The House of Lords Gambling Committee says video game loot boxes should be regulated under gambling laws

The Game Room
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From: Loot boxes: Lords call for ‘immediate’ gambling regulation

The Lords say they should be classified as “games of chance” - which would bring them under the Gambling Act 2005.

“If a product looks like gambling and feels like gambling, it should be regulated as gambling,” their report says.

And they warn that such a change should not wait.

“The government must act immediately to bring loot boxes within the remit of gambling legislation and regulation,” said a statement accompanying the report.

Personally I think this is great although, with my limited knowledge of how the British government works, I am not sure this is as serious as it may seem. I have long held a notion (I do not know why) that pretty much all the power in the British government lies in the House of Commons.

Still, it’s a start I think. Personally, I despise loot boxes and think they are a scourge to the gaming world. If a country like Great Britain declares loot boxes gambling and should be regulated as such others may follow. Get enough of them and maybe an end can be put to it.

I do find the, “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it must be a duck,” a weird way for a legislative body to describe it but whatever works is fine with me.

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To me, I think the two key criteria are, first, do the players pay real money for them, and second, can the contents be exchanged for real money? For the first, I expect the answer is usually yes, because most of them exist as a way for the game companies to make money off of the games (I know of some exceptions, but they’re unusual circumstances). The second is a bit trickier, though: The game designers might prohibit selling them for real money, and even take steps to make that more difficult, but if they’re tradeable to other players at all, somebody is going to buy and sell them.