Capping off the Great Star Wars Battlefront II Fiasco of November, Belgium’s Gambling Commission and the Dutch Gaming Authority both began investigating lootboxes/lockboxes to determine whether they constitute gambling and necessitate appropriate regulation. Now, the former has issued its ruling, and unlike the gaming-industry bodies ESRB and PEGI, it didn’t add to the BS smokescreen.
Indeed, the Belgian Kanspel Committee has indeed ruled that the practice is a serious problem. “The mixing of money and addiction is gambling,” it declares. Belgian Minister of Justice Koen Greens told VTM that he aims to have gambling mechanics stricken from games entirely, banned outright, throughout Europe. “But that takes time.”
The US state of Hawaii has joined in the fray too, as state representatives have lambasted EA’s “predatory behavior,” calling the game a “Star Wars-themed online casino, designed to lure kids into spending money.” Is it just one state? Maybe not.
“While we are stepping up to act in Hawaii, we have also been in discussions with our counterparts in a number of other states who are also considering how to address this issue. Change is difficult at the federal level, but states can and are taking action,” Hawaii’s Chris Lee posted to Reddit. “These kinds of lootboxes and microtransactions are explicitly designed to prey upon and exploit human psychology in the same way casino games are so designed. This is especially true for young adults who child psychologists and other experts explain are particularly vulnerable. These exploitive mechanisms and the deceptive marketing promoting them have no place in games being marketed to minors, and perhaps no place in games at all.”
MOP commenter Miol further points out that French Senator Jérôme Durain tweeted out his missive to ARJEL (France’s Regulatory Administration for Online Games, which regulates online gambling in the country) and says he is further communicating with various gaming commissions, including the videogame consumer body and e-sports associations in the region.
Maybe EA should shy away from these types of business models come its next Star Wars game, yeah?
#lootboxes je dépose une question écrite @mounir et écrit à l'@arjel pour trouver le meilleur moyen d'éviter des dérives pic.twitter.com/1p65PW4wjq
— Jérôme Durain (@Jeromedurain) November 16, 2017
