Pete (BlackLivesMatter) Lewin

The UK parliamentary committee 'DCMS' concludes 9 month long investigation with massive 84 page report. Key recommendation is that loot boxes should be regulated under UK gambling laws.

Important note: this does *not* mean that loot boxes are automatically outright banned. The DCMS’s finding are purely recommendations. It is ultimately up to the UK Gambling Commission (UGKC) to determine what is / isn’t gambling.

If the UKGC decides to continue holding that loot boxes are not to be regulated as gambling, DCMS recommends the UKGC issues a position paper clearly outlining how / why. The gauntlet has been well and truly dropped.

DCMS also recommends that the sale of loot boxes to children be banned outright. This isn’t surprising given the committee’s recent focus around protection of vulnerable individuals.

DCMS suggests that legislation may be required in order to prevent children from playing games that aren’t age appropriate. It’s unclear what any such legislation would actually look like or how it’d be meaningfully enforced though.

DCMS also expressed concern at the lack of verifiable / robust age-verification systems in games. That said, the UK porn-ban age gating systems aren't exactly going smoothly, so...

DCMS also recommends that PEGI should apply “gambling content” label to games featuring loot box / similar mechanics.

Finaly, DCMS floats the idea of an “industry tax” and aggregated data sharing from companies in order to fuel independent research around the long term impacts of gaming, partly influenced by WHO’s classification of “gaming disorder” earlier this year.

There's a LOT to digest here and I want to read the full report, but this is huge news. Yes it's only DCMS's recommendations at this point, so nothing immediately changes. But this is a massive, but not entirely surprising, statement and puts the UKGC under huge pressure.

Also, yes, this is just UK news. But remember, the UK is historically liberal in comparison to many other countries on gambling fronts. And what happens in the UK is often influential for policy elsewhere.

I'm going to add further thoughts to this thread throughout the day