
Belgium declares loot boxes gambling and therefore illegal - alex_young
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-04-25-now-belgium-declares-loot-boxes-gambling-and-therefore-illegal
======
IkmoIkmo
Netherlands is close to drawing similar conclusions.

And it makes sense. You can buy, using real money, a virtual ticket for a
virtual item. Then that virtual item can in turn often be sold to others for
real money. In other words, players can participate by gambling real money in
return for less or more real money.

In short, it is gambling. Not all countries make gambling illegal, but those
who do, should treat loot boxes the same. And virtually all countries make
gambling illegal for minors, and there's currently no working mechanism in
play for 15 year olds not to be able to play these games.

Currently in the Netherlands it's required for the proceeds of loot boxes to
be tradeable in the real world, giving them economic value, for it to be
considered gambling. If it's purely virtual, it's not gambling but just part
of the game. (you can question this of course.) The problem is that it didn't
matter for the Dutch government whether the items were traded on external
platforms (which are often in violation of the games EULA itself), or on a
platform of the game itself.

What would help stay legit is for the games to prevent loot box items from
being traded between characters at all.

Here's the weird thing though. My entire childhood was filled with opaque
plastic packs of cards, pokemon cards, football cards etc. You didn't know
which 5 cards were in there. The cards were semi-randomly distributed in the
packs in the factory, just like these loot boxes are semi-randomly generated
by an algorithm. And you'd pay, not knowing what you'd get. And indeed,
sometimes you paid $10 for a pack with a rare pokemon you could sell for $100.
That was gambling too under this definition.

~~~
JackCh
> _" Here's the weird thing though. My entire childhood was filled with opaque
> plastic packs of cards, pokemon cards, football cards etc. You didn't know
> which 5 cards were in there. The cards were semi-randomly distributed in the
> packs in the factory, just like these loot boxes are semi-randomly generated
> by an algorithm. And you'd pay, not knowing what you'd get. And indeed,
> sometimes you paid $10 for a pack with a rare pokemon you could sell for
> $100. That was gambling too under this definition."_

Is that so weird? I came to the conclusion that industry was gambling when I
was a kid. I saw my friends spend their allowance on those packs of cards,
open them up, then become disappointed because they only received "trash". Yet
again and again they'd do it. It seemed totally irrational to me.

~~~
yuchi
After my first 6 packets of trash I started printing copies of them and
reselling them for 40¢ each (50¢ for more rare ones) making a little fortune
(3€ a day).

It lasted a week before other parents were incredibly annoyed by this. Aaaaand
they kept paying a lot of euros to buy real ones.

:shrug:

~~~
dintech
Copyright infringement: every parent's worst nightmare.

------
ghostcluster
The entire mobile app store economy needs major regulation. The platform
operators have shown they are willing to allow hugely profitable apps whose
business models prey on gambling tendencies in children and they will look the
other way, while bragging about their curation of their stores in some cases.
It's shameful hypocrisy.

The entire industry knows this is going on. Parents have complained for years,
but nothing's changed.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
So if we assume gambling should be regulated, and that pay-to-play loot boxes
are gambling...

Why haven’t the licensed gambling venues (casinos, lotto, and what have you)
pressured the regulators to stop the unlicensed gambling? Or have they and I’m
not aware / the regulator is dragging its feet?

Do the licensed gambling entities not perceive this as a threat? Or has
gambling revenue increase overall because these games / apps basically groom
young people in to being habitual gamblers as they age?

~~~
cableshaft
I bet it's somehow not on their radar. Because they have done this in the
past. They shut down online poker in the US in 2011 by paying off a couple
Senators to attach the ban into a Port Security act, which most legislators
didn't want to not pass as they don't want to appear weak on security (also
they probably didn't read the whole act).

My Dad's a great poker player and his secondary source of income vanished
overnight. He still complains about it.

[https://medium.com/@bostonirishblog/the-simple-science-
behin...](https://medium.com/@bostonirishblog/the-simple-science-behind-
senator-bill-frist-torpedoing-internet-poker-and-gambling-fd55d3ae21cd)

~~~
monetus
I'm still annoyed. It really clamped down on the culture.

------
tokyodude
I mostly agree with the idea. Many F2P apps prey on people and something
should be done.

That said I'm curious what happened and why these things are so addictive. As
a kid I collected Wacky Packages. They were parody stickers that came in a
pack of like 3 or 5 with a stick of gum just like Baseball Cards. While I
probably owned 150 stickers or so I would never have considered myself
addicted nor my friends. We were into them for a couple of months, probably
spent no more than $20 total each.

Compare to my nephew who was into Pokemon Cards and spent hundreds of dollars.
Of course I new a few kids that seriously into baseball cards but they were
the exception. With Pokemon cards it seemed much much better. Also before that
a large percentage of my adult friend spent hundreds on Magic the Gathering
cards. Some spent thousands.

Now we have IAP in apps and some people are spending like crazy.

What happened? What made Magic the Gathering and Pokemon so big compared to
Baseball Cards? What made IAP so big? I can only guess 2 things about IAP. One
that it's super each to buy being connected directly to your account. Two that
being a video game they can more easily use psychological techniques to
manipulate people. That might explain the IAP issues. Not sure it explains
Pokemon + Magic the Gathering vs Baseball Cards.

Any ideas?

