The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is an American regulatory organization that assigns age and content ratings to consumer video games. Today the ESRB announced a new label to indicate games that include in-game purchases of loot-boxes or similar randomized gambling items. This update will compliment the existing In-Game Purchases notice which applies to games with non-randomized purchasable items such as DLC etc.

In April 2018 the ESRB began assigning Interactive Elements to physical video games with the In-Game Purchases and Users Interact notices. The In-Game Purchases Interactive Element informs parents and other consumers of when a game offers the ability to purchase additional items without leaving the game. To provide even greater transparency about the nature of in-game items available for purchase the ESRB will now begin assigning a new Interactive Element: In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items).

Yesterday, a US senator called Josh Hawley announced a bill to legalize banning of so-called "manipulative" video game design in the United States. The decision was proposed yesterday to US Congress.

The "Protecting Children from Abusive Games Act" would prohibit all games geared towards children, that implement a "pay to win" model where a player is progressing through the game by paying for it. The Senator also added that titles with paid-for in-game awards, such as loot boxes, are supposed to get banned. For overseeing and enforcing the ban, the Federal Trade Commission would be in charge. The FTC in-turn would hire state attorneys to prosecute companies violating the ban.

This has been a long time coming for sure: the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is looking to launch an investigation into the practice of introducing loot boxes in video games. The issue has already been brought up numerous times in other countries around the globe (Belgium and the Netherlands being the most prominent ones against its implementation). Only now will the FTC investigate openly into this, though, following an official request by Senator Maggie Hassan during a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation subcommittee hearing.

Well, well, well. It was only a few days ago that we reported how 2K was being brazen about asking their game players to talk to the Belgian government about keeping loot boxes in their NBA series and turns out Electronic Arts (EA) decided they could do one worse. Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad published a story on how the Belgian Gaming Commission is preparing to take a legal stance against EA for refusing to remove loot boxes from FIFA 18 wherein their game buyers could purchase player packs with real money and not know what they receive in return. As if that was not bad enough, EA has doubled down with FIFA 19 by having the same "feature" again but with an increased roster to further tune the loot box chances against the customer. Andrew Wilson, the CEO of EA, commented that these loot boxes are not gambling as players know exactly how many objects they receive.

As it stands, the Belgian Gaming Commission has sent an official report to EA about their refusal to comply with the act that has been ratified since. The report states that anyone who does not conform will face the risk of legal prosecution, and it is now up to the Brussels public prosecutor's office to decide whether or not they want to charge EA accordingly. EA, meanwhile, is prepared to fight this in court and a judgement here would set a massive precedent to what is allowed in game microtransactions in the future. EA remains the only major game publisher to not make changes as directed, with Valve, Activision Blizzard and 2K, having done so before- albeit begrudgingly in some cases. Loot boxes contributed a major part of EA's annual revenue last year, with some citing online sales to be as much as 67% (which includes other forms of purchases, not just microtransactions). No wonder then that EA would like to keep milking this cow as much as they can, even if that means less milk to everyone else.

In a bold, bold move that is already backfiring on them, games publishes 2K put out a statement clarifying their stance on the Belgian Gaming Commission (BGC) ruling against the specific loot box implementations on multiple games. In particular, the gaming commission made it clear that loot boxes were against the gambling laws of the country and several game publishers quickly complied, including Valve with CS:GO. 2K's NBA 2Kxx series (where xx is the year of the current decade) was one of the affected titles, with the "MyTeam" packs using a loot box-based mechanism for microtransactions.

The statement put out says that 2K is working to comply with the ruling and have made changes to the MyTeam mode, but they also disagree with it and are going to be, and I quote, "continuing conversations with the BGC in order to explain our view" to get around the ruling. Furthermore, they are actually asking players to contact their local government representatives, assuming they share this view, to try and get BGC to allow the old loot box system to be placed back in. To no one's surprise, 2K is collecting a ton of flak for this and we can only hope that fans of the NBA 2K franchise vote with their wallet and let the publisher know exactly what they feel about all this.

After the media coverage and customer response to some of the latest games to ship with the current gamers industry parasite of microtransactions or loot crates, it's only fair for media outlets to provide coverage for known companies that might take up that path, but choose not to. There's nothing inherently wrong with microtransactions, per se - it's up to each user to choose whether or not they want to take part in that particular economic bit of gaming. That said, it's just the way of the beast that microtransactions' implementation usually end up affecting progression systems and the ability for players to unlock what would otherwise be behind a paywall - just ask Destiny 2 or Star Wars: Battlefront 2 players. But while microtransactions of some kind may not have anything inherently wrong with them, loot boxes, by their very nature, actually might.

As such, here's some free coverage for Obsidian Entertainment, makers of Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas, Tyranny, and Pillars of Eternity 2: the company has said in a blog post that users should not, will not, can not expect any kind of microtransactions whatsoever to appear in their upcoming, super secret game, being developed in partnership with publisher Private Division. Obsidian's "emoney" said that "We're extremely excited about our upcoming RPG, and we know you are too. We wish we could tell you all about it right now… but we're going to hold off until the time is right. What we did want to talk about was a question a lot of you have been raising: "Will this upcoming game feature any lootboxes or other microtransactions?" To which he added: The answer is simply: "no." No microtransactions, of any kind, in our game." For me, that's one point more for Obsidian (whose Tyranny was actually amazing, in this editor's humble opinion). Vote with your wallet and all that.