After Belgium and the Netherlands which have banned loot boxes (chests or packs containing random random objects or cards), as well as the United Kingdom and New Zealand which have requested it, it is at France’s turn to tackle this problem now. Two Parisian lawyers, Karim Morand-Lahouazi and Victor Zagury, have filed complaints with the Public Prosecutor of Bobigny and Crteil. They point the finger at the FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) game mode of the famous FIFA football simulation of the American publisher Electronic Arts, rvle The Team.
We believe that a game of chance has been included in this video game because the purchase of packs with random content is nothing more than a bet. It is the logic of the casino that is thus brought into the homes, they denounce, highlighting the risks of addiction, especially for the youngest, of this practice which allows to spend credits collected in the game. or real money.
An addictive system
My client spent 600 euros in the space of five months without ever having a major player. Developers of this mode have created an absolute illusion and a particularly addictive system. The more you pay, the more you have the possibility of finding costly players, notes lawyer Victor Zagury.
Today, an 11 or 12 year old teenager can, without any restriction, play FUT and commit money because there is no parental control system in this mode, underlines for his part Karim Morand-Lahouazi.
The algorithm which manages the allocation of these cards is an industrial secret, How to know if there is no deception on the goods? wonders a player, questioned by the Team. Electronic Arts, which since FIFA 19 displays the probabilities of the packs by showing the content that it is possible to obtain, defends the game of chance character of the Ultimate Team mode. As a reminder, all games combined, it represented 28% of the turnover of 4.9 billion dollars of EA for the 2018-2019 fiscal year.
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