~~~
scotty79
I think it's just people have more money to gamble.

Baseball cards became a thing because Americans already had too much money.
Other countries that got hit by world wars didn't have baseball cards.

New milenium came and now money is more useless than ever and people have much
eadier time to gamble it away.

~~~
slac
Maybe because other countries do not play baseball? (Except japan Canada Cuba
and a few other island countries)

~~~
dempseye
The UK and Ireland had cards representing Premiership soccer players. You
would buy a book in which to collect the cards and the goal was to fill in
every player on every team in the league.

The cards were sold in packs of ten or something, and kids used to trade them
with each other in the playground.

------
justonepost
So, like, pokemon card packs and lego packs and friends should be illegal too.

There are you tube videos my kids liked to watch of people just literally
opening pokemon packs. I'd actually be OK with making this illegal.

Especially considered the frenzied buying and selling of pokemon cards at
their school..

This is actually pretty huge. There is a very massive industry both virtual
and non that relies on preying on kids and their gambling instinct.

Steam makes a lot of money on Counter Strike via this.

~~~
dpwm
I'm all for seeing items with random distribution inside as gambling too. I
recall the monetary value of some pokemon cards caused my school to ban them.
This didn't really have any effect other than to allow the school to say,
"well, they are banned," if there was any fights or thefts relating to them. I
think they probably had a net social negative amongst my friends at the time.
In fact the only social positive I saw from them was in getting people, who
wouldn't otherwise interact, interacting -- which wasn't always a good thing.

But I do see a few tiny differences in general between loot boxes and physical
items like trading cards:

1\. the packet does contain physical items which cost money to produce,
whereas a duplication of a virtual item is effectively the distribution cost.

2\. Retailers made a profit on physical items too. With virtual items sold by
developer-publishers like EA and Valve, it's really just one party.

3\. There is typically no limit on the number of loot boxes you can purchase.
With physical items there is the stock of the shop.

4\. Loot boxes can in some cases be purchased with other people's (usually
parents) cards by default and without their immediate knowledge.

5\. It isn't routine for somebody to give you a pack of physical tradable
items for free to go and feel what they are like. If you go and buy them,
there is a small amount of honesty in terms of what you are getting. With loot
boxes, you are presented with them through in game events and then provided
with the opportunity to buy more.

6\. With physical items, you don't know how things are distributed but you can
be reasonably certain that they can't be targeted at you. If you're looking
for card X, the shopkeeper usually has no way of knowing what pack contains
that and withholding that pack from you to maximise profit. You have no idea
how the loot boxes are distributed. It is entirely possible for developers to
detect when somebody is "hooked", work out what they are after, and attempt to
maximise profit by withholding the desired item.

The only thing that could prevent such abuses is to regulate loot boxes as
gambling as several countries have now done and respond with immense penalties
where regulations are violated (a multiple of what would be made * estimated
chance of being caught or a fraction of published turnover).

~~~
zelos
>If you're looking for card X, the shopkeeper usually has no way of knowing
what pack contains that and withholding that pack from you to maximise profit.

Although I believe they do weigh Pokemon booster packs to find the ones with
more valuable shiny cards.

~~~
sfotm
I actually have a coworker that's very active in the Pokémon community, and
there are now countermeasures to make this ineffective. IIRC, there are now
variances in the weight of a "code card" inside the pack.

------
Aissen
I don't honestly know if lootboxes are gambling or not, but it's time to be
honest with the mechanisms behind them, and follow Chinese and Japanese
regulations: be transparent and open about the probabilities behind them. Yes,
even if it includes pity counters, etc.

Apple has started mandating this:
[https://www.polygon.com/2017/12/21/16805392/loot-box-odds-
ru...](https://www.polygon.com/2017/12/21/16805392/loot-box-odds-rules-apple-
app-store)

But Steam, Google Play, PlayStation, XBox, and smaller platforms all need to
follow suite, very quickly. Or they'll face even harsher legislations around
the world.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Was your use of the phrase "follow suite" intentional? Because if so, bravo,
that's the funniest thing I've read all day :)

~~~
Aissen
Classical typo, enhanced by non-native writer skills ;-)

~~~
duncan_bayne
Haha! I actually missed the typo altogether. I thought you were intentionally
using a phrase originating in gambling ("follow suit") as a joke, given the
context.

~~~
caf
Games in which you follow suit are not generally gambling games.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Bridge is the first that springs to mind, and that is most definitely a
gambling game.

~~~
caf
Do you say that because of the bidding mechanism itself, or is there actually
a culture of wagering on bridge games? I wasn't aware of that.

