In Austria, gamers successfully sued Sony and EA in a minor court. The judge agreed with the gamers and said loot boxes are illegal gambling. Sony and EA were ordered to pay back €10,800 ($11,800) in loot box sales to the individual gamers.
While loot boxes are banned in Belgium and heavily restriced in the Netherlands. In other countries gamers and parents are starting to sue in minor courts. This leaves Blizzard incredibly vulnerable to these type of court cases.
Gamebiz, Aug. 16, 2023
Electronic Arts and Sony have been ordered to pay €10,800 ($11,800) to gamers who bought FIFA Ultimate Team packs in Austria.
The order comes from Landesgericht für Zivilrechtssachen Wien, which is a regional court in Vienna. The court ruled that these loot boxes violate gambling laws. However, this is a standalone decision, and has no wider impact on the country’s legal position on loot boxes.
Are hearthstone card packs considered loot boxes though? I think they’ve made the argument before that it can’t be a loot box if you’re guaranteed to pull $0 worth of value regardless of your luck roll.
I don’t think it is about having loot boxes or not. For the courts it is about gambling or not.
There’s no legal definition of what a “loot box” is. But there is a definition of what constitutes gambling.
To operate online gambling you need a gambling license. These gamers probably showed the judge an exchange of money took place, and a game that has a gambling/reward mechanic. The judge saw EA nor Sony have a gambling license. So the judge orders to repay all the money. The real issues for game companies start when children are involved, since illegal gambling involving minors has some pretty harsh criminal penalties that go beyond just fines.
EA quickly stopped loot box operations in Belgium since gambling involving minors has a jail sentence.
They don’t define gambling as spending money and getting equal value or more in return. Gambling is spending money with a chance of getting nothing or less value.
If Hearthstone packs are considered gambling, then so is every card pack in real life, baseball cards, trading cards, pokeman cards, etc.
None of those are considered gambling. They don’t outlaw baseball cards do they?
Gambling doesn’t have guaranteed minimums, you can never get nothing for something in this game, also gambling is illegal because it destroys lives, I have yet to see any evidence of HS making people go bankrupt and going homeless. Reality is people crying foul are doing so because they have no self control and have buyer’s remorse. That is a YOU problem, not Blizz’s.
Here’s How Loot Box & Microtransaction Addiction Destroys Lives
Gambling addiction in the world of video games – especially in the lootbox era – has gone almost entirely unstudied.
Ruth, a 39-year old in London, cut off her credit lines. She told her bank to throw out her overdraft protection, and she’s wiped her phone clean of anything that might tempt her back.
“So much of the stuff about addiction online is for more traditional forms of it. When they talk about ‘gaming addiction’ in the media, it’s usually focused on kids spending money on games,” Ruth says. " Just because I’m not going to a casino doesn’t mean I’m not dealing with addiction.I think I’m the tip of a huge iceberg. I think there’s loads of people out there just like me, who haven’t put it into words."
Joseph, a 31-year old in Florida, generated his own treatment process, also cobbled together from the posts he read on gaming addiction subreddits. In total, he sunk about $1,300 into Fire Emblem Heroes and Dragalia Lost. Like many others interviewed for this story, those numbers repulsed him, and Joseph tried to retune his brain. Gacha games are structured around forward progress, but he forced himself to reconsider every spin he made as a step backwards.
Ryan*, a 29-year old from Canada, played a lot of Seven Knights, a well-established gacha game published by Netmarble, and says he began to feel the walls close in once his social life started to atrophy away. “I would spend at least eight to 10 hours a day just playing on my phone,” says Ryan. “My ex breaking up with me was when I realized I had a problem.”
Luke Clark, the head of the University of British Columbia’s Gaming Research arm, tells me that there is plenty of evidence in behavioral neuroscience that leads researchers to believe that dopamine responses tend to react strongly to “uncertain reward” – which is the dynamic that the blind-box gambit preys upon.
“It seems likely that gamers might engage in a lot of ‘what if’ thinking, similar to how lottery players might spend time fantasizing about what they would do if they were to win,” Clark says. “This can also create another source of ‘near misses’: a gamer might actually win a decent item in a loot box, but they could still be disappointedif they missed the specific prize they were hoping for, and this could fuel further purchases.”
