One plucky Australian legislator is attempting to introduce a bill which would ban the sale of loot boxes to anyone under the age of 18.
Australia might soon join the ever-growing list of countries that are taking some kind of legal stance against loot boxes and in-game gambling. Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie has recently expressed his intentions to introduce a bill which would see every game that includes loot boxes slapped with an R18+ rating which would essentially ban children from purchasing them.
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Wilkie has stated that he considers loot boxes as a form of gambling and believes that loot box mechanics are grooming young children "for future gambling." While gambling is legal in Australia, the bill's main intention is to help in "giving parents a warning" as some games like FIFA that include loot boxes are currently marked as 3+ by rating boards like the ESRB.
Wilkie's line of thinking is nothing new as several countries across the globe have started to introduce restrictions on the sale of loot boxes. Countries like Netherlands and Belgium have opted to outright ban loot boxes, penalising publishers with heavy fines for not complying. Similarly, Brazil has recently started fining publishers up to $700,000 for the inclusion of loot boxes in their games.
Germany is also currently trying to tackle the loot box problem in a very similar way to Australia. The country is currently trying to reform it's Youth Protection Act with an amendment that would see games with loot boxes given 18+ ratings, likely in an effort to warn parents that there are gambling mechanics stashed away in games marketed towards children.
In fact, more and more evidence has begun to pile up over the past few years to suggest that loot boxes are a significant problem for people with existing gambling issues. A recent study from charity GambleAware claims that loot boxes are "structurally and psychologically akin to gambling" and that almost a third of players spending the most on loot boxes are "problem gamblers."
Another study from the UK Royal Society of Public Health claims that one in ten children will go into debt after using their parent's credit cards to buy loot boxes. It was also revealed that 9% of the young gamers surveyed had borrowed money they couldn't pay back to purchase loot boxes.
With these kind of statistics surfacing, it's likely that more and more countries will attempt to limit the sale of loot boxes to minors, and rightfully so.
Source: GameSpot, Kotaku, Daily Telegraph
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