The unhealthy parallels between gambling and video games goes further than loot boxes

Opinion by Matt S. 

As we all know by now, loot boxes have become such an issue of contention in the games industry that a number of countries have declared them to be gambling. The idea of getting random stuff in exchange for cash has been around for a long time now - think gacha toys in Japan, or card games like Magic the Gathering - but game developers pushed things a little too far, and tied loot boxes so closely to the kind of progress that you want to make in a game that it all became just a touch too exploitative for regulators... especially since children are often the target market.

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