With governments in many countries questioning the practice of loot boxes in gaming, the ESA has announced three major platform holders, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, have committed to disclose the odds before a customer purchases a loot box, or a ‘surprise mechanic’ as EA would say.
This commitment will reach further than only their first party games. Third party games such as Overwatch, FIFA and Call of Duty will not be affected immediately, but new games or additions will have to disclose odds for loot boxes. According to Gamesindustry.biz Apple already mandated this for the iOS platform and Google has started to mandate this on the Google Play platform earlier this year.
Among the publishers that have pledged to release the loot box disclosure odds are Electronic Arts, Blizzard Activision, Take-Two, Ubisoft and many more.
Missing publishers from this list, who are member of the ESA, are Epic Games, Riot Games, Tencent, Square Enix and others. It’s still possible these companies will follow suit. The platform holders are targeting to implement these policy changes in 2020.
