Yeah, some sort of mandatory discloser would, I think, be sufficient. So when my theoretical future children bug me for a game, I can more easily determine not to do so.
Maybe something like "gambling elements" automatically boosts a game's rating to teen? Though I don't get a sense pre-teens buying loot boxes is in any way the core of the issue people have with loot boxes.
Basically, legally force everyone to do a better version of Blizzard's lootbox model, which is already one of the better ones. Would limit design for grindfests that let you pay instead of sinking a ton of time in, but if the playtime is large enough to be cumbersome to fitting the legislated range's "best deal" limit, they probably deserve the potential profit of using a lootbox system being gutted. They can also still just go with direct item sales, which would be untouched by this, so pay-to-win garbage just needs to stick to in-your-face item sales.
The legal system just simply doesn't have the agility, reaction time or expertise to achieve this desired result in this manner. Lots of rule lawyering would ensue, and the likes of EA or Activision can afford lots of good lawyers.
For one that's something that lawmakers may actually be able to write as a law without screwing it up in a dozen ways, and having it become obsolete in a few months anyway as the worst offenders refit their predatory monetisation schemes to technically fit within the law, as the politicians pat themselves on their backs and prepare campaign ads on how they have solved the problem.
That's a much more pragmatic reason i think, applying regardless of how anti regulation on principle one is.
What about someone who didn't know in advance? Perhaps they just don't follow online gaming news media, and maybe they have a relative who likes Star Wars and video games.
That's probably the biggest problem here, one not directly favoring or disfavoring regulations... But the fact is that the gaming industry offenders under the predatory monetisation scheme are greatly benefitting from information superiority. They have quality experts, studies, and even individual data on how their customers work...
But most customers have little idea about how these games work, doubly so before purchasing them, which makes them unable to make informed decisions on whether they are worth buying. Worse yet, they have bad information, from the industry's own advertising, or the lackey industry press that's more interesting in helping them as an auxiliary PR department as long as they get to push cultural marxism with that platform as a side hobby...
Yeah, many people here can say that it's not a problem, because in their case it's true. They are adults or older teenagers, decently informed on the gaming industry and its practices, not having a clinical gambling problem, and are possibly even conscious about what games they like and how to find less well known ones that fit the bill and aren't plagued by this kind of shenanigans.
But the fact is that people swayed by pretty graphics, cool trailers and over the top advertising slogans exist, there are many of them, and their very existence does affect the market. It makes all those abovementioned game industry experts focus on thinking up the most effective ways to separate these fools from their money rather than you know, make good games reasonably cheaply. It's a terrible influence on the state of the art, leading to the inevitable conclusion of games being designed around best compatibility with monetisation schemes, grindfests designed by people who have carefully studied interesting psychological concepts like the
Skinner Box.
So, who's going to do the work of informing the customers which products are properly designed, and which are just fool-money separators disguised as videogames, whether high or low budget? Certainly not the industry press, they tend to be worse than useless in this regard.
One solution worth considering would be some kind of publicly known industry association/organisation run by gamers and/or honest journalists which would review monetised games on these things and provide some concise, informative statements on them, up to and including putting them on a wall of shame even if they are a huge AAA studio that bribes all the industry press with access, paid vacation or other favors. The problem is that such organisation would need lots of public trust, which would not only require time, but unlike the existing ones, it would absolutely need to keep both industry people and unrelated ideology pushers out, because both would friggin love to co-opt such an organisation for their own respective goals the moment it acquires the tiniest smidgeon of trust.
