Topic: Belgium wants to forbid loot boxes

Trading cards are less of an issue given that they're physical goods that can be resold, and aren't as easy to buy in large numbers. Whether that's enough to justify a legal distinction, I don't know.

It is true, actually, that an outright ban on loot boxes is unlikely. Although if strict enough regulations are passed they might have practically the same effect, since it wouldn't make much sense as a choice of business model anymore.

Is buying a pack of M&Ms gambling? Since you never know exactly how many of them are in a pack, and how many of each colour is in there. It's indeed a grey area. We know for a fact that one of the reasons why trading cards games are allowed is because the cards themselves have technically no intrinsic value. For what it's worth, the company is selling you 10 pieces of paper for €5, and that number is always the same.

I think you could say the same about loot boxes, because there is some overlap. However, I do think they're shifted more towards the actual gambling. So the question is where do we draw the line? But more importantly, how do you define that line?

I think that's the issue too. We don't know what the legal lines are.

Trading cards can be traded, loot boxes can not. I think that's a huge difference.

Trading cards can also be bought as singles as well...

I think that countries would need to make laws regarding this rather than slap a ban.

@TheLZdragon Well, there is actually a bit of irony in the fact that Pokemon games had their game corners removed due to the in-game gambling, and we've seen several video games getting a higher rating due to the in-game gambling references, even though there was no actual money involved. Yet when it comes to a game like FIFA or Battlefront II, there's no warning whatsoever. So whatever the exact rules and definition are, I feel that they're loosely enforced at best.

@Shantephan What about online card games though?

I think one could make an argument about the starting fee of trading card games versus video games. One requires you to pay, in most cases, €60, the other is completely free apart from the actual card packs themselves. That way you can also rule out any ''free-to-play'' game, even though I'm not sure if that solves the issue entirely.