Report by the Belgian Gaming Commission on loot boxes – Statement

Video Games Europe and its Belgian trade association, BEA, have several times over the past few months requested a meeting with the Belgian authorities. As such, we welcome the willingness by the Belgian authorities to now initiate a dialogue with stakeholders including ourselves. Our membership takes its responsibility towards gamers seriously and particularly when minors play games. Every platform has parental control tools installed allowing parents to control their children’s behaviour online, control spending, set and control the time spent on games and online generally, and manage the sharing of information with other players. We are currently in the process of reviewing the report which has now been published by the Belgian Gaming Commission, and would prefer not to comment at this stage.
Most countries across Europe such as Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom do not consider that loot boxes in themselves fall under the national gambling law as there are no means to convert the item(s) obtained into real money-value, i.e. where there are no cash out mechanisms present in the game.