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Belgium outlaws paid loot boxes

Belgium outlaws paid loot boxes
Justin Cabrera

Justin Cabrera

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On the Blizzard forums, Community Manager Vaneras announced in a post that paid Overwatch loot boxes were being disabled in Belgium. This change also applies to Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm.

Back in April, Belgian Minister of Justice Koen Geens announced that paid loot boxes in Overwatch, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and FIFA 18 violated the country’s anti-gambling laws. While this announcement was made months ago, Blizzard and FIFA publisher EA declined to comment until now. Given the choice between region-locking Belgium out of their games or removing paid loot boxes, Blizzard chose the latter.

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The Belgian government’s pushback against loot boxes further adds to the conversation about the relationship between loot boxes and gambling. For years, cosmetics have been used by developers to gain additional revenue, providing players with costumes for their favorite characters in exchange for money. Games that have followed this model include League of Legends and DOTA 2.

However, developers discovered that they could make considerably more money by selling loot boxes that have a chance of including the skin the player wants, instead of selling them to the player directly. If a player wants a certain skin badly, they hypothetically would spend money on loot boxes over and over until they get it, making much more money for the developer than if they sold the skin directly.

Gamers everywhere have been highly critical of the loot box model. Despite this, many game franchises have added loot boxes to recent installments including Call of Duty, Star Wars: Battlefront, and Street Fighter, to extreme profitability. The loot box trend is only barely slowing down despite massive player opposition.

Not all hope is lost, however. Fortnite, a free game, doesn’t use a loot box system. Instead, players buy the content they want directly. This system, unlike loot boxes, does not resemble gambling at all. The absolutely massive success and profitability of Fortnite will likely inspire publishers to start moving away from the loot box model. Hopefully, publishers will follow suit and come up with systems that allow players to directly purchase the content they want, removing the gambling element from games completely.

Justin Cabrera

Justin Cabrera

Justin Cabrera is a tech content writer with Softonic.com. Prior to joining Softonic, Justin was a overcaffeinated radio DJ and know-it-all music critic with WPGU 107.1. His two favorite things in the world are video games and music culture.

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