~~~
duncan_bayne
The latter - although I've read that it's never attracted the kind of money
you see in high stakes poker.

------
Matt3o12_
On the one side I am glad that they banned such in-app purchases because
sometimes it can get ridiculous on how much people (especially young children
without realizing the cost) spend on them but I can't help but feel the irony
because many "more legacy" things offer similar system. I remember spending
far more then $100 for soccer stickers. You would basically buy a pack of
maybe 10 stickers and you didn't know if you needed them or not. There were
also stickers that were less common so in the end you ended up with over 300
excess stickers just to complete a book and you ended up doing that every
other year for the euro and world championship.

I don't think there is much of a difference and both cases should be more
regulated (especially those catering to children who do not know any better).

~~~
wastedhours
I was thinking exactly this - I'm not massively clear on where loot boxes and
blind-pack card games/sticker collectables differ. Both are fixed price
products where you don't know the contents, with the value of said contents
varying massively from the invested cost, along with the ability to trade/sell
the contents on secondary markets.

Trading Pokemon cards, I reckon I spent more on booster packs trying to get a
Charizard than I've spent on all of the chests, loot boxes and packs in games,
for nothing more than a piece of card that (sadly) eventually gets water
damaged...

~~~
matwood
> I'm not massively clear on where loot boxes and blind-pack card
> games/sticker collectables differ. Both are fixed price products where you
> don't know the contents, with the value of said contents varying massively
> from the invested cost, along with the ability to trade/sell the contents on
> secondary markets.

I'm also not clear how this differs from an MMO where you kill monsters over
and over hoping for piece of random loot that can then be virtually sold.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Two difference with an MMO are that it needs some sort of skill to kill the
beast; and time makes it so you can't just mash a button and max out your
credit card.

It's exploiting dopamine hits but not as aggressively, and it doesn't -
presumably - cost real money every time you try.

~~~
Goronmon
_It 's exploiting dopamine hits but not as aggressively, and it doesn't -
presumably - cost real money every time you try._

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the people in these discussions who gloss over the
"pay money to roll the dice" portion of the gambling issue.

------
belorn
Like with much in law things exist in an context. In order to compare physical
card packs to loot boxes one has to first figure out the market size of each.

So I took a glance doing a few Google searches and it seems that physical card
packs has a global market of a few billions. The number varies a lot since
some of the data include card trade as well as pack sells. One data point
argued a 450 million from news packs and 3 billions from card trade, specific
for sport cards. For loot boxes I would estimate the number to be around 100x
of that, give or take. For every $10 in the past there is $1000 dollar being
spent on virtual packs.

It seems reasonable to me that a government body might not care too much about
a $450 million industry, but do care a lot when it is a $100 billion industry.

~~~
Thiez
On which numbers is your 100x estimation based? Or is it just some number you
made up.

~~~
belorn
I did say that I took a glance at google search. This is not a academic paper
with careful study with tight citations from the last 100 years. If you want
that, go and do the work yourself.

Here is a few new random google glances:
[https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/28/newzoo-game-industry-
grow...](https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/28/newzoo-game-industry-growing-
faster-than-expected-up-10-7-to-116-billion-2017/) $116 billion in total video
game market, $50 billion for just the mobile market. How much of that is micro
transaction? Don't know. How much is loot boxes. Don't know.

Blizzard reported more than half their revenue, $4 billion, was from micro-
transactions. [https://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-blizzard-
made-4...](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-blizzard-
made-4-billion-on-microtransac/1100-6456669/)

EA reported similar $2 billion, almost half of their revenue, from micro-
transactions. [https://www.tweaktown.com/news/57475/ea-
earns-1-68-billion-m...](https://www.tweaktown.com/news/57475/ea-
earns-1-68-billion-microtransactions-fy2017/index.html)

According to this random article, loot boxes are around $30 billion this year
and expected to reach $50 billions in 4 years.
[https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-04-17-loot-
boxes...](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-04-17-loot-boxes-skins-
gambling-to-hit-usd50-billion-by-2022-report))

------
GuB-42
I understand the idea but what apply to loot boxes may apply to a lot of
things.

The first ones are trading cards, including games like "Magic: the Gathering".
If you are lucky, you can sell a card you got from a booster pack for way more
than what you originally paid. And chances that you can don't even have to
leave the shop to do it.

What makes gambling is that you get money for money, not worthless prizes like
in the case of most loot boxes. It is an additional risk because there is
always hope that you will be able to recover your losses and you may spend
more than you can afford. With loot boxes and most other random prizes, it is
clear that while you may get something nice, that money will be gone for good.

As for game developers, they don't lack options for Skinner box schemes. Loot
boxes are just one among others, there are things like energy systems that are
popular on mobile games that don't involve chance but have the same effect of
making you spend more money than originally intended.

It is just that loot boxes look more like gambling, even though it isn't
really, and are disliked by the majority. The rest is politics.

------
simias
I see other posters saying that it has to do with probabilities and the way
they're designed or how you can play a game with the cards etc... and I
disagree.

I think what triggered the problem with lootboxes is that the monetary value
of the items is immediately obvious and you can trade those items without any
friction over the internet at any moment. For many games an item is just
equivalent to some amount of money. It's not a good, it's casino tokens that
you can exchange for real money at the counter. Selling cards, especially
before the internet, was way more complicated and most 12yo at the time
probably wouldn't bother unless they were extremely lucky and managed to
acquire a very expensive card "charlie and the chocolate factory" style. Cards
have pretty limited liquidity, unlike digital goods that can be traded quickly
and safely across continents in an instant.

I don't play a ton of games featuring random item drops but if I look at my
Steam inventory for instance I can get the immediate value at which any item
is trading (including loot boxes and their keys, but also skins, cards,
emoticons, profile backgrounds...). Valve itself plays into this by tracking
the price and making it easily available to anybody. You can directly, from
Steam, trade these items for money (well, money locked into your Steam
account, but money nonetheless).

On the other hand when I was a teen and played Magic: The Gattering most of
the time I had no idea of the value of an individual card and checking it
would have involved buying specialized magazines (the internet was only in its
infancy at the time). We traded cards only for other cards and based mostly on
our own subjective assessment of their relative values and how they fit into
our decks (or even if the drawing looked cool), not based on some global card
exchange with real-time trading.

On top of this there are a huge number of 3rd party "casino" sites for these
in-game items who add another layer of gambling on top of the lootbox concept.
Those websites don't hesitate to pay Twitch streamers to "play" on their site,
sometimes even tweaking the odds to make them win more than average to make it
even more enticing for the (often very young) watchers. It's scummy as hell
and while Valve & friend don't directly partake in this they very clearly
enable this behavior with their policies (and they APIs).

I could see the point of somebody arguing that MtG and Pokemon are gambling
but these video game economies are on a whole other level.

