Belgium says loot crates are gambling

Telefrog · July 24, 2019, 1:04am

Meanwhile…

YakAttack · July 26, 2019, 12:35am

Are pixels imaginary? I thought they were electricity.

Teiman · July 26, 2019, 7:20am

Parts of my mind are trained to automatically block the word “casino”. I guess is normal after years browsing the web.
I can’t believe how “in the face” is this thing GTA did. Convert real world money into chips that you can play on a virtual casino.

In japan they have pachinko machines where you buy balls for real world money, and win balls. And is not gambling because the balls have no real world value. But…

Gambling is illegal in Japan, but pachinko is regarded as an exception and treated as an amusement activity.[19] Although awarding direct money prizes for pachinko is illegal, it is possible for parlors to reward players with golden tokens which can then be sold for cash at nearby exchange centers.[20] With the growing public and political pressure in recent years, since passage of Japan’s blanket anti-gambling law in the 1990s, the police are more active in regulating parlors.[15] Retired officers often work in the pachinko parlor industry; critics have pointed out that while this has had a deterrent effect against organized crime involvement, it also means that these operators are in a strong position to influence police officers in their favor.[15]

The police tolerate the level of gambling in pachinko parlors. For example, in May 2005, a parlor in Kanagawa prefecture reported to the local police that someone had counterfeited their tokens and made off with the equivalent of US$60,000 in cash by trading them in at their nearby exchange center. Even with such information proving that this parlor was illegally operating an exchange center, which by law must be independent from the parlor, the police did not shut them both down, but instead only worked to track down the thief in question

Nesrie · July 26, 2019, 3:50pm

It’s the weirdest thing. I also found the game to be pretty boring but yeah it’s gambling even if it does require you to walk across the street to get paid.

I don’t ever remember seeing children in those buildings though. Just like I never saw children buy things they shouldn’t out of vending machines either.

Woolen_Horde · August 7, 2019, 5:19pm