Loot box

[26] Another early game with loot box mechanics was Team Fortress 2 in September 2010, when Valve added the ability to earn random "crates" to be opened with purchased keys.

[61] Blizzard claims that it attempts to minimize the effect of pay-to-win in Hearthstone, by implementing a gameplay mode which only allows players to use cards from a "core set" and from expansions released in the prior two years.

[63][64] This may include the use of loot boxes as a means to bypass the need to grind missions repeatedly to get gameplay-changing items that significantly help towards completing a single-player game, which drives players to use real money to purchase these to avoid the time sink.

[86] Conversely, Electronic Arts' Star Wars Battlefront II, developed by EA DICE studio and released in November 2017, received heightened attention in the wake of the October 2017 loot-box criticism.

Principally an online multiplayer shooter, Battlefront II was developed to eliminate the "season pass" approach that the original 2015 game had used, which was found to have split the player base over those that paid for the added content and those that did not.

[95] The reaction and change to the loot box and monetisation scheme caused sales of Battlefront to fall from expectations, and EA's stock lost 8% of its value a week after the game's release (equal to about US$3 billion).

[97] In April 2018, EA's Patrick Söderlund stated that the loot-box controversy over Battlefront impacted the company significantly, which included a reorganisation of executive positions, and that: "For games that come next, for Battlefield or for Anthem, [players have] made it very clear that we can't afford to make similar mistakes.

Thus, players must work to regain a competitive team by re-earning in-game credits or spending more money by buying additional points, with the potential to continue that cycle each year.

[105] In December 2016, China's Ministry of Culture announced legislation which required "online game publishers" to publicly release from May 2017 onwards the "draw probability of all virtual items and services".

[106] When the law came into effect publishers complied, resulting in a variety of statistics being released which quantified the odds of Chinese players receiving different categories of item from each loot box, some of which were as low as 0.1%.

[112] Chung Woo-taik, a Saenuri Party member, had questioned the pratical effect of the self-regulation bill proposed by the industry, arguing that the lack of a proper penalty on loot box systems does not solve the problem and demean consumers' rights.

[121] In October 2021, the Office of the Mufti for Federal Territories in Malaysia published on its website and social media channels finding that the acquisition and ownership of items promoted in PUBG: Battlegrounds lootboxes are not always guaranteed despite enforcing an obligatory price of in-game currency to access them which would have to use real money, thus they qualify as a form of gambling (maisir) forbidden in Islamic jurispudence.

[127] In the final report, the committee urged the Australian government to "undertake a comprehensive review of loot boxes in video games" through a multi-departmental effort to determine what legislative and other actions need to be taken.

[166] On July 11, 2018, Valve re-enabled the ability for players to trade in-game items from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, but restricted customers from the Netherlands and Belgium from opening loot boxes.

[189] In February 2018 Germany's Commission for Youth Media Protection announced research into loot boxes undertaken at the University of Hamburg which concluded that they present features "typical of gambling markets".

[194] Germany's Bundestag passed revisions to the Youth Protection Act in March 2021 that would update the ratings systems for games to mark those with loot boxes or similar mechanics as "cost traps".

[195] Also in February 2018, Ardalan Shekarabi, the Swedish Minister for Public Administration, stated that he was "ready to ask [the] authorities to take a closer look at the phenomenon of loot boxes and see if there is a need to change legislation in order to strengthen consumer protection."

[201] While the report identified this had similarities with gambling, the authors also urged that the European Parliament consider the loot box issue at a consumer protection standpoint since it can create addictive behavior particularly in young persons.

The report included recommendations such as restrictions on design features that encourage the addictive loop, better disclosure from publishers to players on loot box odds and the risks of playing such games, parental controls, and consumer testing with governmental oversight.

However, with more technically literate court judges that may consider "value" more than just a financial value, alongside new perception of how much value in-game items can have resulting from the skin gambling situation, could change how the framework in the United States would classify loot boxes.

[224] Before the disbanding of the Japan Social Game Association (JSGA) in 2015, it issued 2 self-regulatory guidelines for in-game gacha: provide a minimum 1% payout rate and establish a payment ceiling.

[226] UKIE, the video game industry trade organisation for the United Kingdom, asserted its stance that loot boxes do not constitute gambling and are "already covered by and fully compliant with existing relevant UK regulations".

Electronic Arts' CEO Andrew Wilson stated in May 2018 that they will continue to include loot boxes in their games, and "While we forbid the transfer of items of in-the-game currency outside, we're also actively seeking to eliminate that where it's going on in an illegal environment, and we're working with regulators in various jurisdictions to achieve that".

Though neither the hearing nor the letter called for regulation, Brian Crecente of Glixel considered these as pretense to get the ESRB to act on its own before Congress would be forced to take legislative action.

ESRB stated the labeling was primarily meant to help parents watch for games for their children, and because of the brevity of space they have on retail packaging, did not opt to require publishers to identify the specific form of microtransaction.

[248] In the academic literature, King and Delfabbro proposed twenty-four "social responsibility" measures that could be implemented by video game companies to prevent or reduce overspending on loot boxes.

The suits also contend that the FIFA games lack any parental controls to limit spending, which, combined with the pay-to-win nature of Ultimate Team, encourage underage gambling, directly referencing the 2019 decisions from Belgium and the Netherlands.

[252] Another class-action lawsuit was filed against EA in California in August 2020 over their Ultimate Team loot boxes in FIFA and Madden NFL games, with the plaintiff represented by the same legal firm as the June 2020 case against Apple.

[254] This lawsuit was dropped in March 2021 after EA provided technical information and gave the plaintiff access to their engineers to make the assessment that the Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment was not used in any of the Ultimate Team modes.

The lawsuit, filed by the parent of a minor, states that the games "psychologically distance" the implications of loot box purchases from real-world financial costs, and thus engages in deceptive practices.