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An academic specialising in loot boxes has said the UK government should make it clear what rate of compliance with loot box self-regulation it will consider a failure, as fears persist that they stray too close to gambling.
Leon Xiao, PhD fellow at the Center for Digital Play, IT University of Copenhagen, shared his opinions with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Gambling Related Harm (APPG) and the Peers for Gambling Reform during an evidence session in Westminster on January 15.
Despite loot box regulation being left out of the Gambling Act white paper, “it has not been forgotten”, according to Xiao.
“The government promised legislative intervention if the self-regulation fails. However, we do not know what would be viewed as ‘failure’. I would suggest perhaps a compliance rate of less than 80 percent by the 100 highest-grossing games by July 2024 would be unsatisfactory, with this to shift eventually up to less than 95 percent being viewed as inadequate,” Xiao told Vixio GamblingCompliance.
Xiao believes that the current self-regulation of loot boxes has several flaws.
“The proposed measures were drafted too loosely (permitting a probability disclosure of < 1 for a category containing individual rewards of varying probabilities, which need not be disclosed) or do not go far enough in terms of substance. There is also no authority who is in charge of interpreting and enforcing the self-regulation when disputes arise,” Xiao said.
He fears that despite multiple leading academic researchers having raised these concerns when they saw a draft of the rules, their “views were generally not taken on board (if at all)”.
Along with discussing loot boxes, the evidence session also covered a host of other topics, including whether video game warning labels for games with loot boxes are inadequate and whether or not social casino games should face more scrutiny.
One issue flagged with social casino games by Xiao is the fact that not all of them are required to be rated PEGI 18+ only, as a requirement introduced in 2020 to require them to do so does not cover games released before it was enacted.
“All social casino games should now be required to carry a PEGI 18 age rating: this can be done reasonably easily as PEGI has previously acceded to my demands to duly label popular but older games containing loot boxes as containing loot boxes,” Xiao said.
A spokesperson for the APPG told Vixio that minutes from its latest evidence session will be available on its website "in due course".
