Loot boxes (paid random items)

What you're actually buying

A chance at items, not the items themselves: a crate, pack or chest opened with a paid key or currency that returns something random from a table of odds. The prize may be cosmetic or, in the worst cases, gear that changes how you play.

How it works

Loot boxes combine two older ideas. DLC taught players to keep paying after the disc was sold, and gacha (paid random pulls for characters) showed that randomised rewards earn more than fixed prices. A £60 sale is one transaction, but a slot-machine mechanic inside an annual franchise keeps players spending for years, with a small minority of whales (the heaviest spenders) funding most of it. That incentive pushed design towards manufactured scarcity and grind engineered to be bought away.

When it's fine

Seldom for children. If you accept them at all, only for cosmetic-only boxes with published odds and a hard spending limit, and not in a game where they affect fairness.

Where it came from

Valve combined paid add-ons with gacha-style random draws in 2010: Team Fortress 2's Mann-Conomy Update (30 September 2010) bolted crates, paid keys and the Mann Co. Store onto an existing full-price PC game for the first time. FIFA Ultimate Team, added as a DLC mode for FIFA 09 in February 2009, grew into a mode that EA's own reporting valued at roughly $1.6 billion in net revenue for fiscal 2021, more than the base games earn. Overwatch showed that cosmetic-only boxes could earn heavily without touching balance; Middle-earth: Shadow of War let players buy past its Nemesis system; NBA 2K18 turned a basketball sim into a storefront. Star Wars Battlefront II priced Darth Vader at 60,000 credits (about 40 hours' grind), and EA's Reddit reply that this gave players 'a sense of pride and accomplishment' drew over 660,000 downvotes. EA switched off progression purchases on 16 November 2017, a day before launch. In April 2018 Belgium ruled loot boxes in FIFA, Overwatch and Counter-Strike illegal gambling. The battle pass later offered a non-random alternative.

Rules and regulation

In April 2018 Belgium's Gaming Commission ruled that loot boxes in FIFA 18, Overwatch and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive were unlicensed games of chance, making Belgium among the first governments to declare paid loot boxes illegal gambling. Publishers were reportedly threatened with fines of up to €800,000. The backlash over Star Wars Battlefront II in November 2017 came shortly before the ruling.

In Australia, since 22 September 2024, games with in-game purchases linked to chance (including paid loot boxes bought with in-game currency) can't be rated G or PG: they get at least an M. The rule isn't retrospective, so older games may still carry lower ratings.

ESRB (North America) and PEGI (Europe) added a 'paid random items' notice in April 2020. Under PEGI's updated criteria announced in March 2026, games with paid random items default to PEGI 16.

Historical prices and revenues are in US dollars at the time unless marked A$.