Loot box regulation
The Future of Dutch loot box regulations after the EA FIFA FUT ruling Bo Hyun Kim
T he highest administrative court of the Netherlands recently issued a surprising landmark decision overturning a €10 million fine levied against Electronic Arts over gacha mechanics in FIFA Ultimate Team , garnering attention from the gaming industry. INTRODUCTION The gaming sector has seen an exponential growth in Gacha-style games, a top grossing genre with the fastest growth in the industry. Analogous to loot box mechanisms in the West, gacha mechanics are their Eastern counterparts and are implemented in games to induce players to spend in-game currency to purchase chance-based virtual collectibles such as characters, items, and cards. 1 Gacha mechanics have drawn scrutiny from regulators because they tend to incentivize players to continue spending to
acquire prizes with low probabilities of winning. Gacha- style games are proving to be a lucrative driver of the market, with leading RPG games like Genshin Impact which has generated US$3 billion since its launch in 2020. 2 While publishers increasingly seek to expand their portfolio of gacha-style games, the contours of the regulatory landscape surrounding the legality of such mechanisms – whether labeled as loot boxes or gacha mechanics – remain unclear. Despite a favorable ruling for Electronics Arts (EA) in March, 2022, overturning a ruling that acquiring virtual in-game FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) card packs constitutes gambling, Activision Blizzard announced in June that it would not be launching its new free-to-play game, Diablo Immortal in the Netherlands and Belgium. In this article, we will examine the implications of the recent EA ruling and provide a commentary on the future of gacha-style games.
1 Demircin, Y. (2022, January 30). What are Gacha games? Mobidictum. https://mobidictum.biz/gacha-games/. 2 Conlan, D. (2022, May 5). ‘Genshin Impact’ has reportedly made over £2.4billion on mobile since launch. NME. https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/ genshin-impact-has-reportedly-made-over-2-4billion-on-mobile-since-it-launched-3219210.
38 • IMGL Magazine • November 2022
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