Culture Loot Box Microtransactions in Video Games Made Illegal in Belgium - News guaranteed not to make you punch a wall

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Now Belgium declares loot boxes gambling and therefore illegal
Hazard warning.

By Wesley Yin-Poole. 25/04/2018

Hot on the heels of the Netherlands declaring loot boxes are gambling and therefore illegal, Belgium has had its say.

The Belgian Gaming Commission looked at Star Wars Battlefront 2, FIFA 18, Overwatch and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and found only Star Wars was not in violation of the country's gambling legislation - and that's only because EA stripped out the game's loot boxes after its launch debacle.

It determined FIFA 18, Overwatch and CS:GO's loot boxes are a game of chance and so are subject to Belgian gambling law. Battlefront 2, at the time the investigation was conducted, did not have loot boxes, so escapes unscathed.

A statement from Minister of Justice Koen Geens said FIFA 18, Overwatch and CS:GO were therefore illegal and demanded their loot boxes removed. If they're not, the publishers "risk a prison sentence of up to five years and a fine of up to 800,000 euros". When minors are involved, those punishments can be doubled, Greens added.

Belgium expressed a particular concern about the impact loot boxes have on young people. "It is often children who come into contact with such systems and we cannot allow that," Geens warned.

In fact, Geens requested the Belgian Gaming Commission investigated video game loot boxes after the Star Wars blow up. "Given the importance of the protection of minors and vulnerable players, this was very worrying," he said.

So, what happens next? Geens wants a dialogue with video game publishers and developers to work out who's responsible for the removal of the loot boxes. Whatever the outcome of those talks, it's clear Geens means business.

"We have already taken numerous measures to protect both minors and adults against the influence of, among other things, gambling advertising," he said.

"That is why we must also ensure that children and adults are not confronted with games of chance when they are looking for fun in a video game."

This is yet another dramatic turn for the video game loot box issue, and a sign that in Europe at least, publishers may be forced to change the way their games work. Like with the Dutch situation, it'll be interesting to see whether publishers play ball with Belgium. But unlike the Dutch situation, Belgium has yet to impose a deadline by which publishers much change their games.

Meanwhile, the UK's Gambling Commission still doesn't think loot boxes are gambling or illegal in any way.

Here you go, EU nations are taking a stand against predatory microtransactions. With any luck, more nations will adopt this measure and we'll all be free from this nonsense.

 

[DragoonSierra]

Imagine it this way: Videogames are entertainment/artistic in nature, a class of media related to but distinct from Tv shows, movies, etc. How ridiculous would it be for theaters to charge you by the minute to watch a movie? Or letting people pay half price for a movie ticket to watch only one half of the screen? The point is that yeah, you could do that, but then you wouldn't get the full package, and you wouldn't have standing to review it objectively and say if it was a good or bad product.

In addition, paying real money for lootboxes that could have random stuff in them is basically gambling, except you have no way to calculate/know the odds, and you're getting something that is not even redeemable for cash.

But havent other forms of entertainment done this before? I mean Pokemon and Magic have been doing this with card games since the 90s. You get a starter set for X number of dollars then you get booster packs with random cards in it. I mean sure I dont like it as much as the next person. If you tie it to gameplay thats bad but for skins and such i think its fine.

 

[LocalFireDept]

But havent other forms of entertainment done this before? I mean Pokemon and Magic have been doing this with card games since the 90s. You get a starter set for X number of dollars then you get booster packs with random cards in it. I mean sure I dont like it as much as the next person. If you tie it to gameplay thats bad but for skins and such i think its fine.

A big difference with those is each pack is organized the same. Magic boosters had a distribution of 11 commons, 3 uncommons, and 1 rare. Even if you got a crap rare at least you knew you were getting one. Then they added mythic rare which replaced one rare in about every 8 packs. Then they added premium chase cards that are even more BS and I think outside of people trying to make money off pulling those they were poorly received because they horribly skewed the power of Limited booster draft events.

It is a good comparison to draw, but at least with card game boosters you knew you'd get a rare, even if it was a crap one. The negative pushback to further cash grabs around luck wasn't recieved well either. I think the differentiation isn't based on whether or not it is random, but how random it really is and how much you feel like you're getting ripped off or not. I agree that it effecting gameplay is also a big factor.

Edit: to add to this, I've looked at lootbox data for an MMO I play. Some whales (people who dump loads of money into the game) will actually buy a ton of lootboxes and then document the distribution of the contents for reference since they were gonna blow the money anyway. Based on sample sizes of hundreds, the most highly desired items may not show up even once in many cases. Without knowing the true odds of getting them they are incredibly risky and not truly evenly weighted for every poasible result. That's why I feel like it's a bit shady, but as was said earlier, when all else fails may the buyer beware.

 

[The Great Chandler]

I hear that outside of Belgium, having no microtransactions is a selling point. Am I right guys?

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

Word and no harm no foul.

From any issue I've seen, it's also not really gambling as I don't know of (and maybe someone can share) one where you get nada. They have shitty pulls that are hugely worthless and wasteful but in the end of the day it's a digital good exchanged for cash even if not the good you are hoping for. 3 real world dollars might be an awful deal for 1 game gold for example, but people really want that chance to hit the space ship upgrade or what have you.

If i remember right, it is still gambling if you win every time due to the varying worth of the prize. That said that is very shaky and with a lot of this lootbox stuff, you can argue it all has a value of 0 if there's no way to just buy the stuff outright.

