gambling: these essential features
are found in roulette, slot machines, betting on horses, raffles, and
lotteries.

Er. And Magic: the Gathering booster packs.

Does that mean I have a gambling problem then? Because I had hoped that
despite my M:tG habit [1], I was not really-really a gambler.

____________

[1] And let's not discuss my DnD etc RPG habit. I flip cards and roll dice way
too much for someone who sincerely thinks she's not into games of chance.

~~~
tialaramex
The psych people I've talked to explain it as a rule of thumb "If it's not a
problem, it's not a problem".

Say you feel you need to wear a hat made of marshmallow. Is that a problem?
Well, is it? For example if you lost your job because of the hat, that's a
problem. If you spend so much on marshmallow hats that you can't afford your
rent, that's a problem. If you killed somebody's dog because it tried to eat
your hat, that's a problem, and so on.

If you spend money on MTG and enjoy it even if it's $5000 per week that could
be fine, psychologically at least, if it didn't cause you or others to suffer.
But if you find you're ruining your life, or other people's to buy cards, even
if it's just $50 of cards per month then that's a gambling problem.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
I think that's what people (used to?) call "ego-dystonic" situations (?). I
like the zen of the particular wording you give.

~~~
tialaramex
I think the idea is that in an ego-dystonic illness _you_ know this is a
problem, and in other mental illnesses other people have spotted it's a
problem but you can't/ won't.

For example starving yourself to death is definitely a problem, but body-image
mental health illness that causes it usually leave the sufferer unable to
recognise this consequence of their actions.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Cheers. Should have bothered to look it up :0

------
paradite
Related: China already regulates loot boxes in games:

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/2/15517962/china-new-law-
dot...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/2/15517962/china-new-law-dota-league-
of-legends-odds-loot-box-random)

------
partycoder
Loot boxes work by having a list of items with weighted probabilities adding
up to 1, and what you buy is getting one or more of those items at random.

The way the weighted probabilities list is constructed changes from
implementation to implementation.

The prevalent one so far is "box gacha", the spiritual successor to "complete
gacha". The latter is now banned in Japan and the rest are somehow regulated.

The motivations are many. First, it distributes large payments over smaller
payments making people lose control over their spending. Then, it complicates
people's perception of how expensive an item is.

In a sense, lottery games are the same in spirit. For example, what's the
probability of getting an arbitrary unique combination of 6 numbers out of 49
(lottery)? Very, very low.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery_mathematics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery_mathematics)

In mobile, they're usually coupled with "events" that have a leaderboard.
Events are actually auctions were people "play" (bid) for a better place in
the leaderboard. The rewards are usually not worth it, because through
successive updates they're made worthless (e.g.: stats inflation).

------
lathiat
I much prefer how Epic Games have done this with Fortnite. And by all accounts
their method is raking in a LOT of cash.

All cosmetic items only, but you purchase the exact item you want directly.
The items are a little more expensive than you might expect (I think on
average $4-10 each) and it includes skins, different "axes" to break objects,
different dances and different "gliders" that you fly into the game on.

It's quite fun, but also totally unnecessary and you only spend money on
exactly what you want - no random chance.

On top of the fact that it's a free to play game in the first place, and you
can also get quite a wide range of skins, axes and dances (10s of them) by
playing to complete the battle pass which is only about $10 or so per season.
Plus there are a few freebies even if you pay nothing, and some you can get
from linking to Twitch Prime, etc.

I think this is winning partly because it is fun (the skins are quite comedic)
but also just because you know what you're getting. By comparison I spent
about $10 on keys for PUBG and stopped because I just got useless crap that
isn't really exciting - they're just basic clothing items. Even the rarer
items aren't as exciting which doesn't help but the chance of getting one is
quite low.

The thing Epic/Fortnite have done to make them sell more (compared to the
random chance) is that there is <10 items for sale per day for 24 hours, after
24 hours the set changes and you may not be able to buy that item again
(though in practice many returns a few days or weeks later, you can't be
certain). So instead of random chance gambling they're capitalising on missing
out / time limited offers. Plus there's a constant influx of new items so
instead of wasting time gambling for that ultra rare item - instead you can
keep up with whats newer and cooler.

~~~
sundvor
Fwiw, PUBG loot boxes are not game play impacting; they are cosmetic only. If
you don't want that "chance", you could just buy the specific item you'd like
on the Steam store from other players. You may even sell unopened boxes (which
require a key) there.

Sauce: [https://www.finder.com.au/playerunknowns-battlegrounds-
will-...](https://www.finder.com.au/playerunknowns-battlegrounds-will-never-
have-pay-to-win-items)

~~~
cannonedhamster
So what you're saying is that there's a variable real world amount of monetary
value that you could win determined solely on the random outcome of a loot
box. Sounds exactly like gambling. If someone spent $5 on a chance to win
either a marmot, a squirrel, a fancy coat, or a golden banjo and the rarity of
winning those depended upon their real world value, it would still be
gambling. The only difference with loot boxes is that their real world value
is determined by their rarity.

------
em3rgent0rdr
> "Loot boxes work like gambling, and they're designed like gambling. They're
> designed to provoke compulsive reward-seeking behavior."

Just because A has some properties of B doesn't mean that A is B.

I think both gambling and loot-boxes could be categorized as subsets of the
set of things that are "compulsive reward-seeking behavior".

~~~
manicdee
Gambling is defined as the activity of playingva game for stakes or betting on
an uncertain outcome.

Playing poker for matchsticks is just as much gambling as playing poker for a
$50k pot. The only thing changing is the stakes of the gamble.