Well ok, I finally got some examples. While I think one should exercise basic self control the reality is if it is indeed proven to be harmful to many (more than just a handful of extremes because you will find that with anything) as gambling is then it should be regulated. I’d have to have a study or something to see if examples like you gave are prevelant enough to matter. You can find people dying due to drinking too much water, doesn’t mean water is dangerous to most people.
Right. I would love to see how it compares with regular casino/gambling addiction. But it would have to be the exact same UK demographic for it to be comparable.
There’s an argument that they should be and there have actually been lawyers who have mentioned being interested in civil suits (especially with Konami and how they handle differing pull rates between their main sets and side sets as well as evidence of short prints in main sets which violates their print policy).
I’m not saying one way or the other if this SHOULD be considered gambling or not, just that intellectually there’s very little reason why it can’t be and there are actual lawyers out there who are confident in the intellectualism of it but not confident in courts caring to really establish a precedence of law for it.
Im no expert but i think card packs are something completely different from loot boxes. Card packs contain cards. Only cards.
Loot boxes can contain lots of things, premium currency, cosmetics, various upgrades having an instant impact on your power level in game etc.
In Hearthstone a loot box would be like a $10 mystery box in the shop with contents unknown. Could be a skin, could be packs, could be “anything” but you wont know beforehand. This kind of box doesnt exist in hs. In the shop youre told what you get and the cost.
Im no expert but i think card packs are something completely different from loot boxes. Card packs contain cards. Only cards. Loot boxes can contain lots of things, premium currency, cosmetics, various upgrades having an instant impact on your power level in game etc.
I think this is irrelevant in a court case. A judge will look at the relevant laws dealing with online gambling. Whether it pertains to card games, horse betting, whatever, as long as its an online game of chance or betting and money is involved, it’s going to fall under gambling.
A judge doesn’t care what’s in the loot box, that’s assuming they even know what a loot box is. They want to see a gambling license, since you’re operating a for-profit game of chance, and if the developer doesn’t have one, they’re in trouble.
In the same way you know your chances in a game of roulette. But don’t know your chances at the slot machine. It’s a fine argument, but these games still all fall under gambling.
They’re all games-of-chance, you’re placing a bet in all of them, regardless of what the reward is.
I know EA tried to use the argument that there is no “monetary payout” like in a casino. But that argument was just dismissed by the gambling authority in Belgium. It was still considered gambling.
This wouldn’t work for HS in the past. Because while you are gambling, you are guaranteed to hit a legendary each 40 decks, you can craft any card you want using dust. I could see it being a problem now because of the signature cards. You either get them in the packs or you don’t.
I don’t know the laws when it comes to this though. But if they allow us to craft any signature card they release, or buy them, I don’t have any problem with their system.
I don’t see the significance of this news as it pertains to the states (is this an American forum?). I also don’t see gambling as some sort of particularly immoral activity. The problem arises when self control is lacking, and often some mental diagnoses. Still, and probably falling into that camp myself, part of me feels that freedom should extend to such behavior. In a way I’m on the fence, because I am very familiar with addiction (both physical and psychological). This is different, in my mind, than say, illegalizing an addictive and likely deadly drug (say, crack or dope).
It’s not a concern with morality vs immorality, it’s a concern of legal precedence and transparency.
Not the complete picture. One problem arises when results of gambling can be manufactured or skewed in ways that are deceitful or not transparent and make fair gambling illegitimate. This was the issue with PhantomL0rd.
On the issue of self-control, there are practices that are considered anti-consumer and the gambling industry is one of the poster children of industries who have had to be repeatedly revised because of issues regarding anti-consumerism. The above is why things like loot boxes and card games are relevant to being categorized as gambling.
Speak for yourself!
I was hooked hard on the kinder. I was riding that chocolate dragon into the sunset almost every day. Nearly cost me a total of $13 and a dental visit.
so only an EA card game got banned ? weird because last time this was talked about i read MTG arena shadowverse and HS arent banned in belgium so their card game must be very differnt when compared to the rest