Belgium’s Gaming Commission has declared that games like Overwatch and Star Wars Battlefront 2 constitute a form of gambling. As such, Belgium wants to ban games with loot boxes from Europe.
Belgium’s Minister of Justice Koen Geens said that mixing gambling and gaming is dangerous for the mental health of a child. Furthermore, Koen Geens wants to ban in-game purchases of things you don’t know exactly what they are (in other words, loot boxes).
Not only that, but Hawaii has announced action to address triple-A games like Battlefront 2. The State of Hawaii also considers Battlefront 2 as a Star Wars-themed casino, designed to lure kids to spend money.
State representative Sean Quinlan elaborated:
“One of the things that is disturbing about this to me is that this was previously a business practice that was mostly seen in the mobile gaming market. In your ipad, your ipod games. And now it’s moved into the main event. This is a triple-A title that’s been released by the world’s largest gaming studio. And it has the most popular intellectual property in the world attached to it.”
Sean Quinlan concluded that they shouldn’t allow Star Wars to encourage their kids to gamble.
And that is that. Things have escalated and it appears that countries are currently trying to address the loot boxes in video-games. Funnily enough, and before Star Wars: Battlefront 2, Overwatch had loot boxes and this did not piss a lot of people. Therefore, I think we have EA to thank for trying to capitalise on this. After all, its EA’s greed that came back and is now biting its butt.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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