The House of Lords Gambling Committee has classified loot boxes as: “Games of chance,” meaning that it believes they should be regulated under gambling laws.
In a just-published, wide-ranging report looking at the entirety of the gambling industry in the UK, the section investigating gambling among children concluded that: “We recommend that Ministers should make regulations under section 6(6) of the Gambling Act 2005 specifying that loot boxes and any other similar games are games of chance, without waiting for the Government’s wider review of the Gambling Act.” An accompanying summary reiterated that conclusion: “The Government must act immediately to bring loot boxes within the remit of gambling legislation and regulation.”
Defining loot boxes as: “All mechanisms by which a player pays money for a randomised item,” the report described various items of evidence considered by the House of Lords Committee, including from a Dr Zendle, who: “Has undertaken various studies which found that spending money on loot boxes is linked to problem gambling, and that the more money individuals spent on loot boxes, the more severe their problem gambling.”
In oral evidence to the committee, Dr Zendle said that the link between loot boxes and problem gambling is: “Extraordinarily robust. It is of a magnitude that is uncommon in the social sciences. You see it every time you measure how much people are spending on loot boxes and their problem gambling. It has been replicated across the world, from Canada to Finland to the UK.”
The Government has said that its planned future review of the Gambling Act will include loot boxes, but the House of Lords Committee is keen to see more immediate action on the matter: “While we welcome the Government’s intention to consider the relationship between gambling and video gaming, we believe that this issue requires more urgent attention. We agree that it is vital that any legislative changes are based on evidence; the evidence we have heard has stressed the urgency of taking action, and has not drawn attention to any unintended consequences.”
The report even spells out what initial form that action should take: “The Government should bring forward regulations under section 6 of the Gambling Act 2005 to specify that loot boxes are a game of chance.”
Loot boxes have come under scrutiny by governments for some time now – in 2018, for example, they were banned in Belgium. It will be interesting to see whether our current Boris Johnson-led Government – whose instincts clearly err on the side of light-touch – acts quickly on the House of Lords’ recommendations.