 

[mindlessobserver]

People are wIlling to feed the beast let them.

I'm all for microtransactions being A it's free market B I'm a not a gamer. If people had self control the market would adapt but it's the consumers fault and they cried hard enough to cause laws to be passed.

Wait until TV Shows lock content behind a roulette wheel. Put .99 cents in good sir, spin the wheel! My goodness, you unlocked 2 minutes of viewing! Spin again, spin again! Whoa, rare drop! You can watch a full episode Game of Thrones uninterrupted! Spin Again, Spin Again! Whoops, bad luck, you just lost 3 minutes of viewing. But that's okay. Just put another .99 cents in. Its optional!

 

[Bassomatic]

If i remember right, it is still gambling if you win every time due to the varying worth of the prize. That said that is very shaky and with a lot of this lootbox stuff, you can argue it all has a value of 0 if there's no way to just buy the stuff outright.

I guess that's the big legal grey area and that will differ country to country if any prize makes it count as such. It'll be interesting to see what changes happen in the market due to this but I do still feel greatly it's the consumers choice, right and in ways fault.

 

[Florence]

But havent other forms of entertainment done this before? I mean Pokemon and Magic have been doing this with card games since the 90s. You get a starter set for X number of dollars then you get booster packs with random cards in it. I mean sure I dont like it as much as the next person. If you tie it to gameplay thats bad but for skins and such i think its fine.

The difference is that you can’t start playing a TCG unless you pay for the cards, and everyone has to buy cards with the same odds if they want to progress, so it kinda evens out. If it worked along microtransaction lines, your only choices would be a bad free deck, a great deck that you would pay an obscene amount of money for, and random card sleeves with special designs that you also have to pay for.

 

[Robotron]

Hopefully Lootboxes quickly die out as quickly as they came in.

 

[Urban Superstition]

The thing about lootboxes that are fair is that the only thing you get out of them is shitty cosmetics that you can get anyway from just playing the game a lot. This is just another sign of the EU being a bunch of cucks as usual.

You don't get a hidden damage or speed boost just because your character is a different color. You can enjoy your game without spending another cent just by not buying lootboxes that don't affect gameplay, so the whining and groaning of "I ALREADY PAYED FOR MY GAME" are pure autism.

 

[DrunkJoe]

Publishers were stripping out conent adding it to a bullshit randomized lotto system designed to feed the feels of addictive people. They were preying on their whales to bring in stupid amounts of money. Face it some people lack self control and loot boxes were designed with the help of pyscologists to abuse these people. The industry refused to regulate it's self and now Governments are involved.

 

[Coster]

The thing about lootboxes that are fair is that the only thing you get out of them is shitty cosmetics that you can get anyway from just playing the game a lot. This is just another sign of the EU being a bunch of cucks as usual.

You don't get a hidden damage or speed boost just because your character is a different color. You can enjoy your game without spending another cent just by not buying lootboxes that don't affect gameplay.

Games where loot boxes are cosmetics-only are becoming the minority. The biggest reason why this aggressive pushback has finally kicked off was because Battlefront II showcased the worst environment imaginable for loot boxes, where the game was practically designed around making the grind unbearable to encourage you to pay more money into it for outright gameplay advantages.

TF2 has kind of been doing this for years, but had way more of a balancing act around it with a player trading economy that made it so buying keys for crates was completely optional, whether it was gameplay-affecting items or cosmetics. If more games had ways to earn loot boxes or the items in them that weren't just buying them (more specifically, buying the random chance to earn them) in addition to getting them through gameplay then I'm positive this would be way less of an issue.

For another example of this done right, Injustice 2 actually bundles both cosmetics and gameplay-affecting items in their random loot boxes. The rate at which you earn them, however, is really high, and they updated the game at one point to give daily missions that gave loot boxes of the two highest tiers. Participating in an online guild easily doubles what you can earn on top of it already being a very giving system. Even when I was farming for one item with a really low droprate, the amount of stuff I was getting was staggering and helped to offset the feel of the grind.

 

[DragoonSierra]

Games where loot boxes are cosmetics-only are becoming the minority. The biggest reason why this aggressive pushback has finally kicked off was because Battlefront II showcased the worst environment imaginable for loot boxes, where the game was practically designed around making the grind unbearable to encourage you to pay more money into it for outright gameplay advantages.

TF2 has kind of been doing this for years, but had way more of a balancing act around it with a player trading economy that made it so buying keys for crates was completely optional, whether it was gameplay-affecting items or cosmetics. If more games had ways to earn loot boxes or the items in them that weren't just buying them (more specifically, buying the random chance to earn them) in addition to getting them through gameplay then I'm positive this would be way less of an issue.

For another example of this done right, Injustice 2 actually bundles both cosmetics and gameplay-affecting items in their random loot boxes. The rate at which you earn them, however, is really high, and they updated the game at one point to give daily missions that gave loot boxes of the two highest tiers. Participating in an online guild easily doubles what you can earn on top of it already being a very giving system. Even when I was farming for one item with a really low droprate, the amount of stuff I was getting was staggering and helped to offset the feel of the grind.

I disagree. That Injustice 2 grind is atrocious especially when you want something for 1 character. In a fighting game where often people pick a character and stick with it not getting gear for that certain character can be a chore.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

They're gonna find ways to bypass it, Blizzard already did that in Asia. "We can't sell purely crates? Throw in 5 gold, that'll do."