News business Lootboxes: Brazil will launch an investigation to ban them

At the heart of controversy since 2017, lootboxes are new in the sights of a country. After the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, Brazil launched an investigation to ban them.

Following the recommendation of ANCED (The National Association for the Defense of Children and Adolescents), the Brazilian authorities have launched an investigation aimed at banning loot boxes in the country. The association explains that the monetization of this random mechanism is akin to betting, some forms of which are prohibited in Brazil (such as poker or bingo for example, but not sports betting). In the eye of the investigation, companies like Activision, Electronic Arts, Konami, Nintendo, Riot Games, Ubisoft, Tencent, or even Valve are involved in the sale of these lootboxes.

In 2018, lootboxes were already the subject of a measure in Belgium: publishers had to remove all micro-transactions involving real money with these “loot boxes”. Please note, only operations involving real money have been deleted and it is still possible to obtain them by gaining a level in Overwatch for example. On the German side, the government has decided to review the classification (the PEGI) of games including the monetization of lootboxes.

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