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Epic Games, the creator of global hit video game Fortnite, announced last week that players would be able to see what is in loot boxes before they buy them. This follows growing criticism that loot boxes 鈥� virtual in-game purchases that contain random virtual prizes 鈥� amount to gambling. Are the criticisms right?
Psychologists agree that loot boxes share the structural features of gambling: real money can be exchanged for a reward that is apparently determined by chance. Loot boxes also produce the same results as gambling: repetitive behaviour which can be very difficult to modify. This is in part why they are so extraordinarily lucrative and remain an essential tool for game developers looking to make a profit.
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Critics of intervention argue that regulation in this case would be a slippery slope 鈥� if loot boxes are gambling, what about football stickers, which also come in packs containing a random assortment of players. But football stickers aren鈥檛 constantly available in a child鈥檚 bedroom, or听promoted as an integral part of a game in which possession of a picture of Ronaldo determines your progress and status among bitter rivals.
The UK鈥檚 Gambling Commission, which oversees this area, argues that loot boxes aren鈥檛 within its remit because the virtual items won, like an armoured unicorn or the voice of Darth Vader, don鈥檛 amount to a prize of 鈥溾��. As such, developers like Epic Games have been left to self-regulate.
Time听to act
This attitude rests on an outdated understanding of value, and obsolete distinctions between real and virtual. The regulator doesn鈥檛 appear to understand that virtual things can have real value. Gamers, on the other hand, immediately recognise loot boxes as gambling, and some have berated designers for making games impossible to play without them and encouraging young people to pay repetitively for unpredictable returns.
Belgium, Holland and the Isle of Man have acknowledged that loot boxes are subject to gambling law. But the UK regulator hesitates. It is stymied by limited research, much of it funded by a voluntary levy from听the industry itself, and has failed to keep pace with new iterations of gambling within video games.
If regulators in the UK, and in many other places, want to protect young people from this, they should advise governments to declare that loot boxes are a game of chance. To continue to express concern for young people, while apparently choosing not to make use of the powers available to them, is to gamble on the makers of video games doing the job for them. The creator of Fortnite is acting, but others may not.
Rebecca Cassidy is a professor of anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London
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