Loot boxes continue to be a topic of significant controversy within the video game industry. Despite recent findings by various governments, particularly in Europe, that loot boxes are a form of gambling. Yet loot boxes and similar types of microtransactions continue to be widespread and massively popular. That kind of saturation has an impact, and a new study shows just one way that impact is material. According to the UK’s Gambling Health Alliance, one in ten young gamers has gone into debt buying loot boxes.
The Gambling Health Alliance is a faction of over 30 different charities and organizations lending their support to the alliance’s goals. Specifically, the GHA seeks to address social, economic, and cultural factors that contribute to gambling harm and the resulting health inequalities caused by it. To that end, the GHA issued a study into the financial impact of loot boxes on children and young people. The study surveyed gamers between the ages of 13 and 24, inquiring about their experiences with loot boxes.
Analysis of its survey has led to several key points that the GHA felt deserving of being recognized. For example, 23% of those surveyed between 11 and 16 years old have paid money to open a loot box already. That aligns with a separate study that found 27% of 11-to-14-year-olds had purchased loot boxes, and that 40% of young people had done so, too. In other words, loot boxes are reaching game players at a very young age, and that number grows rapidly year-by-year.
Further, of young gamers, one in four said that they spend over £100 on average over the course of a game. To pay for that, 15% say they’ve taken money from their parents without permission, 11% say they’ve used their parents’ credit card or borrowed money from family or friends to do so, and 9% say they’ve borrowed money that they couldn’t repay. Considering only a portion of young gamers have purchased loot boxes, the fraction going into debt to do so is significant.
Young gamers are also surprisingly aware of the risks of loot boxes, too, it seems. 24% of those surveyed said they “felt addicted to loot boxes,” that they felt “cheated or ripped off.” Further, 31% said they “struggled to keep track of how much they spent on loot boxes” and 33% said they “did not feel in control of their spending on loot boxes.” While loot boxes may not impact the majority of young game players significantly, it is impacting the minority profoundly. Loot box addiction and symptoms of addiction were claimed even among young ages.
One final detail worth calling attention to is just how widespread loot box-style microtransactions are in gaming. GHA says that loot boxes appear in 70% of the most popular games on Steam, as well as 60% of the top mobile games on Google Play and the Apple App Store. Further, they are increasingly lucrative for major publishers, making up between 11% and 33% of annual sales for Activision Blizzard, Take-Two Interactive Software, and Electronic Arts. In other words, this issue will only grow in gravity in the future.
Source: Gambling Health Alliance
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