EA reportedly under criminal investigation in Belgium due to FIFA's loot boxes

I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, I'm a libertarian and don't like regulations. On the second hand, these kinda regulations make sense.

Video game publishers have been trying consistently to implement a "less for more" attitude when it comes to their products. The whole lootbox trend on a whole was the peak of having their cake and eating it (wanting to "chase whales" like the free to play model but charging full price for the product). The only surprising thing about this is that there hasn't been a lot more push-back a way earlier.

Maybe you have just discovered that you're not libertarian after all, as some regulation seems to be better than no regulation is certain cases.

To the extent that these card games rest on "winning" a good card by luck in the blind purchase packs they're clearly in the same ball park.

The psychological quirk these games exploit is that some humans get a disproportionate internal reward for taking chances that come off. This quirk gets you polar explorers, and a man on the moon, but it also gets you financial crashes and people losing their life savings on the turn of a card. So, you know, maybe not something we want under the control of a for-profit company.

Traditional gambling laws assume the rewards must be financial, but this psych quirk doesn't care what the reward is, shiny Pokémon cards, virtual currency, anything you perceive as desirable. What's important is that you took a risk and it paid off, if you have this quirk your body rewards you for this entirely luck-based success, of course you want it again.

Note that although Magic itself is going nowhere, this game design trope has been somewhat displaced by designs where players buy fixed decks with fixed boosters - no blind buy. Android Netrunner is an example of that. You know going in that to be competitive you're buying so-and-so many packs to have the best cards, a few extreme choices might mean buying one extra copy of something, but there are no truly "rare" cards.

> Video game publishers have been trying consistently to implement a "less for more" attitude when it comes to their products.

Isn't maximizing profits just a natural consequence of having a for-profit business? It's not just evil video game publishers, everybody wants to sell less for more.