I work on video games (not on the design side but programming) and had to implement some on those systems on several mobile games. I agree with the comment above that it’s hard to draw the line between gambling addiction and à faire amount of random that brings fun to a game. Diablo 2 has already those kinds of random behavior to retain your attention and trigger dopamine rushes but without trying to grab cash from you.
The only solution to me is legal regulation, companies won’t listen as it brings money and most people like to play them. Features like battle pass for example are pretty moral and a good balance between making the game profitable, having a rétention and not milk users.
I hope EU will flag lootboxes based games as casino games globally and that other big countries will follow (like Korea, Japan and USA) to stop this trend and force designer to find better mechanics.
Also users should also be educated to pay for a game that they enjoy. Nowadays with all the free services, it’s harder to make users pay for something they can get for « free » elsewhere. So it’s a complicated issue.
Apple is now pushing against it. For legal and marketing reasons. The apple arcade model is the opposite of that: no online required, no IAP. I think the loot boxes model is slowly dying in flavor of subscriptions, battle pass and other mecanisms like that.
The only solution to me is legal regulation, companies won’t listen as it brings money and most people like to play them. Features like battle pass for example are pretty moral and a good balance between making the game profitable, having a rétention and not milk users.
I hope EU will flag lootboxes based games as casino games globally and that other big countries will follow (like Korea, Japan and USA) to stop this trend and force designer to find better mechanics.
Also users should also be educated to pay for a game that they enjoy. Nowadays with all the free services, it’s harder to make users pay for something they can get for « free » elsewhere. So it’s a complicated issue.