Loot boxes have been a big talking point in the world of gaming recently (we even wrote a whole article about it, which you can read here), as a number of big games such as Middle-earth: Shadow of War and the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront II have included them in some form, and now UK Reddit user Artfunkel has posted that he has talked to his local MP about the matter, who will submit questions to the government regarding loot boxes.
The two questions are as follows:
- To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she plans to take to help protect vulnerable adults and children from illegal gambling, in-game gambling and loot boxes within computer games.
- To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment the Government has made of the effectiveness of the Isle of Man's enhanced protections against illegal and in-game gambling and loot boxes; and what discussions she has had with Cabinet colleagues on adopting such protections in the UK.
Artfunkel says that the discussions with the MP for Cambridge, Daniel Zeichner, took place a few weeks ago and were very positive. He also adds that "the goal here is to see the UK's existing gambling regulations applied to loot boxes," and that "The Isle of Man is a British territory which explicitly defines in-game items as money's worth in its gambling law. It's currently the only place in the world that does so."
He adds that replies take around a month to arrive and that one of the big aims is just to get a conversation going. Do you think the government should pay more attention to things like loot boxes and in-game gambling?