The UK Government recently weighed the question of whether to regulate loot boxes in games, and decided that the video game industry should first be allowed an opportunity to self-regulate and mitigate the potential harms of loot boxes. Legislation will only be brought if industry self-regulation fails to provide tangible improvements to consumer protection.
A technical working group of industry members convened by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has already begun work. I, alongside other academic researchers, have been invited to provide our input (which may or may not be taken onboard).
For transparency, I share my current views and my advice on loot box regulation based on my interpretation of the existing academic literature and my empirical research results in this guest post.