How Gambling Took Over the Gaming Industry

Published: September 12, 2024

How Gambling Took Over the Gaming Industry

By Movieguide® Contributor

The current industry standards for the gaming world push players to develop addictions and spend hundreds of dollars through predatory monetization practices.

With the online integration of nearly every modern video game,

Gone are the days of games being a one-time purchase as there are now online integrations of nearly every modern video game. Many popular games now include systems that allow developers to extract hundreds of dollars from everyday players.

The most egregious practice is loot boxes, which offer players a chance to roll the dice and potentially receive a new cosmetic experience or enhanced gameplay. However, because no specific reward is ever guaranteed, players often have to open hundreds of loot boxes to collect the most elusive rewards, spending copious amounts of money in the process.

While minors are protected from traditional gambling, these gambling-like practices that pervade the gaming industry are currently allowed to target any age. Their success at monetization has changed the gaming industry, and some major studios have become dependent on them for their business strategy.

Epic Games, for example, offers a variety of extremely popular games, such as Fortnite and Rocket League, that are free to play. Because their games are free, billions of people play them every year. However, the company can also generate billions of dollars of revenue every year, largely through proceeds from loot boxes that offer nothing more than cosmetic changes.

Because companies like Epic Games are able to make a major profit on free-to-play content, this has opened the door for gaming companies to offer subscription-based services that offer users access to hundreds of games for a low monthly fee. Xbox, for example, has its “Game Pass” service which features hundreds of the most popular games for only $9.99 per month for its most basic plan. Most of the games on the platform, however, make their money through alternative means of monetization, such as loot boxes.

While these predatory practices take a toll on players’ wallets, they also pose a major risk to users’ mental well-being. These addictive properties are largely to blame for the Gaming Addiction behavioral disorder that the WHO officially recognized in 2019. Since then, the rates of the disorder have skyrocketed as millions of young players suffer from the gambling-like features that plague the industry.

While an ongoing class action lawsuit looks to hold the major game studios accountable for creating addictive products, until that lawsuit is resolved, millions of kids will continue to suffer from the addiction created by video games.

Movieguide® previously reported:

Video games are undeniably one of the most popular forms of entertainment, however, as their popularity continues to grow, so does their negative impact on people’s lives.

The video game industry is a $200-billion-in-profits-per-year behemoth that has taken the world by storm. In the past two decades, video games have gone from a somewhat niche pastime to a leisure activity enjoyed by nearly all young people (85% of teens). However, as studios look to generate as much profit as possible, they have introduced industry norms that wreak havoc on developing brains.

Features such as loot boxes or rewards based on playtime have brought the addictiveness of video games in line with that of gambling. The impact video games have on young brains has become so pronounced that in 2019, the WHO classified a new mental disorder: “gaming disorder.”

People who suffer from this disorder forgo real-life responsibilities, such as work, eating or sleeping, in order to spend more time gaming. While the condition is often fueled by underlying problems in a person’s real life, gaming companies are nonetheless to blame for the addictive products they have created.