Loot boxes under investigation in The netherlands and Belgium

Non Entropia Related Off topic
1

https://www.nu.nl/games/5009924/nederlandse-kansspelautoriteit-onderzoekt-lootboxen-in-games.html

You gotta use google translate since it is written in Dutch and I am too lazy to translate :wise:

Short version;
In the Netherlands companies need a license to offer gambling. Now they are investigating if loot boxes which in some games are paid for with real cash are gambling because you never know what you are getting. If they conclude it is gambling all those games will be forbidden.

2

I doubt anyone believe someone (that maters) will say it is gambling if we donā€™t count angry youtubers :laugh:

3

Good thing boxes in EU = 1:1 paid for in-game credits. Anything of ā€˜valueā€™ that you ā€˜gambleā€™ to obtain is of player faced value and not of true value. I.E. we donā€™t pay $1 for the chance to open $10 in-game credits or cash even, we always just get $1

1 Like
4

Very smart of MA to have the system made like this, no one can ever claim that it is gambling since you get the same value you are paying for, and about looted boxes that people pay markup for, that is not MAs fault, people choose to pay markup.

5

Ah ye thats a good point! Didnt think about it. I just read the article and thought wtf :smiley:

6

Gacha games are extremely bad for their value. Terra battle 2 is a prime example. Im not surprised more countries are looking at this stuff.

7

I wonder like in a game such as Overwatch whether this has any meaning whatsoever. You can earn the lootboxes through ingame activity, and the items are purely cosmetic. If you were to ban lootboxes, you would need to band things like ā€œseason passā€ which supply the same service.

8

the only implication i can see for MA is that universal ammo might have to be tt-able

9

ā€œdit zou betekenen dat de verkoop van games met lootboxen in potentie verboden kan worden, totdat een nieuwe wet voor online kansspelen in werking treedt.ā€

translated:
ā€œThis would mean that the sales of games with lootboxes can potentially be forbidden until there is a new law for online gambling in effectā€

So games can no longer be sold.
But what about free to play games like entropia which arent bought? :scratch2:

10

I wonder if the non-ttā€™able items would be an issue here.

11

How many of those are left? I think everything is smashable now from boxes.

12

You all obviously cant see what is under investigation here, by several countries now.
Its not about EU its about other games, where you can buy ingame currency aswell as lootboxes.

Now there is some lootboxes in other games, where you could get much more valuable items (counted ingame currency) than what you would have gotten by buying ingame currency for the same amount of money instead boxes.

Even worse it is when you can buy lootboxes that drop way less ingame value than just buying ingame currency for the same amount of money.

MA is on a very save side here.
You buy boxes for 10$ you get same ingame value than buying PED for 10$. No gambling here.

In other games it is completely different. There you buy lootboxes and may get much less or much more than just buying the ingame currency, and then this is called gambling. Not even needed to be an RCE. If you cant withdraw anything from that games it is still gambling, if designed the way mentioned above.
Very good that some countries start to look into that issue.