The State of New York's attorney general, Letitia James, has officially taken gaming giant, Valve, to court in a state court in Manhattan, alleging that the combination of games like Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, and Dota, wherein players can earn and use real money to buy loot boxes, and Steam's Community Market, where rare skins and items can be sold, often for exorbitant prices, amount to "quintessential gambling." There are reports of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins selling for as much as $2.5 million, with the game touted as having the biggest in-game economy of any video game. Valve previously adjusted the way it presented loot boxes and their rewards to players, seemingly specifically to avoid EU gambling regulations.

The lawsuit, spotted by Reuters, alleges that "Valve's loot boxes are particularly pernicious because they are popular among children and adolescents," going on to state that these mechanics put children at risk of becoming addicted, with the complaint adding that children are four times more at risk of becoming addicted to gambling in adulthood if they are exposed to gambling before the age of 12. The lawsuit seeks restitution for players and a fine of three times Valve's earnings from any activities deemed to be illegal. Loot boxes are largely looked down on by gamers and lawmakers alike, because players are encouraged to spend money on them, and they provide no guarantee of any return or specific value. If James succeeds against Valve in the lawsuit, it could set a precedent that may result in sweeping changes across both Steam and the gaming industry at large.

Roblox has long had faced complaints and legal issues over child safety issues, and the gaming platform's latest attempt to quell those complaints was to add AI-powered facial age estimation to match users in chat with those of a similar age. In a recent interview with The New York Times to discuss these new safety features, Roblox CEO, David Baszucki, addressed questions about the future of the UGC gaming platform. Much of the early conversation revolved around the new safety features and how they would affect the users of Roblox, especially minors, but when asked about potentially adding features like microtransactions, lootboxes, and "kid gambling" to Roblox in the future, Baszucki explained that he thinks "we would have to do that."

After a bit of push back from the journalist conducting the interview, Baszucki continues to say that he thinks it's "a brilliant idea if it can be done in an educational way that's legal," without trying to get children financially involved in gambling, but still mimicking the actual mechanics. There is research to indicate that gambling mechanics in video games are linked to addiction in adulthood, especially when elements of real gambling situations—casino sounds or visuals, for example—are employed. That said, most video game loot box systems that have been the focus of research contain a monetary element as well. Aside from the addictive aspects of loot boxes in gaming, microtransactions themselves are often seen as manipulative and potentially predatory.

A U.K. House of Lords empowered committee called for video games with loot crates (aka loot boxes) to be classified as games of chance and "immediately" brought under the country's stringent gambling regulations under the Gambling Act 2005. "If a product looks like gambling and feels like gambling, it should be regulated as gambling," the committee says in its report, cited by the BBC. "The government must act immediately to bring loot boxes within the remit of gambling legislation and regulation," stated one of its members.

The report has sparked a debate in the U.K. about whether the Gambling Act 2005 is up to the task when dealing with contemporary and new forms of gambling, especially one with potentially billions of Pounds in market size. Lord Michael Grade, chair of the committee, in an interview with the BBC highlighted how several other countries already identify loot crates as a form of gambling as "they can see the dangers" which is teaching "kids to gamble." He argued that the Gambling Act can regulate video game loot crates without needing any legislation in the way of amendments.

According to Belgium's VTM Nieuws, the Chancellor Commission from that country has opened an investigation into both Overwatch and Star Wars Battlefront II loot crates, so as to rule whether or not these constitute gambling. Loot boxes being compared to gambling isn't a new debate, but up until now, a clear ruling that characterizes loot crates as such still hasn't made its way onto the courts or commissions that have been looking into these issues. That loot crates and other microtransactions are resounding successes in ever increasing monetization of game experiences is no secret: Digital River has released a report that stated microtransactions and the whole "Games as a Service" model has tripled the industry's value.

EA has been receiving a lot of flak for the way they implemented their loot boxing mechanics in Star Wars Battlefront II, which has led to repeated cycles of posturing, bullying, and ultimately some small steps backward for the company, regarding its initial stance on Battlefront II's specific implementation. Already has the company decreased costs for unlocking characters in-game, though some are reporting that for players to unlock everything the $60 game supposedly offers, they'd have to play it for at least 4,528 hours - or pony-up $2,100 to unlock all the base content.