As it turns out, Hawaii’s plans for potential loot box legislation are turning out to be more than just a series of viral videos. State lawmakers in Hawaii have now introduced a pair of bills meant to restrict sales of “loot box games” in ways that should make publishers like EA and Activision more than a little concerned.
The proposals are pretty intense.
The first bill:
Games with loot boxes will be required to disclose that up front, and will also have to publish the exact drop rates of items in the loot boxes, similar to rules that China have passed for games like this.
The second bill:
Would flat-out bar the sale of loot box games to anyone under 21 years old. A “loot box game” is anything that offers a randomized in-game reward for real-life money.
“I grew up playing games my whole life,” said state Rep. Chris Lee of Oahu. “I’ve watched firsthand the evolution of the industry from one that seeks to create new things to one that’s begun to exploit people, especially children, to maximize profit.”
And while these are just Hawaiian bills for now, Lee says he’s been working with a number of legislators to draft similar proposals in about the half the states of the US.
Restricting the sale of loot box games to anyone under 21 would be a huge, earth-shaking deal for the current state of the AAA games market. There are few games these days that do not sell loot boxes in some form, and the law would include pretty much all of the biggest games on the market from Call of Duty to Destiny to Overwatch to PUBG to Fortnite to...really, it's harder to name games without them. And as you’ll recall, this was all sparked by Battlefront 2, which sold powerful loot boxes to players in early access before being forced to strip them out of the game before launch because of the outcry.
You’ll notice that there’s no distinction here between Battlefront 2-style “sell power” loot boxes and ones that sell cosmetic items. One fervent defense of loot boxes has been that cosmetic items don’t have in-game “value” by increasing your stats, and yet that doesn’t seem to matter to those drafting this legislation. Anything that’s a randomized reward counts, whether it’s a legendary skin that offers no power boosts, or a legendary gun that does.
This law would essentially make all of these games Adults Only (AO) and then some, the current ESRB rating that forbids sale games to those under 18, usually due to graphic violence or nudity, and nearly all retailers refuse to stock them. But in this case it’s about gambling, and in theory, we could have an entire slate of games that everyone under 21 can’t buy, making this a restriction unlike anything the industry has seen.
I’m going to hold back before I say that this is definitely going to be some industry-changing tsunami. Right now these bills are just bills, and only in one state for certain. There is a long road to go to pass these and reshape the entire industry both in the US and abroad, and I’m sure publishers will do everything in their power to push back and try to retain this incredibly profitable form of microtransactions. I also do not have faith in the ability of most US lawmakers to understand the nuances of any of this, outside of younger legislators like Chris Lee, and may just vote it down if they’re told corporations will make less money because of it and somehow it's restricting "individual liberties" or some other nonsense.
I will say, however, that this is unlike past video game legislative controversies because for the most part, the government and the public are on the same side. Unlike bills that aimed to restrict sales of games because of the wrong-headed idea that they cause real-world violence, the majority of gamers also hate exploitative loot boxes and would love to see something like this pass so that publishers were forced to rework how their rewards were distributed in games.
If somehow this did become the law of the land, I do wonder how publishers would contort themselves to try and follow the rules while still using gambling mechanics. Say you pay $5 for a specific item, but that just so happens to come with enough XP points to earn three “free” loot boxes as well, so you’re technically not purchasing outright. Or you could have a game that still uses loot boxes as a reward system, but sells pricey 2x-10x XP/currency boosts so you can earn them much, much faster. There are going to be a lot of potential loopholes unless the lawmakers think them all through.
This could end up being nothing if lobbying efforts shut it down or legislators don’t understand the need to pass this kind of legislation. Or it could end up being an enormous shift in the video game landscape like nothing we’ve seen in age. Not to oversell it, or anything, but as this process moves along, we could literally be getting close to an industry that forbids the sale of loot box-laden games to anyone under 21, an extreme measure that has the potential to shift the entire industry. This is low-key one of the most important stories in gaming right now, and we all should be watching it closely.
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