~~~
cableshaft
> Those websites don't hesitate to pay Twitch streamers to "play" on their
> site, sometimes even tweaking the odds to make them win more than average to
> make it even more enticing for the (often very young) watchers.

I doubt it was only sometimes. I bet it was pretty much every time. A few have
actually been caught red-handed doing just that.

~~~
pferde
It goes even deeper than that - some of the twitchers/youtubers were caught
_owning_ those gambling websites, and claiming no affiliation with them in
their videos.

~~~
kikimaru
They got caught, prosecuted, and went right back to making money from said
sites.

------
Asgardr
Serious question; why isn't Magic the Gathering illegal? Don't booster packs
perform the same function.

~~~
PeterStuer
At the time it was considered, but the randomness in the packs was considered
a 'sales tactic', not gambling. (I'm not sure wether Carta Mundi, the printer
for a.o Magic the Gathering being a Belgian company had anything to do with
it). Loot boxes otoh are compared to slot machines.

I know it sounds 'illogical', as they both at first glance seem alike, but
there are aspects of difference to consider. Loot boxes are generally packaged
with 'addiction triggering' opening ceremonies. Furthermore, the probabilities
are not publishes (afaik they are for trading card games), and the digital
platform also enables for far more ingenious addiction/purchase/retention
inducing psychological gaming than physical card packs.

~~~
rightos
> addiction triggering

Sorry, but virtual flames shooting out of a box and a "here, you lost" screen
doesn't exactly stimulate a dopamine response.

~~~
PeterStuer
from [https://www.pcgamer.com/behind-the-addictive-psychology-
and-...](https://www.pcgamer.com/behind-the-addictive-psychology-and-
seductive-art-of-loot-boxes/)

Overwatch's loot box is a masterpiece of audio-visual design. "It's all about
building the anticipation. When the box is there you're excited at the
possibilities of what could be inside," says senior game designer Jeremy
Craig. Click the ‘Open loot box’ button and the box bursts open, sending four
disks into the sky. Their rarity is indicated by coloured streaks to further
build the suspense. "Seeing purple or gold you start to think about what
specific legendary or epic you've unlocked. This all happens so fast, but it
was those discrete steps that we felt maximized excitement and anticipation."

~~~
rightos
Nothing about that sounds substantially addiction producing. Just flashy and
designed, like anything else in a video game. Is there a proper study on that
being a substantial addiction causing effect compared to card games and such?
I've seen people lose ridiculous amounts on completely boring gambling games
like SatoshiDice where all they do is push send. The fact that you get the
random outcome seems much more likely to be the primary culprit than any flash
effects around it.

I get the impression people saying that are just making excuses because they
don't like loot boxes as a business model for games. Would you be accepting of
it if they replaced it in the game with a simple click and get the result
system?

------
nske
I'd find it fair for these games to be classified only for adults.

As for adults however, my philosophy is that we should stop treating them as
kids that need to be told what they are and aren't allowed to do. Loot boxes
are addictive? So is sugar, alcohol, sex and 1000 other things. Do we want to
go down that road?

