Czech Republic joins global initiative to tackle gambling in video games

The Czech Republic has decided to join an international front of 14 other countries and the state of Washington in its bid to fight gambling in video games. Children are the most vulnerable prey to this particular form of gambling. The initiative was formed to tackle the blurring lines between digital entertainment like gaming and gambling.

The following countries are going to be part of this initiative: Austria, Czech Republic with Karel Blaha that is the director of the State Oversight Over Gambling Department, France, Gibraltar, Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Latvia, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, UK, The Washington State.

As video games become more popular thanks to the advances in technology, competition also heats up in the industry, which in turn leads to a mad rush for revenue. That is when new revenue streams like “soft” gambling: “loot boxes” are introduced, which are in effect a surrogate form of gambling, the initiative reckons.

Loot boxes started to appear in the US with the release of Star Wars Battlefront II, by Electronic Arts. Players began to flag that with the increasing presence of loot boxes they were being forced to gamble to improve their gameplay.

This is a clear reflection of the challenges that the video games industry has had to face since the late 1990s: production costs have continued to increase, but retail prices have remained stagnant. Loot boxes offer the opportunity to increase revenue and were firstly available in Blizzard’s Overwatch (2016) but are not regular features also in video games like FIFA 17, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Halo 5, Gears of War 4, Forza Motorsport 7, and Star Wars Battlefront II.

In 2017 the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), which is the regulator that classify games in regards to sex, violence and other age factors refused to classify loot boxes as a type of gambling. In 2018, however, the ESBR released a new label for games that do include loot boxes or similar features.

Until now, however, there has not been a single approach to the problem with different legislators that have had different views on the subject: in Belgium, for example, the gaming regulator said that Battlefront II has loot boxes that involve money and addiction: the result was that both Belgium and Netherlands have banned games that have loot boxes.

Source: PraguePost