My guess is, if they can slap 18+ and keep what's working, they'll just do that. Games don't make remotely enough profit to warrant a gambling license, so that's a no-go.

That might be enough to get it acceptable according to this. What might be needed is also publishing the odds of the loot tables and have some kind system to prevent duplicates for things that are not consumable. I am quite sure that no game publisher wants to get a 18+ on their game just because of that or have to go through the licensing process that gambling services need to go through (and the taxation that comes from this).Īs for BL chest. That would probably speed up things a bit and start changing the characteristics of micro transactions to be more acceptable. I think until we know a) if this is even going to happen and b) exactly what the new law says we can't work out how it will affect said:Hopefully if enough regulators get on this it might prompt the industry to start regulating itself. That might be enough to get around whatever new laws get put in place as well.

Now you can even get a list sorted by rarity just by right-clicking the chest. And it's always been possible to find full lists of the contents of black lion chests. According to another article the problem Belgium had with the Battlefront ones was that there was no way to find out what might be in the box before buying it, which I have heard is one of the rules used to distinguish gambling from other 'games' of chance like a lucky dip - if all the possible prizes are on display then even if you don't know exactly what's in your box you know what you might get and that apparently makes it ok. Or they might be able to change them slightly so they are still allowed. But then would they remove black lion chests entirely, or just make it so you can't buy them if you're in Europe (which might involve selling them outside the game)? The problem might be getting the licence, I really don't know what that involves and maybe Anet will decide it's not worth it. (Unlike in the USA and some other countries 18 rated games are widely available, it's pretty much unheard of for a retailer to refuse to stock them.) So the end result might just be that games like GW2 go from a 12+ rating to an 18+, which would reduce the pool of potential new players but otherwise wouldn't make any difference. You have to be over 18 and I think the companies running it have to have a licence.

I definitely wouldn't want to get my hopes up that we're going to see the end of black lion chests and all similar RNG boxes in games.įor a start gambling isn't illegal in Europe, even online gambling for real money, it's just restricted. I think it's too early to say what the effect might be.

Belgium says loot boxes ar gambling