~~~
jerrre
Is monopoly gambling? Where buying property is betting on the uncertain
outcome of someone landing there later, and the stakes are playmoney or the
honors of winning?

~~~
draugadrotten
To argue that monopoly for playmoney is "gambling" is sophism. When one talks
about gambling the bet is for real money (or other tokens with real monetary
value). Playing roulette "for honors" would not be gambling either, it would
be just playing. The argument you make is sophistic because you are focusing
on the word gambling instead of seeing the real issue - that gambling for real
money can cause addiction and worse. A random number generator is taking
chances all the time, but it is not gambling for money until you connect the
outcomes to real money.

------
PhasmaFelis
This sort of thing is going to keep happening, and not _just_ because game
publishers are greedy bastards.

These days, it's very, very difficult to make a profit on a AAA game at only
$60 a pop, but if anyone tries to raise that price the fans will cry bloody
murder. So publishers are desperately trying to find ways to make up the
difference. Cosmetic sales, DLC packs, loot boxes, anything. Making loot boxes
illegal doesn't fix the problem; it just pushes it somewhere else.

Source, among others:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhWGQCzAtl8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhWGQCzAtl8)

------
baxtr
There was an discussion on HN about this recently when Belgium prohibited loot
boxes

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16929119](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16929119)

------
zerostar07
Most games contain calculated random rewards or else the game would be boring
and predictable. However to call this gambling it's quite a stretch as you
can't cash out. Whoever decided to make those "boxes" look like slot machines
spinning brought it upon themselves.

~~~
oldcynic
Even if you can't trade the items (and you often can), they have a _perceived
value,_ and often a hard cash market value. A value that is frequently over-
promoted by the game to encourage purchase of more premium currency by the
naive to buy more boxes.

I can't distinguish a loot box from a scratch card -- except a scratch card
must reveal odds.

I'm old-school in terms of paying for games: £xx for a complete game, £x for a
month's access as they provide a _known_ value exchange. Doubly so when it's
the underage being _sold_ to. My kids learnt never to ask - my answer was
always no. Lootboxes and other variable rewards, time unlocks and so forth are
just a piss-take driven by sheer greed of the GameCo that's ruined many games.

~~~
aianus
> I can't distinguish a loot box from a scratch card -- except a scratch card
> must reveal odds.

A lot of problem gamblers get in a bad way because they think that the only
way to recoup their losses is by continuing to play until they win.

If you can't sell loot for cash, then it can't lead to this same kind of
problem gambling because it's literally impossible to recoup your losses
instead of merely unlikely. Therefore lootboxes should be regulated
differently from actual gambling if at all.

~~~
oldcynic
> A lot of problem gamblers get in a bad way ... by continuing to play until
> they win

The why does not matter. By removing that part of your text the behaviour
applies equally to both.

Whether it is about recouping losses, or desiring the "ownership" of some
pixels the same addictive behaviours are at work, and the same problems and
financial losses can accrue.

Game companies employ psychologists and economists to try and ensure
addictiveness - giving you a meaningless "almost a winner" tickets with 2 of 3
required tokens etc

> If you can't sell loot for cash

In a good proportion of games you _can_ sell the loot for cash. Via Steam
Marketplace and so on.

They deserve the same regulation and age limits as fixed odds betting
terminals and fruit machines as that is essentially what they are.

------
bni
There was outrage from the "gamer community" in Sweden a few years back when
Swedish gambling authority wanted to regulate "Internet Cafes".

I guess the line between games and gambling wasnt so clear cut after all.

Disgusting. This needs to be rooted out completely from the gaming industry.

------
krsdcbl
Got to raise the question here: following this argumentation, aren't
collectible card games like Magic The Gathering also to be considered
gambling?

------
JaceLightning
When I was a kid, we'd buy packs of unknown Pokemon cards hoping for a shiny.
I wouldn't consider that gambling.

------
evolighting
Gambling is gambling, loot box is loot box, I think we should not spending
time on arguing the definition, but instead limit loot box as what we do with
gambling.

New stuff come with new rules, may sound more resealable.

~~~
seanhunter
Here's the definition of a "lottery" under the uk gambling act "(2)An
arrangement is a simple lottery if— (a)persons are required to pay in order to
participate in the arrangement, (b)in the course of the arrangement one or
more prizes are allocated to one or more members of a class, and (c)the prizes
are allocated by a process which relies wholly on chance."

There is also a complex lottery where the process begins with chance. This
covers things like scratchcards where you choose which things to scratch off
but which card you are given, and what is printed on the card is governed by
chance.

[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2005/19/section/14](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2005/19/section/14)

Lotteries are one of 3 forms of gambling covered by this regulation, so in the
uk at least it seems pretty obvious that lootboxes are gambling from a legal
point of view. Lotteries are permitted for people older than 16 in the UK but
it's an offence to allow a "child" (someone younger than 16 in this law) to
participate
([http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2005/19/section/56](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2005/19/section/56))

It's also an offence if your company to manufacture, supply, install or adapt
gambling software without a license. So they could be liable from that point
of view also, in the UK at least.

edit: clarify one bit of wording

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amelius
> and (c)the prizes are allocated by a process which relies wholly on chance."

This part sounds leaky to me. Game producers might assign prizes which are
based e.g. 99% on chance and 1% on skill.

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tialaramex
The law calls that a complex lottery. But it's still a lottery, and the UK law
on lotteries is very simple: No for-profit lotteries.

You can (and at least two big companies do) make money from operating a
lottery on behalf of a charity, but you can't run a lottery where the profits
themselves go somewhere other than a "good cause" such as a charity. And the
UK has tighter regulation than the US of charities so it's harder to have a
"charity" that basically just puts money into your own pockets.

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Double_a_92
I personally would say it's only gambling if there is a trading system so that
you might trade for money (even if it's outside the official platform).

