Irish Government Doesn't See Loot Boxes As Gambling, Won't Take Legal Action

Perhaps it's no surprise that a country synonymous with "luck" would give loot boxes the OK. That's the report from website Irish Legal News, which states that the government of Ireland won't be pursuing legal action against loot boxes, whose implementation it describes as "normal consumer law," and not gambling.

Those words come from David Stanton, minister of state in the Department of Justice, who seemed to narrowly define gambling as something that you could win money from. As such, loot boxes that only offer in-game items "are essentially a commercial or e-commerce activity." The DoJ, he said, "does not have a role to regulate game developers on how their games work nor, in the offering of in-game purchases."

This comes despite the recent statement from several European countries, Ireland included, that a committee of gambling regulators would "address the risks" of loot boxes in video games. As Stanton said, that declaration "does not have legal effect" but instead indicated that the countries involved are in discussion regarding the loot-boxes-as-gambling question. At least in Ireland, that discussion seems to be closed for the moment.