France Weighs in On if Loot Boxes are Gambling

With the whole Battlefield 2 thing that happened, a lot of countries have been looking into loot boxes to see if they need some legislation to keep them under control. In good ol’ Europe, both Belgium and the Netherlands have officially declared that Loot Boxes are a form of gambling (in some games) and that those games need to be changed if they want to stay on store shelves. But in case you failed your geography, there are more countries than just those two in Europe, and France has just finished its own decision on if loot boxes constitute as “gambling.”

Their conclusion?

No. It’s not gambling. But...

Their reasoning should be familiar to anyone who’s engaged in this kind of debate before. The biggest reason they weren’t seen as gambling was because they didn’t provide anything of “real world value,” but they also pointed out how, unlike gambling, you always got at least SOMETHING from a loot box, while there’s no guarantee you’ll get anything from a slot machine other than a lighter wallet.

But here’s where things get complicated: the ARJEL, France's gambling authority, still very much thinks loot boxes are a problem, largely because even though they don’t “count” as gambling, they still exploit all the triggers gambling uses to hook people into spending more time/money on the machines. So while they can’t call Loot Boxes “Gambling,” they still encourage other nations - and especially the Gaming Regulators European Forum - to take action against Loot Boxes to regulate and possibly even criminalize them.

So don’t breathe easy, EA and Activision-Blizzard, as this isn’t the good news you were hoping for.

Personally, I think this is the best kind of conclusion to reach. As much as I hated loot boxes and saw how damaging they could be, they still never thought they were really ‘gambling,’ as much as they were ‘a problem’. So it’s validating for me to see France agree with my take on things.

That said, given how the EU is by no means immune to making stupid, bad laws… maybe inaction would be better…