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Yup! Outright illegal.
It has nothing to do with age. Valve, game developers and the publishers can put all the age verification they want in there, it doesn't change that lootboxes are banned for everybody here.
It wouldn't surprise me if they started being deprecated as a monetisation schemes by AAAs in a short-medium timeframe.
The new Overwatch has already completely removed them, for example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6qN4JdylXM
Those sound like some pretty anti-anti-consumer laws.
The Netherlands requires companies hold a gambling license because it makes it easier to regulate the market. Every company operating a gambling outfit has to be registered. Those licenses are gauged at a suitable cost that does not bar any company serious about its affairs from being able to afford one, while preventing frivolous fly-by-night operations from doing so.
The proceeds from these flow back into financing the regulators and contributing to aid; recovery; and awareness programs for gambling addiction. Pretty sure the 'for profit' part is immensely slim; if it's not just an outright net loss.
Wrong.
Any company wanting to use lootbox monetiziation could register for a gambling license, and it would be perfectly legal for them to use lootboxes. They would just have to comply with gambling legislation and conditions of their license in the process.
One important part of that is that they have to follow legal set standards for accurately ascertaining the identity and age of their users and only allowing play by those that are of adult age. (Yes; real world identity is required.)
Other than that, it limits them in when; how; and how much they are allowed to advertise their services and it requires that they follow certain other procedures that demonstrate proper customer care, such as monitoring for and protecting against excessive use and employing expenditure ceilings that prevent players from spending beyond what the average person could reasonably be understood to be able to afford on e.g. a weekly or monthly basis.
There is no ban on lootboxes in the Netherlands.
There is a ban on unregulated games of chance.
And some types of lootboxes, in particular those where the random earnings can be converted back into real world value, i.e. where the outcome has monetary value, are classified as games of chance.
Regulated games of chance are still allowed.
They simply require a license, which - as explained in my earlier post - comes with some requirements attached. One of which being an age check to ensure players are of adult age.
Under France's gambling legislation the lootboxes were labeled a game of chance because the contents of the box were unknown prior to opening the box. The X-ray scanner was created specifically to skirt that condition. Players will know what is in the container, but are at that point required to open that one container, because they can't use the scanner again on another container, until it has been opened.
In effect, the moment of the gamble has just been cleverly shifted around, which allows Valve to weasel the legal definition.
Also, personal opinion: there has to be something profoundly wrong with your moral compass if you think well-meant consumer protection legislation is a 'flawed argument' that requires companies 'doing a workaround.'
The gambling license in the Netherlands applies at the level of the operator running the actual games. Not at the level of the individual games or at the level of the technical developer that built the games.
So it would apply to the publisher as a whole. However, before you are allowed to bring a new game online, that game does have to be individually approved. So while the license is held by the organization; approvals are handled at the level of individual games.
If you're capable of grokking Dutch, or can get Google Translate to do it for you:
https://kansspelautoriteit.nl/voor-zakelijke-aanbieders/online-kansspel/
Sadly, there isn't a functioning English alternative for that page.
(Yes; really. I don't get it either.)
Publishers said 'Nah. and just cut it out from those regions. That's how it goes m8.
Sure; you do you and keep holding on to that gross oversimplification if you want.
In the Netherlands, regulations dictate that the funding for gambling-addiction therapy must come from taxing gambling businesses.
The special tax is applied to registered products under properly licensed businesses.
...do I have that right?
By the looks of it, they're not even assuming that gambling always leads to addiction, they just want the thing which is a health issue for some people to be funded by the businesses that are profiting off of the health-risk. Frankly, there are similar regulations for alcohol-sales and sobriety programs in America, just no one really bothers to educate themselves on these matters.
If government wants something cut then they'll just ban it outright, like how most controlled substances are illegal in America, but yet alcohol is still permitted to be sold, often just requiring special licenses & the businesses which provide it to customers pay a special tax on alcohol sales. ...so clearly they don't just "want it cut".
To want 'a cut' is a saying meaning you want a piece of the pie; you want 'in on the money'; etc. Start_Running is of the belief that governments wanting a cut is somehow a big part of the motivation for having these taxes and gambling licenses.
But yeah; like I mentioned; taxation on gambling proceeds as well as the costs of gambling licenses are there mainly to fund regulators and aid programs for the damage gambling does.
With the cost of those things; as well as the cost on society for personal bankruptcies following from gambling addiction gone wrong, it'd have to be nothing short of a miracle for those to actually be anything but a net loss.
Those taxes and license costs just go to a partial recoup of losses brought on by the impact of the industry itself. Yeah; in a way, governments 'want a cut' ... in the sense that they want the industry to pony up the dough for what they themselves brought on. But not in the classic sense of looking for easy money.
Not saying some of those taxes aren't put to good use but at the end of the day. it's about Lucre.
If there was no money changing hands the same mechanics, that triggers the same brain response, with the same items.. would miraculously not be considered gambling.
Games of chance in the Netherlands require that there is actual real world monetary value on the earnings/winnings somehow, because legislation traditionally recognizes that as the only form of value that players would gamble over. Leaving games that don't involve monetary gains out of it prevents e.g. a friendly game of poker with chips among friends, from being officially classified as a game of chance and being regulated.
At least that was the going theory.
But then we got loot boxes in digital gaming.
And legislators are now figuring out and learning the hard lesson that in the digital landscape, there are compelling forms of value other than money, which may spur players to gamble onward.
In other words:
This is not a matter of government not caring about gambling where no money is involved, because there is no money to be had there through taxation.
This is a matter simply of the law being behind the digital times. As is fairly usual as far as legislation and the digital landscape goes.
Several political parties in the Netherlands are afaik cooperating and are in the process of drafting updated laws that can cover these new angles. But as with all things legislative; this moves at a glacial pace.
It's one of those 'monkey paw wishes' where gamers wished one thing with an outcome in mind, but reality brought a different outcome. Which is what happened here.
Goverments weren't going to achieve a banishment of lootboxes. They weren't going to go full 'YOU SHALL NOT PASS' Gandalf on lootboxes. What was going to happen was what happened here, a regulation of lootboxes. A 'If you wanna do lootboxes you're going to do it this way and comply with A, B and C'.
And taxation is (almost always) a part of regulations.
So while Start Running's sentence can be an oversimplification, it's one that's going to be widely perceived. Because 'I asked your help to ban lootboxes, they're still here and all you've done is to tax them, you bastards.'
Yeah DIablo did the world dirty on that one. Though one might say Pokemon and sports trading cards beat them to it. :P.
Because as said. No exchange of value shall go untaxed.
Kinda like how governments on national and even regional levels are slowly slapping taxes on goods sourced on line. :P