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Comment by yAnonymous | Hacker News Reader

Ultimately, most publishers will probably handle it like Valve, who have found a brilliant workaround:

Show players the contents of the next box they buy, which makes it not gambling.

I hate it, but it's a very elegant solution to avoid any legal problems.

Not being familiar with their system myself, I have to ask - does this imply that there's 2nd order gambling? I mean, the same gambling "kick" then arises from seeing what they would get after paying for the following big, right?

I suppose they could also make the boxes transparent all the way down, but that would just shift the gamble to the account creation phase.

Oh, or is it just the exact same boxes for everyone? I suppose that solves the problem.

The box system is exactly the same as before, only that you can see the contents of the next box. It's very easy to implement and, as you pointed out, changes pretty much nothing. The gamble is still there, but not in the box you pay for.

The problem is that it just pushes out the "unknown" factor to the next box. The content of the current box never changes for an individual, but the content of the next box might have that rare or legendary object that I really want.

Practically speaking, it's a brilliant move because it works around laws without removing the addictive gambling feeling.

That seems like a hack that won't hold up in court. Now it's still loot box gambling, but with the n+1 th box instead.

Actually I think that's a common salesman trick ? Put the product in the hand of the customer, so that they feel they already have it, then they have to pay.

Its that too, but that aspect of it isnt gambling. It's the part where buying the existing loot box gives you access to a second, yet unknown, gambling outcome.

Exactly. You're buying a known thing and an option. What's the option for? That's the gamble.

I actually think it will hold up quite comfortably, as no court will be able to tell when exactly it starts being gambling.

I can see how this can work in the US, but courts in Belgium (and Europe in general) do not stop at technicalities and they can absolutely consider it gambling without having to define the exact boundaries of gambling.

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