I've wondered many times how close videogame companies are to accidentally repeating the Pinball Prohibition. There was a period of time when all pinball machines were forbidden, because lawmakers throughout the US couldn't easily enough tell the difference between which ones were gambling and which ones weren't. (That was an extinction level event that bankrupted a bunch of pinball manufacturers and nearly ended several industries.)

On the one hand, a lot of the specific loopholes that games claim come directly out of the results of the Pinball Prohibition and contest laws (can't win cash back, must have winning odds posted but it can be in the fine print, things like that) so it is unlikely to repeat exactly like it happened before. But on the other hand, some of what is going on with current whales is so blatant that some have been famously referred to gambling addiction counseling and we do seem close to that political brink that "somebody must do something" and if it happens as the wrong sort of mob mentality panic, politicians are just as likely to use a sledgehammer to the entire industry than a scalpel to the worst offenders just like the Pinball Prohibition.

(I sometimes worry, too, about the role that Steam's Trading Cards and Inventory items play into their Auctions might impact any sort of "videogames are gambling panic". Those systems' interaction with Steam Wallet is even dangerously close to feeling like "cash back" sometimes, though you can't actually cash it out and it is more of a gift card. [Though gift card-based gambling/embezzling is another potential panic of its own.] It's hard not to imagine politicians preferring a sledgehammer when even the largest, most trusted videogame store on personal computers wasn't immune to adding gambling-like elements and making extra money from whales.)