If someone wants to gamble a percentage of his income, that should be his
choice. If he wants to gamble away all his money or even put himself into
debt, also his choice.

~~~
onion2k
Belgium has declared loot boxes are illegal because they violate Belgian
gambling laws, not because all gambling is outlawed there. They could be
implemented in ways that don't, and people would be able to spend their money
on them again. Your suggestion that 'these games to be classified only for
adults' is _exactly_ what the gambling law says is necessary.

~~~
nske
Requiring you to get a gambling license is a bit different than just requiring
your games to be classed as adult-only.

For starters there are limits to how many gambling licenses are available from
the government each year and companies have to apply and pay for them.

But my comment was mostly targeted to several other comments here that seemed
over-eager to accept something should be rendered illegal simply because it's
addictive and some people can't control themselves.

------
SocratesV
So where does this leave sticker albums (Panini, etc) or any other collectable
that does not serve what is seen as a generally practical purpose in the
World? (don't think that digital vs. physical should play a part in this)

In gambling you are mostly doing it for a clear financial gain: you play for
money/fiat. Loot boxes, sticker albums, and so on, the primary purpose is not
a financial gain. That is a byproduct and secondary, which some elect to make
it their primary purpose for engaging in it.

IMO this is a symptom of people not being able to manage their finances
properly and identify potentially destructive behaviours. This would push the
solution for the problem to Education, how schools should help people in
learning the skills necessary to both manage their money and notice when a
certain behaviour they are about to engage in, or repeat one too many times,
will produce a generally negative outcome for their mental and financial
health.

And no, I'm not a fan of loot boxes. Never bought one and think they are
mostly used by the publishers in a very bad, and silly, way.

------
DoctorOetker
Not sure when chance is considered gambling, I presume artificial chance?

Does that include bitcin mining, the probability that your facebook post is
visible for your friends, the probability that an advertisement is shown to a
specific user, is sortition illegal?

~~~
baddox
I assume that their definition of gambling also requires a payment to be sent
to some party who is offering the probabilistic reward. I doubt that bitcoin
mining and Facebook posting would qualify.

~~~
anvandare
The gambling commission which made this report/recommendation apparently uses
four criteria:

(1) It's a game /* hello, Wittgenstein */

(2) There's a (financial) stake

(3) The player can win or lose (i.e. they're not guaranteed a specific return)

(4) An element of chance is involved

~~~
thaumasiotes
> It's a game /* hello, Wittgenstein */

This element is generally included more to avoid accidentally outlawing
insurance and financial securities than out of an idea that fun is inherently
evil.

Which is to say, they don't care if something IS a game; they care that it
ISN'T something they consider productive.

~~~
anvandare
Oh I understand why that's there, it's just another amusing instance of "I'll
know it when I see it" [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it)

~~~
DoctorOetker
yes it is another instance of ad hoc after the fact "I know it when I see it".

Since the problem does not affect me specifically (not a child nor a gamer,
nor a parent of such a person) I can see why this seems ammusing in the sense
that we see lawmmakers drown in their own rules again, even though I don't
think it is amusing in general.

In fact it bothers me, because I am very much against "void for vagueness"
rules, while in this case it is very hard for me to formalize a general
prinicple differentiating good and bad (although I consider a lot of the
insurance stuff nonsense tbh...).

If I had to formalize a principle, I think it would start from informed
consent: i.e. a lottery ticket should define exactly the probability of each
possible return scenario, and also the expectation value of the return. And
then in order to legally buy lottery tickets you would need a non-expired
certificate that proves you understand expectation value, where the
certificate is issued after passing some automated exam say at the city hall.
Just passing it once should not suffice to gamble the rest of your life after
forgetting how expectation values work.

In this way children, or uneducated adults, or elderly with dementia are
prevented from gambling unless they "regularly" prove to society that they
understand what an expectation value of return of 50% means (if you buy $1000
worth of lottery tickets with 50% expectation value, on average you get $500
dollar back, and that is already taking into account the cases you win the top
prize), and how to calculate this in general...

All the places where the tickets get sold would have to be mystery-shopper
checked by the government so that if a place sells a ticket to a person
without the valid certified status, they get a big fine.

If the same was done for insurance etc, then at least the consumer can be said
to have given informed consent to the transaction. But don't get surprised if
suddenly a large part of the population stops different kinds of insurance, or
at least systematically en masse switch to whoever has the best offer, putting
pressure in order to get democratic pricing of insurance etc...

Not just licenses for the gambling houses, but also for the gamblers, like
driver licenses...

------
baxtr
I’ve never heard about loot boxes before. But I wonder: how is this any
different from “Kinder Surprise” (a chocolate egg with a small surprise toy
inside that you can buy in supermarkets)?

