Audioboxer
Member
Daniel Zeichner, Labour MP for Cambridge, has submitted two written questions on my behalf:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she plans to take to help protect vulnerable adults and children from illegal gambling, in-game gambling and loot boxes within computer games. (link)
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment the Government has made of the effectiveness of the Isle of Man's enhanced protections against illegal and in-game gambling and loot boxes; and what discussions she has had with Cabinet colleagues on adopting such protections in the UK. (link)
These are a result of a very positive meeting I had with Daniel a few weeks ago. Some quick context:
- The goal here is to see the UK's existing gambling regulations applied to loot boxes.
- The Isle of Man is a British territory which explicitly defines in-game items as money's worth in its gambling law. It's currently the only place in the world that does so.
- In the language of parliament, both of these questions are saying "you should do this".
- Replies seem to take about a month to arrive. When one does arrive it is highly likely to be something non-committal rather than "we'll get right on it". That's OK, the point is to start the conversation.
To my knowledge this is the first time that the issue has been raised in parliament, so while this might not quite be up there with "fight them on the beaches" it is still a significant step. I'll make another post here once the replies arrive...unless of course the government acts first!
PS: If you're interested in helping raise the loot box issue further, and are a British citizen, someone else has a petition underway which is currently less than 50 signatures away from receiving a response from the government. I think we can get a few more names on there.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/76644w/my_mp_has_asked_the_british_government_to/
Sourced from reddit, but the links check out. Daniel's Twitter account if you want to forward on support/questions - https://twitter.com/DanielZeichner (keep it clean and respectful)
Comments actually funny... but kind of true, for once (nod to this).
It's a Labour MP asking these questions, our current government is Conservative led. The questions and petition will need to at least be discussed, so it doesn't matter too much an opposition MP is fronting this.
edit: Traditional website sourcing reddit ~ http://wccftech.com/british-parliamentarian-loot-boxes/