The pushback against lockboxes in gaming in the UK continues in spite of the matter not exactly making non-stop headlines. A new study from the Gambling Health Alliance (GHA), an organization established by the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), has found that a large number of young gamers are running into fiscal trouble due to lootbox spending.
According to the study, which has been made available for download, 31% of gamers say they are unaware of how much they’ve spent on lootboxes. In addition, one in ten players borrowed money they couldn’t repay to spend on lootboxes, 11% used their parents’ debit or credit card to buy lootboxes, and almost one in six or 15% took money from their parents without permission. There are even three edge cases where a child’s lootbox spending habits caused families to re-mortgage their homes to cover the costs.
Lootbox mechanics are having negative effects on the experience of games as well. According to the study, players feel that games with lockboxes are either pay-to-win, that lockboxes have unfairly low odds of getting valuable items, and that the features around lootboxes are “especially addictive.”
This new study is part of the RSPH’s #LidOnLoots anti-lockbox campaign, which is calling for the UK government to class them as gambling and to be regulated accordingly. The RSPH, readers will recall, has made other efforts for this action such as releasing a similar report on how lootboxes affect young people.
