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Belgium banned loot boxes in video games in 2018. This is how it affected gaming in the country. The debate over gambling content in video games intensified in the UK this week, as a study released Wednesday argued that the practice goes far beyond loot boxes and into other gaming activities.

In video games, loot boxes contain extra content that a player must pay actual money for. They’re common in popular games such as FIFA and Fortnite. In the latest FIFA game, for example, a mode. This might have been the video game ancestor of the modern loot box, and these days loot boxes are a key part of an exploding video game business. Video games blew past global box office sales in. Retro Video Games Delivered to your Door Every Month! Retro Game Treasure is a monthly subscription service. Every month you get a selection of games for the retro consoles you select with ONLY the types of games you like! A treasure chest contains 3-5 Retro Games inside for you to keep!

Is this what EA Sports means by “It’s in the game”?

The maker of the Madden NFL and FIFA soccer video game franchises is among those on a growing list of companies facing class-action lawsuits over their use and disclosures of “loot boxes,” which are randomized virtual items that players often purchase using real money. Specifically, a lawsuit against EA Sports filed in California alleges that the company fails to disclose that the Ultimate Team Packs in video games such as Madden and FIFA are loot boxes and that purchasing the packs is a form of gambling in violation of the state’s gambling laws.

EA’s Ultimate Team Packs are Loot Boxes. Buying the Packs are nothing more than a gambling bet. Purchased using real money, the Ultimate Team Packs are simply wagers on completely randomized chances within the game to win valuable professional players and other items for the EA gamer’s virtual sports team.

While packs can also be obtained through gameplay without having to spend any money, going that route to score valuable items like star players can take a long time, according to the lawsuit.

Thus, it becomes increasingly attractive to spend money to purchase Ultimate Team Packs instead of “earning” them through gameplay.

Loot Boxes In Video Games

However, the packs are not a sure bet.

The EA Sports lawsuit alleges that the highest rated players are the least likely to be included in a pack, while players that “tend to be common or undesirable to the gamer” are the most prevalent. The lawsuit provides a screenshot of “pack probability” for four different tiers of FIFA players rated on a scale of 0 to 100. According to this breakdown (which consumers only see if they click “more info” in the top right corner of the screen, the lawsuit says), the probability that a pack contains a FIFA player with an 80+ rating is less than 3 percent.

Yet consumers — who are spending more time playing video games during the pandemic — pay upwards of hundreds of dollars for the packs. The named plaintiff in the EA Sports case claims he spent “in excess of $600 on in-game loot boxes in exchange for the random-chance possibility of winning valuable players.”

EA Sports did not respond to a TINA.org request for comment.

Monetizing gamers

Loot boxes bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for top titles like EA Sports’ Madden and FIFA, as well as Epic Games’ Fortnite, another video game caught up in loot box-related class-action litigation. (Other titles under scrutiny include Supercell’s Clash Royale and Brawl Stars and Nintendo’s Mario Kart Tour.) But for players who may find themselves in endless gameplay loops or at a competitive disadvantage, the EA Sports lawsuit calls buying loot boxes to advance in a game or to get on a level playing field “demand through inconvenience.”

What Is Loot Boxes In Video Games

EA and other developers intentionally design games this way to increase the gamers’ frustration with the game’s free or earned aspects and profit off the ensuing “demand through inconvenience.”

Regulators have taken notice.

In August, the FTC released a report on a 2019 workshop on loot boxes. The report highlights various consumer protection issues, including, among other things, the use of techniques to mask costs and to manipulate and confuse players and the impact loot boxes may have on children, including those with access to mom and dad’s credit card.

A new label

Following the workshop, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRP), which age-rates games according to language, violence and other criteria, announced a new video game rating element to disclose when a game includes in-app purchases that are “random,” such as loot boxes.

“By including more specificity about the randomized nature of the in-game purchases, consumers can make more informed decisions when purchasing or downloading a game, instead of finding out after the fact,” the ESRP said in an April 2020 blog on its website.

However, this new label — In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items) — has yet to make it to the covers of video games that use loot boxes or to places like the Apple App Store where the games are sold, according to the lawsuits.

Find more of our coverage on video games here.

Ban Loot Boxes In Video Games

Video game companies that use loot boxes in their games have been put under a lot of fire by various governments throughout the world for a very, very, serious problem.

Namely, these companies use loot boxes, loot crates, and other means to effectively cause addiction to which the player would spend more money in the game.

Not only do most of these games cost $60 each, but they also employ other means to make the player give them more money. Companies such as EA, Activision, and Blizzard, in particular, for games such as FIFA, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Call of Duty, and Overwatch have made a fortune off selling loot boxes on top of their overly priced video games.

