A former gambler, who was introduced to betting at just 12 years old, highlights concerns around in-game loot boxes.
Niks, who was interviewed by the Huffington Post, is now a member of the Lived Experience Council at GambleAware which is a UK-based charity that aims to provide advice, tools and research to help keep people safe from gambling harms.
For Niks, his gateway to gambling came from unregulated ‘loot boxes’ which is where a gamer can open “a treasure box…for example, [for] £2, and you can get a randomised [in-game] reward item that could have a value of…up to thousands of pounds.”
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These boxes are a type of in-game purchase which aren’t covered by UK gambling regulations.
Concerns that loot boxes are a gambling loophole
While there has been calls for these to be banned, the Gambling Commission has said that the Gambling Act 2005 does not cover loot boxes and that it therefore cannot use any of its regulatory powers to take action.
In September 2019, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee published a report about immersive and addictive technologies which called for regulations to extend to loot boxes.
Another report, in July 2020, also called for loot boxes to be added into the scope of the act. A call for evidence was then requested in response to the committee report, but since then, only guidance has been shared by industry representatives.
This includes the suggestion of using controls to prevent those under 18 from buying loot boxes without parental permission, but Niks says “it doesn’t work.
“They don’t do it. They still allow kids to gamble,” the interviewee claims. They went on to describe their experiences: “There are marketplaces where you can sell your virtual items and get cash back.
“That’s how I, as a 12-year-old, was able to access all sorts of gambling online. It still exists now, and basically any child now can do it, like with their parents’ credit card … they can easily get into gambling through video games, and nobody would know about it.”
Loot box mechanics have been banned in Belgium since 2018, with regulators worldwide having their own approaches to the concerns.
Featured Image: AI-generated via Ideogram
