[tablethnuser]

Remember when loot boxes promising valuable rookie cards of baseball players captured America's youth and squandered the nation's fortune back in the 20th century?

Or the countless families devastated by beanie baby addiction?

Me neither. Collectibles aren't the problem.

And it isn't gambling if you can't cash out. Why do you think there's so many casino games in the app stores even though digital gambling is illegal? Cuz they aren't gambling - they're hobbies. Thirty years ago you bought a $20 handheld slot device from the department store. Now you download an app.

[notTyler]

1) They have perceived value, which for children who don't know any better, is really important. 2) In many cases you can cash out. Fortnite accounts with'valuable' or rare skins getting hacked and sold is a real thing. Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2 both have real actual economies where things that come out of loot boxes have listed values that someone will probably pay you for in REAL WORLD DOLLARS. 3) Gambling is gambling regardless of whether it fits into your worldview and these companies shouldn't be able to sidestep defined and enforced regulations that exist for a reason. That's the issue here.

[nabergh]

I don't think people are arguing that collectibles are the problem. They're arguing that the gambling is.

In this context, we're defining gambling as exchanging money for a chance at receiving something of value. I think that's a reasonable definition and it certainly fits here.

[someexgamedev]

Do Happy Meals constitute gambling then, because they contain one of eight great toys?

[tialaramex]

So this goes like lotteries and several other things we already write laws about. What we care about is the behaviour. If your product triggers the problem behaviour then that's a problem.

If I go to McDonalds and there's a queue of people buying Happy Meals because they want a specific toy, and they either don't actually take the meal or it goes straight in the garbage, that's a huge problem -> gambling.

If I go to McDonalds and every kid just seems to be eating Happy Meals and enjoying whatever crap they got by chance, no problem -> not gambling.

You might argue, well, how can McDonalds control this? There are a bunch of things they can do to avoid causing the problem and thus avoid triggering an investigation. For example when somebody proposes "Ooh, let's make Toy #3 way better than the others, and then also only give it out 0.1% of the time" don't do that. That's going to trigger the problem. Or if a parent comes in and says they really need Toy #6 and they're willing to give you the price of a Happy Meal for that toy, you should say "Yes" and hand them the toy, if you insist they keep buying Happy Meals to have a chance you are encouraging the problem behaviour.

We see this stuff with other industries that trigger problem behaviour, we say "Don't do that" and we tell them things they should avoid to prevent the problem behaviour. Good actors work very hard to avoid a problem. Bad ones work very hard to avoid getting caught. Either way we did our best to protect people.

For example "Direct Sales" companies are told not to allow their "sales partners" or whatever they choose to call them to build up stock, because that's part of a negative behaviour. They're told to make sure those "sales partners" are deriving revenue from actually selling the product, which is ostensibly the point of their business, not from selling the opportunity to also become a partner, which would be a Pyramid Scheme, also negative behaviour. Invariably the people who own (and profit from) these companies insist the problem behaviour isn't what they want, and yet so often they do encourage it, because of course it makes them rich. Similarly with video game gambling.