With technology evolving so fast, gaming has changed a lot in the last two decades. We went from having a complete product delivered on a cartridge or a CD, where if the game was good, you were in for a ride, but if it turned out to be bad, you just ended up wasting your money. Now games can be released in an unoptimized state and be salvaged via updates months later.
However, unoptimized games are the least of the evils when you compare them to some other exploitative mechanics that several free-to-play games or even paid games have. One such mechanism is loot boxes, or as EA once called them, “surprise mechanics”.
When it comes down to its bare bones, the loot box system is essentially just gambling. Now, whether it should be in gaming at all can be debated depending on the game, the target audience, and other factors. However, something that should be universally agreed upon is that children shouldn’t be gambling, or in this case, opening loot boxes.
As gaming is only getting more popular by the day, many countries are taking this issue seriously. And now Brazil has also joined the fight after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva decided to sign a ban on selling loot boxes to minors.
Brazil’s Online Child Safety Laws Ban Loot Boxes For Minors
Brazil’s Congress passed Law 15.211, which “provides for the protection of children and adolescents in digital environments (Digital Statute of Children and Teenager)”, as spotted by Eurogamer.
As per our translation, Article 1 of Chapter 1 states that the law covers the “protection of children and teenagers in digital environments, and applies to any technology product or service directed at children and teenagers in the country, or which they are likely to access, independent of its location, development, manufacture, offer, marketing, and operation.”
Scrolling down further to Article 20, Chapter 7, “Electronic Games”, the text says that “loot boxes offered in electronic games targeted at children or teenagers, which they are likely to access according to the advisory rating, are forbidden.”
Article 21 expands on this by adding that games under the previous category that allow player interactions via “text, audio, video messages, or content exchanges” must observe the regulation set forth by Article 16 of Law 14.852.
As mentioned before, this isn’t the first time a country has taken such matters seriously. Not too long ago, the UK’s Online Safety Act made it mandatory for Steam to request your Credit Card to verify your age.
There was even the case of Roblox getting in Chris Hansen’s crosshairs after their CEO pitched the platform as a dating site, pushing the platform to implement new tech to verify its users’ age.
It is yet to be seen what methods Brazil puts in place for this law to be enforced, but hopefully it can achieve its goal, especially if it can do that without sacrificing the privacy of others.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