~~~
usrusr
A key difference would be that the little plastic toys are all nominally the
same value. A much closer physical equivalent would be Magic:tG boosters,
where the different play values arguably create value differentials. But even
they contained a defined mix of different rarity classes, probably to fend off
anti gambling laws. And with M:tG boosters, at least you knew the dice were
pre-rolled so you could absolutely trust the cards to not be individually
stacked against you. Online gaming loot boxes on the other hand can have all
kinds of dark patterns hidden in supposedly random distributions that are
actually manipulative sequences tailored to each player.

(And also, Kinder Surprise contain chocolate, which makes them infinitely
better than any virtual loot box could ever be, but that's just my personal
opinion)

Edit: I was assuming gameplay-relevant loot boxes here, apparently some/all of
those under Belgian scrutiny are just cosmetic mods, which brings them much
closer to the Kinder Surprise analogy (although strictly speaking, I would not
consider cosmetics entirely without gameplay effects in something like CS:GO,
relative camouflage qualities of avatars were absolutely a consideration no my
day)

~~~
bobthepanda
I don't think Kinder is a good comparison, because the Kinder toys, while they
are collectables, largely do not interact with each other. Getting one Kinder
toy does not really require you to get the others, the way some of these games
hold themed events with limited-time lootbox content.

A better example would be if Barbie, with her thousands and thousands of
iterations, completely stopped selling the prepackaged outfits. Instead, you
now have to buy a mysterious box, that has one top piece of an outfit, one
bottom piece of an outfit, and one accessory. The pieces you get don't
necessarily match.

On top of that, there are bigger value packs that give you five random ones of
each type, or ten, or a hundred, depending on how much cash you want to spend.
And on top of that, let's say that these outfits are impossible to trade.

I basically just described Overwatch lootboxes. The problem is not necessarily
the lootboxes, which are fine as an in-game reward earned by completing games
or leveling or what have you. The problem is that the only way to purchase
more cosmetics is by chance; as a new player, there's no way to get a specific
cosmetic guaranteed unless you either grind every waking moment or spend
untold amounts of money.

~~~
animal531
Also worse, that Overwatch pack may contain 1 character skin (that you already
own) and then 3 relatively worthless things like sprays, gold etc.

At least when buying a pack of cards you know all of them will be cards.

------
damontal
What about buying card packs in a digital card game like Hearthstone? Does
that count as a loot box?

~~~
magicmu
I don't think it does, since you can't sell individual Hearthstone cards for
money or trade them between accounts. It's still an ethically questionable
business model imo, but it's in a somewhat different category than loot boxes
(or physical trading cards).

~~~
throwaway321546
but they banned Overwatch lootboxes, a purely cosmetic addition to the game
that cannot be resold or traded between accounts and has no impact on
gameplay. the legislation seems to just be a knee jerk reaction to something
that someone told them is bad, without fully understanding the ecosystem.
there are definitely some predatory systems out there, but identifying those
wrong from the onset makes me think they aren't fully informed here

------
scotty79
If you pay fixed price for unknown outcome it should be clasified as
gambling/investment and regulated. Odds should be published (if known) or past
performance if known, expected value and such. Deviation from any information
stated at the moment of sale should nullify the sale and give you your money
back. If the company hesitates, funds should be seized immediately and put on
hold until people who bought the tickets come for their money.

I have no hard rule about which kinds of gambling/investment should be
completely forbidden but all should be scrutinised and some limitations should
be imposed. Like a ban on advertising.

App economy is now gambling economy and at some point it will trigger heavy
regulations.

~~~
rwmj
How do you foresee this working with insurance policies?

~~~
Tactic
Insurance != Gambling. You will not get more out than you lose. It will only
make you whole.

You may get more money out than you put in, but they are compensating you for
a loss. You are paying for risk mitigation, not potential profits.

------
keyle
Isn't this mostly about targeting in-app purchases that offer random awards?

~~~
Yeri
It is

------
tialaramex
The thing we didn't realise / understand when countries outlawed or restricted
gambling is that gambling isn't about the tangible reward per se.

Psychologically some humans receive a very powerful reward sensation
specifically for gambles that pay off. It doesn't matter what the "reward" is
so much as that they gambled and won, they get their buzz if they win a slice
of cake for guessing how many puppies the secretary's greyhound would have,
for a $50 win on the scratch-offs, or for finding the rare Pink Darth Vader in
the loot box.

This compulsion is very powerful, and when harnessed it can be good for
society - ordinary people do not try to fly faster than the speed of sound for
the first time - and it can take individuals to the height of high-risk
activities most of us wouldn't have the nerve to try, all the very good Poker
players are gamblers for example. But it's also potentially catastrophic for
the individual, because they can't stop - or at least they don't want to, and
gambles never pay off forever.

This means that restricting gambling for money only worked because that was
the most harmful practice available that triggered off this harmful pattern.
Once video games began to rely on it too, offering $10 "loot boxes", there was
a new way for problem gamblers to destroy their lives, even when you can't
"cash out" your winnings, because the psychological compulsion doesn't care
about that.

------
xendo
What about Kinder Surprise? Are they going to make it illegal?

