EA’s refusal to remove loot boxes from game despite Belgian authorities warning them that they constitute illegal gambling is leading to a criminal investigation of the company.
Other loot box laden titles such as Overwatch and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive caved in by restricting such purchases for those residing in Belgium, though EA has stuck to their assertions that loot boxes are not gambling (with their sports titles FIFA 18 and 19 being targeted).
Belgium determined loot boxes to be a form of gambling a couple of months ago, meaning that companies who want to include them in their game have to acquire a gambling license as well as follow gambling laws – which EA is not willing to do.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson even stated that he intends to preserve loot boxes for all future games they release:
“As you might imagine, we’re working with all the industry associations globally and with regulators in various jurisdictions and territories, many of whom we’ve been working with for some time and have evaluated and established that programs like FIFA Ultimate Team are not gambling.”
Now it seems the Belgian Gaming Commission are cooperating with the Brussels public prosecutor’s office to prosecute EA for unlicensed gambling, although this would surely be the subject of long-running court fiasco.
Even if EA worms its way out of the charges the Belgian Gaming Commission has declared that should EA win the case, they will revise gambling laws to better address loot boxes anyway.
Great, I really hope Belgium will continue the fight, the loot boxes are an abomination of this gaming era.
They are, BUT, people who use them are the real ones to blame. If you’re mentally challenged and cannot resist a carefully constructed temptation to spend money, this is entirely your fault for being weak, and you do not deserve pity or any form of compensation.
They’re the victims, people with compulsive disorders cant stop themselves from buying loot boxes or microtransactions, those companies feed off of them, mobile games and microtransactions make the most money out of anything else in the industry because of that reason. Theyre changing gaming for the worse. The entertainment industry has descovered that quick short burts of hype bring in more money than actual quality, as admitted by the creators of the Expendables movie series.
If the devs/publishers didn’t make the games such a grindfest, players wouldn’t even consider buying anything.
You know why they’re illegal, right, and gambling is so heavily regulated? Because they target stupid children who couldn’t be expected to know better and gambling addicts who can’t help it.
Buddy, those big companies use research into the psychology of gambling addiction to do this s♥♥t. How about you go eat a bullet?
There are too many who can’t resist in supporting this loot box cancer. Obviously thats why we are here talking about it
Edit: way to many
too*
Yes lootboxes is gambling don’t try to deny it
+1 they are criminals, they deserve punishment!
I’ll bet EA kept the loot boxes enabled because they did calculations and found that the money they’d make would far outweigh the fines. I hope Belgium scales the fines up based on how much money EA made since the law was enacted and really makes them regret it.
You can’t buy yourself out of a law. They will be fined. And they will be fined for more again if the first fine had no effect. And again and again. And if nothing helps and EA continues to ignore the law, the authorities can freeze all EA bank accounts in the entire EU and seize EA’s physical assets as well. Do you know what that would do to EA’s holy stock value?
Hopefully, they f♥♥k up EA so hard that their reputation is destroyed, they have to sell their assets to companies who give a f♥♥k about video games and they fire every single f♥♥k who’s been putting their shitty pay to win, microtransaction, loot box gambling s♥♥t and put those same people behind bars. f♥♥k EA.
EAs reputation is already destroyed among those old enough to remember their bullshit antics, such as the destruction of Westwood Studios & Command and Conquer. Westwood Studios operated just fine before EA came into the picture.
Aaaaaah Westwood Studio. Still remember the hundreds of hours i spent in Lands of Lore 2. Gooooooood times.
Dude, you too? LoL 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. First one that let you be evil and not fucking murder you immediately for it or otherwise render the game unwinnable, and the character is a hilariously sarcastic dick.