gambling
English lawmakers may classify lockboxes as straight-up gambling
Video game studios that feature lockboxes in their titles are sitting very uncomfortably this week as England decides whether or not to make their...
PEGI adds lockbox warnings to rating labels
That sure didn't take long. Earlier this week, we found out that the ESRB would be adding a specific content warning to games in...
ESRB starts putting warnings about lockboxes on its game ratings
You have to imagine that a lot of video game marketers have developed facial twitches today upon the news that they will no longer...
Player who claims a mobile RPG’s gacha mechanics were falsely advertised loses court case
Fair game monetization and gamer spending are topics that are on the minds of many right now, and one of the more slippery monetization...
Lootbox regulation recommended by Australian parliamentary committee
While words and recommendations can certainly be considered equal to vapor, the fact that Australia's parliament appears poised to make moves against lockbox monetization...
Lawful Neutral: Examining the infamous MMO lockbox, 2020 edition
I have a soft spot for paranormal horror. I love movies about demons, ghosts, hauntings, possessions. There's one particular movie from the early aughts...
UK’s Royal Society for Public Health issues report on lootboxes and their effect on gambling perception
There's a new log on the continually burning fire regarding gaming lootboxes, their association with gambling, and their effect on young people. A new...
New French lawsuits accuse EA’s FIFA franchise of promoting illegal gambling
None of the FIFA titles is a pure MMO, of course, but every MMO player interested in how monetization across the industry is being...
UK NHS director calls out lootboxes as ‘under the radar’ gambling
As much as the developers who make lockboxes would probably like for the random packs of items to start slipping back under the radar,...
EVE Online’s new HyperNet Relay reintroduces gambling to New Eden
Remember way back in 2016, when CCP Games outlawed gambling in EVE Online's universe after turning a blind eye for over a decade? In...
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is getting rid of locked lockboxes altogether
The process of getting crates in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is not necessarily all that rewarding. You pay your hard-earned BP to get a crate, and it...
CS:GO stops letting players sell container keys due to their use in money laundering
The otherwise innocuous activity of selling keys to open containers in CS:GO has apparently been used for far more nefarious purposes. According to a...
UK’s children’s commissioner calls for tighter legislation on lootboxes
A report from UK children's commissioner Anne Longfield is calling for stricter laws on lootboxes and to amend current gambling laws to include lootboxes,...
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare eschews lockbox monetization for a battle pass
Arguably one of the bigger online multiplayer shooters coming down the pike is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, just by mere dint of its...
Predictably, the ESA rebuffs UK call to ban lockboxes, citing nebulous transparent lockbox plan
Yesterday, we covered the UK government’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee panel report on addictive technologies: Readers will recall that the lengthy...
UK parliament committee calls for ban on selling lockboxes to kids, deems games industry ‘wilfully obtuse’
As gamers will recall, the UK government's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee panel has been investigating addictive technologies for the better part...
EA’s infamous ‘sense of pride and accomplishment’ post now holds a Guinness record – for Reddit downvotes
By now, we're all familiar with the 2017 comment by EA about how lootboxes provide "a sense of pride and accomplishment." The remark was...
Gaming psychologist Jamie Madigan explains what ‘surprise mechanics’ actually are
We're all familiar with the "surprise mechanics" incident, the absurdist argument in defense of lootboxes from EA's VP of legal and government affairs Kerry...
Leaderboard: Does the ESA’s new transparent lockbox policy go far enough?
Last week, just as the FTC's video games monetization abuse investigation got underway, the ESA announced that many of the major and minor games...
The ESA says a crapton of game companies are finally embracing lockbox transparency
Under pressure from no less than the US Senate, the FTC held the first of its planned video game monetization workshops today, and while...
