On March 9th, the Dutch Administrative Jurisdiction Division explained that Electronic Arts had not broken the country’s gambling laws by allowing the purchase and use of lootboxes in the wildly-popular FIFA franchise. This decision overturns a ruling made in 2020 that fined the company more than $11 million.
A Netherlands District Court had initially sided with the Netherlands Gaming Authority two years ago. According to Gamesindustry.biz, the organization said, “that people could profit from FIFA Ultimate Team cards and could ignore the game itself while playing the Ultimate Team packs as its own title.” However, the Dutch Administrative Jurisdiction Division has changed its tune.
“The vast majority of packs are obtained by and used for game participation,” the Dutch Administrative Jurisdiction Division said. “The tradability of the packs on the black market is relative. The black market mainly focuses on trading complete accounts rather than individual packs or their contents. They are not a game of chance and do not require a license.”
The Profit‘s Take:
This is an interesting one. This basically gives EA free reign to do whatever it wants with lootboxes on a global scale. They’re totally going to take advantage of this. They are the masters of lootboxes.
(All information was provided by Gamesindustry.biz)
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