There is a move here in Australia to ban gaming companies selling their games to those under the age of 18 if those games contain loot boxes (and there is a fairly wide definition of what constitutes gambling/loot boxes). The move also includes changing the classifications of games that feature gambling across all platforms, including apps. A number of countries already ban games from having any form of gambling/loot boxes in their games and many people here are wondering why we don’t as well. The article gave a list of 20 games that feature gambling/loot boxes and Acti-Blizzard was mentioned a number of times. (Should that legislation take place, Activision would need to change whatever games it offers to Australians to remove any form of gambling or loot boxes, or not offer those games to Australians.)
I was interested to note that loot boxes aren’t banned in the US, which probably shouldn’t surprise me, given the influence of big business there. I did notice, while doing a bit of googling on that, that there is currently at least one legal action taking place in the US against Activision Blizzard, in short:
"B.D. v. Activision-Blizzard
- Date filed: March 16, 2020
- Jurisdiction: California state court (San Diego)
… alleging Overwatch loot box issues…" Apparently its an action taken by a father on behalf of a child.
So the short and the long of my post is this: given the freedom that companies have in the US to include gambling/loot boxes in their games, and the fact that Activision Blizzard already have games with those features in them - how unlikely would it be to see something similar happen in WoW?
One could say we already have ‘soft’ versions of loot boxes in WoW - the uncollected boxes in the Black Market AH for example, which are a form of gambling, and to a lesser degree the Cards of Omen in Inscription, which are a bit like lottery cards in that there is a very small chance of winning a large amount of gold from them. The BM boxes are probably closer to loot boxes in that they cost a lot of gold, which can obviously be purchased through the token system. The principle at work here is that they scratch the gambling itch and tempt people to keep trying.
Once I would have said No Way, but with the declining popularity of WoW recently and the use of loot boxes as a way of increasing revenue, it’s looking a little less impossible than it once would have. I think the only possible reason they wouldn’t do it is the risk of loosing a substantial number of older or longterm players, unless they believed bringing in loot boxes would attract the younger players who are accustomed to it in other games.
It’s probably me doing the whole “glass half empty” approach but if it ever did happen, this old, tired casual would be slamming the unsub button so fast my arthritis would play up…
