Loot Boxes and Gaming: A Gateway to Gambling for Young People?

Loot boxes — in-game purchases that offer a randomised reward, common in many popular video games — have become one of the most debated topics in gambling research, precisely because of how closely they resemble traditional gambling mechanics, while sitting largely outside formal gambling regulation.

How they work

Players typically spend real or in-game currency for a chance at a randomised reward, often with different tiers of rarity and desirability, without knowing in advance what they’ll receive. This structure — paying money for an uncertain, variable outcome — mirrors the core mechanic of gambling products like slot machines, drawing on the same variable-reward psychology discussed earlier in this series.

Feature	Loot boxes	Traditional gambling (e.g. slots)
Payment for uncertain outcome	Yes	Yes
Variable, unpredictable reward	Yes	Yes
Real-money value of outcomes	Often present (via trading/resale)	Always present
Age restriction	Frequently absent or inconsistent	Legally restricted to 18+ in the UK
Regulatory classification	Largely outside gambling law (under review)	Fully regulated as gambling

Why this matters for young people specifically

Loot boxes often appear in games that children and teenagers play. This means many young people encounter gambling-like reward systems before they reach the legal gambling age. Research has linked loot box spending with symptoms of problem gambling. However, researchers still study the exact relationship. Loot boxes might contribute to later gambling problems. Alternatively, people already drawn to gambling-like behaviour might also spend more on loot boxes.

Normalisation of chance-based spending

Regular engagement with loot boxes may normalise the psychological experience of paying for uncertain outcomes from an early age, potentially making formal gambling products feel more familiar, or less inherently risky, later on.A teenager who has spent years buying randomised in-game rewards may develop a different attitude towards chance-based spending than a peer without that experience. We still need more research to confirm this effect. However, early exposure can influence later risk in other addictive behaviours, so researchers consider the possibility worth examining.

Financial risk within games

Loot box spending can escalate quickly, particularly because in-game currencies obscure the real-money cost — a system where £50 becomes “5,000 gems,” for instance, can make cumulative spending considerably harder to track intuitively than direct currency transactions. Some games also use similar psychological techniques to those found in gambling products more broadly: near misses on rare item reveals, escalating rarity tiers designed to encourage repeated attempts, and time-limited offers designed to create urgency around a purchase decision.

The secondary market complication

In some games, players can trade, sell or exchange loot box contents for real money through third-party marketplaces. Game publishers may not officially approve these transactions. This effectively creates a real-money value for what began as an in-game randomised reward, further blurring the line between gaming mechanics and genuine gambling — and in some specific cases involving real-money trading of randomised outcomes (such as certain “skin gambling” sites), has already attracted direct regulatory attention as unlicensed gambling.

Regulatory status in the UK

In the UK, loot boxes have historically sat outside formal gambling regulation, though this has been the subject of ongoing government review and industry self-regulation efforts, given growing evidence of their gambling-like structure. Some game developers have introduced measures such as spending controls and clearer probability disclosures. However, most of these measures remain voluntary rather than legally required. Practices also vary widely across the games industry.

What parents and guardians can do

• Check age ratings and loot box content descriptors (now commonly included on packaging and storefronts) before purchase
• Use built-in parental controls on consoles, PCs, and app stores to restrict or monitor in-game spending
• Talk openly with children about how loot boxes work and why they’re specifically designed to feel exciting, in terms they can understand
• Set clear spending limits and require explicit permission for any in-game purchases, rather than allowing saved payment details to enable frictionless spending
• Review purchase history periodically together, treating it as a normal conversation rather than a punitive check

 

Loot boxes don’t inevitably lead to gambling problems, but the structural similarity is significant enough that awareness — for parents, educators, and young people themselves — is a sensible precaution, particularly given how early this exposure can now begin, often years before any formal gambling education takes place.