Officials claim Loot Boxes Shoulds Fall under the Gambling category

Conversations around Loot Boxes and whether or not they should qualify as gambling are coming up more often in the gaming community. According to the Business Insider, In the future, there might be more open conversations about changing the status of loot boxes and possibly introducing separate regulations for the said feature. The ongoing debate centers around the idea that loot boxes encourage kids to gamble from a very young age. In some countries where the gambling regulations are under tight control like the UK, The House of Lord’s representative demanded that the classification of loot boxes be changed in video games and names as gambling. This could change a lot for the gaming community and it could put more restraining and challenges between the players and the game.

Loot boxes are a feature that some games offer, where the player can play with either real money or with the in-game currency for a chance to win a randomized in-game item. There is an option to trade these items with fellow gamers or exchange them with other players for real money. The loot boxes have been criticized for creating an uneven playing field for the players and giving those with more financial capabilities an upper hand, not the Loot boxes seem to be the target of anti-gamblers, labeling as gambling and requesting that the same rules Appl to loot boxes as regular casino games.

Everyone agrees that more research needs to be done before taking the step to rename this feature as a gambling tool and even more time and effort needs to go into whether or not it is possible or even smart to try and regulate a singular game feature, the effects of which haven’t even been properly studied yet. While there are a lot of people rooting for loot boxes to get labeled as gambling tool there are also a lot of industry experts criticizing the radicalized approach that thas no science or data backing it up just yet.

The main document that those who are against loot boxes rely on is the report that the House of Lord published just recently about the hard of gambling, which found that there are around 55,000 problem gamblers aged between 11 and 15 in the UK alone. While the number and their ages do sound disturbing the report might not be all that trustworthy or even credible enough to change the entire gaming systems and add a whole new type of gambling to the list of existing ones.

The report called for the immediate reclassification of loot boxes in video games and demanded they rebrand them to fall under the 2005 Gambling Act that currently regulates the UK’s gambling scene, which has also been under fire by the House of Lords.

While loot boxes might not be the gateway feature to gambling, a lot of gamers are against lootboxes in the first place since  most of them believe that gaming should not be expensive nor should its quality be tied to how much a gamer is willing to spend on a special tool or whatever perk one might get from the loot box