~~~
freehunter
Is there anything of value in a Kinder Surprise? In my experience it's always
been a tiny plastic toy with no (even perceived) monetary value. I think the
point is to ban things where people are paying money for random items in the
hopes that those random items are worth lots of money so they can resell them.

------
SmallDeadGuy
Loot boxes which have actually different values should be illegal, but the
loot boxes in overwatch don't. They don't change the gameplay of the game at
all, having a legendary skin just makes you look cooler and doesn't change
your abilities or damage. It also isn't possible to sell/trade the skins, so
they don't have any inherent value.

That being said, what about card packs in games like hearthstone? The cards
can't be traded or sold, but they do change the gameplay and some cards are
inherently stronger than others so gambling and getting "lucky" can give
players an advantage. This is definitely closer to gambling than loot boxes in
overwatch.

Opening 20 loot boxes in overwatch and getting no legendary skins feels bad
but isn't frustrating, you don't need the skins. But opening 20 card packs for
a new hearthstone expansion and getting none of the strong legendary cards
feels super frustrating, you're at a disadvantage to players that did open
those cards.

------
yAnonymous
It's important to note that there's a distinct difference between virtual and
physical loot box systems. I've seen collecting MtG cards turn into quite
considerable theft, but virtual systems are worse, because

* there's no physical item involved

* the distribution in virtual systems can be changed to the customer's disadvantage

When a kid buys 30 card packs in a store, people notice. Also, holding 30
packs in your hands is very different from opening 30 virtual loot boxes,
because the packs and contents don't just disappear into some virtual table.

And then, you can be sure that the distribution of cards has been decided
before the packs have been put in the store and not changed on the fly to prey
on the customer's addiction and make them buy even more.

Physical loot box systems are still addictive and borderline gambling, but the
limits are much more defined.

------
PeterStuer
For those that can read Dutch: Google turned up a copy of a study they did
November last year on the issue. Note that this is not the report in which
they looked at the four titles in depth, but a broader study looking into
'social gaming', 'Loot boxes', 'Skin gambling' and 'eSports betting'
[https://ds1.static.rtbf.be/uploader/pdf/d/d/b/rtbfinfo_5c742...](https://ds1.static.rtbf.be/uploader/pdf/d/d/b/rtbfinfo_5c742f9b8996afe274e39ad9b4acb453.pdf)
[pdf]

------
lifeisstillgood
I have goggles around a bit but I don't quite get it - what is a loot box, and
what are they doing in what i would consider "safe for my kids" games like
FIFA and Starwars ?

~~~
ergothus
Look up battlefront 2 for a good explanation. Generally a loot box may be
"dropped" as a reward during play, just as games have long given gear or in-
game currency. But in this case the loot boxes (which contain gear, in-game
currency, or other in-game items of value such as skill ups) cannot be opened
without something extra. That something extra is available for a real money
fee. In some games the boxes are just bought and open when bought (perhaps the
only way to get them), in others you can also open them with time (always
slower that your rate of acquisition) or perhaps you can get keys to open them
as random drops (always at a lower rate than box acquisition). End result is
that in addition to any price you paid for the game itself you can pay to open
these which each have a chance to be "worth it", but usually arent.

A few common objections:

Pay-to-win: for those that are focused on skill and competition it sucks to be
beaten and taunted by those that beat you because they paid extra to
essentially make the game easier.

Balance: many games build their progression curve under the assumption that
your stats are improving at a rate that can only be achieved by buying boxes,
so the game may be fun but new content frustratingly out of reach unless you
pay up.

And in both cases, if you decide to pay up...you probably don't get what you
need because of the random and unbalanced design. So you pay again. And again.
It is designed to hammer dopamine triggers, so you get just enough of happy
payoffs to not stop, but not enough of a payoff to stop either.

Some are fine with the model but object to it hitting children who may not be
able to recognize the cost/benefit balance.

Me? I'm glad to see it discouraged as gambling because it is just not fun for
the base game. Skill or even just time invested in playing is replaced not
only by money, but an unknown amount of money. This distorts game options -
think of how many mobile games are time gated constantly with the option to
buy stuff (gems, coins, etc) that will let you skip the waiting. Absent the
profit, who would make a game where you can play for a few minutes and then
have to wait hours to play again? But we fall for it. Or if we don't, we just
don't get to play at all.

That's my beef with the "no one makes you play" argument. If i don't play, I'm
the one that loses out. If the abuse human weaknesses and make bank (and they
do! Unbelievably so), there are no equivalent competing products.

But short story long, that's what loot boxes are and why people object. They
aren't a new concept, but they are so successful and profitable that each wave
is more extreme.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Thank you

------
Noos
Now the issue is whether or not many F2P titles can find some form of
monetization that satisfies the increasing regulation, or if they will just
shutter the Eu market entirely. Apparently Jagex is shuttering the EU
runescape servers because of the GDPR, but this is going to make it even more
difficult for surviving games to monetize.

I have the feeling europeans are going to wake up one day and find the end
result of all this legislation is to make a market very unfriendly to exist
in.

------
Shivetya
Now I am curious if a method used by Wargaming Inc will get a pass and be
adopted elsewhere. Their "boxes" always return a reward of equal or higher
value than what the box cost. The key is that the publisher defines the value.

So in WGs case what dollar amount the assign to a reward may not be what
players perceive as correct. However they were not one of the companies
investigated.

------
delecti
Threads on these kinds of posts (both here and on other websites) always
result in large number of "but what about <other thing>, why isn't that
gambling too?" It always just seems like an attempt at a gotcha and not a
genuine point of discussion.

------
mherrmann
"A loot box is a consumable virtual item which can be redeemed to receive a
randomised selection of further virtual items."

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box)

------
tzakrajs
I think the biggest issue here isn't the money spent on loot boxes but how
variable rewards are addicting and can change children's minds about how they
percieve value in the world more generally.

------
jrq
Are toys in cereal boxes gambling? Are fortune cookies gambling? Are mystery
flavor candy gambling?

I find this a mind boggling decision

Disclaimer: I don't know jack shit about Belgian legislature history

