Its all a slippery slope though, because legislation is unlikely to be so precisely worded that it acts as a surgical strike affecting only the worst offenders.
The question remains, how many degrees of separation does it take to make a random-reward in-game event not gambling, if there's a mtx element tangentially involved?
Bear in mind, its very difficult to legally justify an outright ban on recurrent micro-pay transactions to the extent that I'd consider it effectively impossible. So, following the logic that payment models aren't going anywhere, and neither should randomized rewards as a fundamental ludic mechanic, its all about fire-walling one thing off from the other.
It's not that you can't have micro transactions or lootboxes/random chance in your game so much; it's that companies started abusing the mechanics/rates for profit, enough to where their entire customer base finds it a controversial topic.
That's where it crosses from the territory of "Fun random chance," to "Gambling-Like-Chances." Why change your video game to more align with casino business practices?
Regardless of what you think of the characters of the people involved, on one hand you have someone who has been working in an executive level position in the games industry for many years, who has overseen numerous titles through the entire production cycle from concept to a released title, at every possible level of production value, from AAA through to self published indie.
On the other you have someone who has literally never worked on a videogame in any real capacity (no, doing some voiceovers does not lend him any insight into the process as the SAGAFTRA boyciotts showed) and who peddles
obviously false conspiracy theories demonstrating not just a lack of knowledge of the games industry, but actual
disinformation.
People who actually work on videogames say that post-release monetisation is
necessary to support the traditional gaming industry being
sustainable
People who have no expertise, professional skills, background, experience or knowledge say it is not.
If you jump to believe the second group and ignore the first group, that says something about you.
It would make sense that instead of developing into a new business model for profits, the current successful model would be downplayed as a necessity for sustainability, which is objectively not true. That's just a standard PR move; I can't think of a company who would come out and say "Oh yeah, we know our business model isn't a necissity for sustaining our company and you don't like it, but it's how we're doing business." It's going to be some spin to where they are in some sort of a positive light.
If this was the ONLY method to sustain a company in this industry, every company that didn't do it would fail. Not only this, but if this was the ONLY way, at some point laws are going to be introduced to protect that as the sustainable measure for that industry, if said industry is large and important enough. The movie industry comes to mind with how it played out in its growth.
Speaking in finites, duality, and ultimatums is an incredibly easy way to close possibilities/bring closed minded behavior and manipulate an issue. I happen to employ this tactic quite a bit.
There ARE more ways than what they are currently doing to gain profits; I do agree with people spreading false information, but it's not like businesses are some moral compass and aren't comprised of people who also have the potential for bad decision making, whether or not it's intentional.
If a large majority of your customers say that they don't like something, you WILL change parts of what's going on to still fit the business model and to sustain your customers. If not, the business WILL fail because of the "Speak with your dollars," idea. Not so much as a political thing, just as a normal "People don't buy stuff they don't like."
All in all the concept of lootboxes is not predatory in and of itself; it's when they're combined with enormous random chance does it become predatory in nature, whether or not it's intentional. I would argue it's not intentional because the concept of Snidely Whiplash type villains rubbing their grimey hands together with Scrooge McDuck proves that people have a hard time separating their own fantasies from reality.
What meeting have you EVER been to where ANYONE in management directly said "Oh yeah this is our new way of exploiting customers for profit and here's the development plan for it."?
P.S. As far as your "You shouldn't speak if you're uneducated on the issue," I agree. I'm not familiar with who you are, so I apologize if this is something you have already made clear in the past: where you do fall in the spectrum of:
People who actually work on videogames say that post-release monetisation is necessary to support the traditional gaming industry being sustainable
People who have no expertise, professional skills, background, experience or knowledge say it is not.
