How is this legal?: Gambling for children Edition

[Jeroen]

 

GTA World caters to minors, with rules made specifically for underage players.

GTA World predominantly has players in North America and Europe.

GTA World allows minors to purchase WorldPoints and then lets them convert these to PandaPoints, which can be used to gamble for a lootbox.

 

---

 

With much of western Europe already legislating lootboxes, I find myself unable to open CSGO lootboxes due to this. [1]

GTA:World's panda boxes or whatever they're called could be compared to lootboxes in other games, which you usually buy with some sort of currency.

 

Not only that, but you could technically speculate on the Panda Points marketplace. Which is also illegal in several countries for minors including those living in The Netherlands, with exception to explicit permissions granted by parents. [2]

 

I'm just confused to how all this even came to be, because this seems like an IRL legal fuckup. Promoting gambling to minors is a massive fuckup.

 

For the sake of keeping it simple I'm not going to take a deep dive into every gambling law in every country. Wikipedia's page on lootboxes was a start for my journey too. [3] And just because it's allowed in France for minors to gamble online doesn't mean that a French company can let children in other countries gamble on their platform.

---

Notes:

 

1: https://www.eurogamer.net/cs-go-update-blocks-players-in-netherlands-and-belgium-from-opening-loot-boxes

2: https://wetten.overheid.nl/jci1.3:c:BWBR0002656&boek=1&titeldeel=13&afdeling=1&artikel=234&z=2021-01-01&g=2021-01-01

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box#Regulation_and_legislation

[arkan]

here we go again...

[Cartoonhead]

OH WHO THE FUCK CARES DUDE. 

[Nervous]

Hi, thanks for contacting us about it instead of making a public post, we could have answered you directly.

Few points to clarify as to why our system doesn't apply to your message : 

 

1. You can get the points for free thanks to your ingame activity

2. All the rewards (except cosmetic panda titles) are directly available through direct purchases on our shop

3. The rewards are not tradeable, and thus have no market value.

 

Lootbox laws in some countries are banned when rewards have a market value, which leads to players being able to spend $ into an item that can give them more $, which is also gambling. There is no gambling if you can't get $ when spending your $. It's also why many regular video games still use lootbox, and others don't : the games that can keep it in these few countries that banned it have rewards that cannot be traded, and thus have no market value.

 

Before trying to become a wannabe lawyer, you'll want to think twice about what you're writing and do proper researches. Our own lawyer worked on the system to validate it, and if there is one day a country which has an issue with it, they'll directly contact us and you're free, as a citizen of that country, to warn them about our system so they do contact us to handle it, lawyer to lawyer.