Regulating loot boxes as gambling? Towards a combined legal and self-regulatory consumer protection approach

Loot boxes represent a popular and prevalent contemporary monetization innovation in video games that offers the purchasing player-consumer, who always pays set amount of money for each attempt, opportunity to obtain randomized virtual rewards uncertain in-game real-world value. have been, continue be, scrutinized by regulators policymakers because their nature is akin gambling. The regulation loot current challenging international public policy consumer protection issue. This article reviews psychology literature on potential harms applies behavioural economics order identify potentially abusive harmful effects boxes, which justify regulation. calls industry publish box spending data cooperate with independent empirical research avoid overregulation. By examining existing regulation, this identifies flaws ‘regulate-loot-boxes-as-gambling’ approach critiques alternative adopting ethical game design, such as disclosing probabilities obtaining setting maximum limits. recommends combined legal self-regulatory approach: law should out minimum acceptable standard self-regulation strive achieve an even higher standard.