~~~
GyYZTfWBfQw
It is unfortunate that you have been down-voted. It seems that thinking is a
luxury these days. Prohibition supposedly works even though a pile of
empirical evidence suggests otherwise, and the Government supposedly has good
intentions. All they have to do is claim it's (whatever the heck they want)
for the safety of you, your kids, and vulnerable people, and they can do
virtually anything. They are doing just exactly that. It's OK though, in this
case they give you the illusion of safety at the cost of other people without
said other people even realizing it, and you can shift the blame: you no
longer have to admit to yourself that you are a horrible parent and keep
continuing the terrible parenting.

I wonder if the same people who have down-voted you and I also spoke out
against Facebook and its anti-privacy issues.

EDIT: my friend just bought a bag of chips assuming it will taste good but it
really doesn't. I guess if he's not allowed to taste it before buying, then
it's gambling! Did you know that eating chips could contribute to numerous
health and financial issues? Ban chips effective immediately! Think about the
children!

:)

~~~
def_true_false
> Did you know that eating chips could contribute to numerous health and
> financial issues? Ban chips effective immediately!

Not sure about wherever you are from, but in Europe there is an expectation
that food you can buy in stores is reasonably safe (milk is pasteurized, etc).
It wouldn't be much of a stretch to regulate unhealthy ingredients. In fact,
they do regulate stuff like this, it just takes time, see trans-fats.

~~~
GyYZTfWBfQw
Not the point. The point is that it's not banned merely because it _could
contribute_ to health and financial issues. According to many people here, it
should. I'm merely mocking their idiocy to prove a point, hence why my karma
went from 20 to 4 within hours.

I'll let you in on a little secret: regulations and expectations don't always
reflect reality, and in many cases you'd be surprised what's in your food and
how your food has been handled. Ignorance is bliss, and thinking that
regulations and expectations have significant effects are naive to say the
least. Let me ask you, and any further down-voter, do you live under a rock?

Albeit it's about pollution, it's still worth reading:
[https://mises.org/library/libertarian-manifesto-
pollution](https://mises.org/library/libertarian-manifesto-pollution)

Regulate the amount of calories people can consume to prevent or treat
obesity! Enforce it! Don't ever stop!

------
amingilani
What are loot boxes?

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Those things in (computer) games which, when opened, offer up a random item or
items.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Random? Are you sure, presumably the algorithm for choosing the item can be
anything the dev wants - for example hold back rare items for people more
willing to spend to get them. They want to reward you just enough, no more, so
as to get the maximum money out of you.

Even if they say it's random and "X chance" who's auditing the code to check.

~~~
astura
Which kinda is the point, gambling is highly regulated (and highly taxed). The
code is required to be audited by state gambling authorities and meet a
certain criteria.

Basically, the argument is they are running a gambling operation without
meeting the gambling regulations.

------
petre
Maybe next Belgian legislators will declare the stock market gambling and
therefore illegal.

------
Sevii
Loot boxes are a great way to get teenagers to gamble away all of their money.

------
hokus
Great stuff, let them get back to game mechanics.

------
nukeop
Why not simply regulate it like gambling, instead of outright banning?

Are cosmetic item lootboxes affected too, and if so, why, if they're
completely optional and offer no advantage? Are "lootboxes" that can be
purchased with in-game resources affected as well, even when the game offers
no option to purchase them for real money?

~~~
dingo_bat
I guess gambling is illegal in Belgium.

~~~
anvandare
It's illegal, but legal if licensed (quantum physics has nothing on legal
systems) or on a temporary basis and small scale (town fairs, hobby club
raffles, etc.). The main issue is that the games allow (and target) minors to
play, which is never allowed, and that they do not provide any measures to
protect players against themselves (such as maximum gambling limits).

