Shouldn’t your friend be monitoring his kid’s usage? Why is everything always some government/capitalist entity’s responsibility?
All the boy’s friends play the game and similar games. It’s an uphill battle and an extraordinary pressure on the parents to control each game that gets played and micromanage to that extend - to the detriment of their relationship with the child, because fighting these intentionally instilled addictive patterns will create upset in the child and tension in the relationship. The game devs pay psychologists to create the addiction at scale which the parents just cannot compete with.
In reality parents have finite amounts of energy and a finite numbers of battles to fight. Eat your food, go to school, do your homework, keep your phone charged and call me when you need me to pick you up. That kind of thing.
Having week longs drama forbidding a game that everyone else plays is just not on the map.
It's more the nickle and diming people hate, not the actual gambling. And I don't know if we can or should regulate that.
But the games discourse online isn't exactly giving games like Fortnite any slack despite no longer using lootboxes for its monetization. Or on a fighter game (of which few ever used lootboxes) for offering dozens of skins.
That's the dangerous part on what to or not regulate. Do we want thr government regulating how many add-ons or cosmetics a game can sell?
Why is it different?
Having safer defaults is fine, but why is there no way for alternatives to exist? (30% of all revenue is why BTW)