[hanbura]

>into what is essentially gambling

I think at this point it's important to differentiate: Loot-Crate systems with resellable content (CS:Go etc) are gambling. Loot-Crate systems without resellable content function by the same mechanism but are different legally.

On the other hand pay-to-win or pay-to-skip are very different from gambling and work by completely different mechanisms. Being ahead of everyone else allows whales to either feel superior or to help fellow players, making the whales feel useful and depended upon. All of these feelings can be hard to get in the offline world, so instead whales pay to get them online.

I'm not condoning predatory microtransaction systems at all, but I think it's important to differentiate them instead of treating them all as if they were gambling

[EpicEng]

I think it's also important to note that this is not a scenario which was imagined when those rules were put into place and that gacha systems exploit the same psychological responses in order to get you to spend more.