The topic is quite hot nowadays, so the Entertainment Software Rating Board had to comment about it.

Loot boxes. They offer you random items, sometimes for real money. An example of a game using them could be Overwatch. Do you want more recent titles? Fine. Forza Motorsport 7. Middle-Earth: Shadow of War. Star Wars: Battlefront II. Assassin’s Creed: Origins, although this one will not allow you to spend your cash on them.

About the subject, one of the most known British YouTubers, TotalBiscuit, had his word for roughly forty minutes in the video below. He asks Entertainment Software Rating Board to openly call loot boxes as gambling. It’s an important aspect, as games that have to wager with real-life cash could only be labeled as Adults Only. The twist here is that major retailers, such as GameStop and Walmart, do not carry AO games.

ESRB sent a statement to Kotaku. It says: „ESRB does not consider loot boxes to be gambling. While there’s an element of chance in these mechanics, the player is always guaranteed to receive in-game content (even if the player, unfortunately, receives something they don’t want). We think of it as a similar principle to collectible card games: Sometimes you’ll open a pack and get a brand new holographic card you’ve had your eye on for a while. But other times you’ll end up with a pack of cards you already have.”

Still, loot boxes are here with us, and they don’t seem to be going away for a while. It’s a subject that we could discuss separately, to be fair…

Source: WCCFTech, Kotaku