With the rhetoric and discussion around video game lockboxes at a fever pitch, it has drawn the attention of at least one US congressperson who has issued a somewhat dire warning to the games industry: Police yourself or get ready for us to do it for you.
Hawaii State Representative Sean Quinlan is the latest in a string of politicians and governments taking the games industry to task over the design and mechanics of pay-for-loot lockboxes. He said that while he doesn’t want to see the government step in to regulate, he also doesn’t believe that game publishers are going to get their act together on this.
“The ideal solution would be for the game industry to stop having gambling or gambling-like mechanics in games that are marketed to kids,” Quinlan said. “I know [developers and publishers] have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, but I think they have a responsibility to customers too. So the ESRB could say that if a game has loot crates, it gets a 21-plus rating. I wouldn’t want it to be a federal law. I think that could be a very slippery slope.”
Self-regulation could come from a new “crisis coalition” of industry veterans, although countries like Australia, France, and Belgium are turning up the heat on such practices.
