Australian Loot Box Regulation Recommended by Governement for Children

Published: March 6, 2020 1:10 PM /

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Australian Loot Box Regulation

Australian loot box regulation may be coming soon after a parliamentary committee finalized a report on the matter.

An Australian parliamentary committee has recommended that the government implement loot box regulation in the country. Specifically, the "Protecting the age of innocence" report [PDF] makes several recommendations on how to handle this issue.

The report's first recommendation on Australian loot box regulation is to have the Digital Transformation Agency and the Australian Cyber Security Centre work together to develop new standards for age verification. These standards would be used to prevent loot boxes from being purchased by minors. Their second recommendation would expand this program to create an exchange so that third parties could make use of it.

Several other recommendations are mentioned for the areas of online pornography and gambling, so this isn't solely about loot boxes. However, it does effectively include it in the same category of age-restricted material.

Australian loot box regulation

The Quick History of Australian loot box regulation

This is not the first report to come out on the matter of regulating loot boxes in Australia. A September 2018 report by the Australian Environment and Communications Reference Committee found that there isn't much in the way of legal protections or regulations for loot boxes in the country. Furthermore, it psychologically linked the microtransaction practice to gambling.

That was followed by a November 2018 report from the government recommended that there should be a "comprehensive review" of this style of microtransactions. It seems that this latest report is one of the fruits of those efforts.

Although a recommendation has been made, it's up to the sitting government to actually implement them. Loot boxes are safe in Australia for now, but that could very well change in the future.

What do you think about the proposed Australian loot box regulation? Do you think loot box purchases should be restricted to people over the age of 18? Let us know in the comments below!

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