So, this is a practice that many Triple-A video game companies do. But many people aren’t familiar with the dangers of such practice. And to top it off, these companies are changing the industry we love.

So, with all that said, let’s dive deeper into it.

Loot Boxes Are Ruining Video Games

What Are Loot Boxes?

Whether you have any understanding of the subject or none at all, chances are you’ve opened a loot box (or anything of the kind) in one of the games you’re playing.

If this is the case, do know that you’re engaging in gambling. You might think that you’re doing it to get some cool skins for your character models, weapons, etc, but what you’re actually doing is giving in to your addiction.

The problem with loot boxes is that they aren’t free, and most can cost anything from a dollar to whatever the company in question deems.

But what is the thing that classifies them as gambling? Well, it’s all down the fact that every loot box gives you a chance to get a specific rarity of the item. In most cases, you will get an item that won’t be a return on your investment, and in most cases cost nothing in comparison.

The “fun” part is when you do actually get an item that is worth more than what you’re paying for the loot box. And this is the single aspect as to why these transactions can be categorized as loot boxes.

So, to summarize, loot boxes are, in most cases, simple chests found in-game. These chests can eighter come free, which you would need to buy a key to open, or can cost X amount of dollars. Furthermore, loot boxes can also be bought with in-game currencies, which you would need to grind to obtain.

As we mentioned earlier, these boxes can contain anything from skins for weapons, characters, gadgets, etc, to boosters, and various items. And of course, the “fun” part of them being that you actually have no idea what you’ll get until you open it.

If we’d have to somehow explain these to you using real-life examples, they would essentially resemble baseball cards and kinder eggs, in a sense that you have no idea what you’re getting when buying them.

Because of that, many governments are calling this practice gambling, and are passing laws to restrict them. FHERehab has written an excellent article on the subject of Gambling in video games, and it thoroughly explains how loot boxes can cause an addiction.

History of Loot Boxes

Now that we’ve explained what they are, let’s dwell deeper into the history.

Loot boxes were first introduced by Chinese video game company Zhengtu Network for ZT Online. The developers of the game were sick of players pirating their game and playing for free, so they decided to make it free and introduce a reward, loot box, system that ensures they make a revenue of in-game purchases.

The company enjoyed massive success so other Chinese video game companies quickly followed on the trend.

In the Western world, the first time loot boxes were introduced to us was with Team Fortress 2. For those that don’t know, Team Fortress 2 is created by Valve, the company behind Half-Life, Dota 2, and CS:GO. Valve employs a loot-box system in three of those games, excluding Half-Life.

However, Valve doesn’t charge a penny for their games, except for the recent changes to CS:GO; but the reasons for it were mainly down to hackers, and you can even still play the game for free.

The trend than quickly spread with other companies such as Blizzard, EA, Activision, and many others, but the catch here is that their games also cost a fortune, unlike Valves’.

So now, let’s touch on the gambling aspect of loot boxes.

Loot Boxes ARE Gambling

Everyone that has opened one knows how thrilling it can be to get a good item. However, to get a knife in CS:GO, Messi and Ronaldo in FIFA, or any other legendary item in other games, you would essentially need to open a ton of them.

Loot Boxes Gambling

So the gambling and addiction part actually stems from this. You’ve probably seen dozens of videos where a notable player in a game that has a loot-box system would open hundreds of crates and live stream the whole thing.

Loot Box Statistics

In most cases, the player would not get a return on their investment, until he gets the thing he wants.

But unlike gambling, video game publishers find loot boxes more appealing because of a single reason. Unlike gambling, with loot boxes, the house never wins.

Sure, you might get a crappy 4 cent item from a $2 loot box, but it’s still something in their eyes.

And let’s get back to Valve for a second. Unlike other games, Valve also is the creator of Steam. Steam is the largest video game marketplace platform where you can buy games. But Steam also has a community marketplace, where the main listings are items from Team Fortress, Dota 2 and CS:GO.

This is important to note because you can sell all of your items there. So if you open a CS:GO crate and receive a knife, you can essentially get a return on your investment by selling it.

The real gambling and addiction problem with loot boxes mostly comes in the form of a lack of government regulations, where video game companies make billions of dollars each year through an unregulated system of in-game microtransactions in some games like OSRS, it takes months to obtain the loot boxes. It could even take years if you really wanted to acquire boxes as many as you can. If you are an OSRS player, you know it’s worth the long hour of grinding. Let me know your thought and visit Only4rs.com