The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport Committee has recommended the Government regulates loot boxes under the Gambling Act.
It also recommends the Government order publishers to strip loot boxes out of games aimed at children, and tell PEGI to slap games with loot boxes with an appropriate age rating.
In a stark report following the Committee’s inquiry into the growth of “immersive and addictive technologies”, the DCMS issued a raft of recommendations for Government, which marks a step-change in the thinking around loot boxes in the UK.
While the DCMS Committee’s recommendations are not law, industry members have told Eurogamer they will be taken seriously, and pointed to Labour deputy leader Tom Watson as a prominent politician who has a keen interest in loot boxes and other publisher practices.
Digging into the detail, the Committee said the Government should bring forward regulations under section six of the Gambling Act 2005 in the next parliamentary session to specify loot boxes are a game of chance.
According to the Committee, if Government determines not to regulate loot boxes under the Act at this time, the Government should produce a paper clearly stating the reasons why it does not consider loot boxes paid for with real-world currency to be a game of chance played for money’s worth.(Previously, the Gambling Commission said current laws don’t see loot boxes as gambling, largely because there’s no real-world cash value to the items received in a loot box.)