It's 2018 now, and the loot boxes story isn?t going away. Now, Washington State lawmakers have joined the fray and are digging deeper in an effort to determine whether loot boxes are a form of gambling targeting children. According to a recent news story, Senator Kevin Ranker, a Democrat representing Orcas Island, introduced a bill that asks state officials and game developers to figure out whether loot boxes and other similar game mechanics are nothing more than a form of gambling that takes advantage of children. Ranker said that the industry needs to figure out how to regulate loot boxes because it's unacceptable to have "predatory gambling masked in a game with dancing bunnies or something" (I'm pretty sure those bunnies feel unfairly singled out right now).
This latest move is just one in a series of US and European efforts to tackle what many see as a definite shift in the industry towards reliance on loot boxes. After the huge debacle with Star Wars Battlefront II, which was accused of going way overboard with its use of loot boxes and had to pull them from the game completely prior to launch, the legal landscape is ripe for moves such as the one by Ranker. In addition to Ranker, a lawmaker in Hawaii proposed banning the sale of games containing loot boxes to anyone under 21, and Belgium's government is currently investigating the nature of loot box mechanics and whether they should be classified as gambling or not.
Apple itself, as we wrote a few weeks b...