Ethereum update: Ethereum-based God’s Unchained banned for The Netherlands due to violation of gambling law (loot-box regulation)
Just sharing my findings.
Since April this year The Netherlands found some forms of loot-box mechanisms in games (like Ethereum-based card packs in Gods Unchained, and probably cryptokitties and others) to be violating gambling law and declared them illegal (read more [here](http://m.ign.com/articles/2018/04/20/the-netherlands-determines-some-loot-boxes-are-gambling)). For now, only the loot-boxes of which the content can be traded for money and therefore represent economical value are considered gambling (other aspects required to be considered gambling are that some form of chance is involved and that it needs to cost something to obtain them).
Since June they are said to be taking action against these illegal loot-box practices, like fines and prosecution (read more [here](http://m.ign.com/articles/2018/06/20/the-netherlands-starts-enforcing-its-loot-box-ban)).
As a consequence, Ethereum-based God’s Unchained is banned in The Netherlands. The official website godsunchained.com shows a blank page for everyone visiting from The Netherlands and seemingly also from public VPN services (1). First I thought the website was down or demanding browser specs I didn’t have. After contacting the GU team they told me about the ban.
Attempts are being made to have similar laws in the entire EU to protect its citizens against the addictive loot-box mechanisms on which many games are based nowadays.
Now it only affects 30M citizens (The Netherlands and Belgium), but if it will affect 750M Europeans it will have a tremendous impact on the gaming industry, including people buying TCG card packs either to play a game or in anticipation of making a profit later trading them.
Makes me wonder if they will also ban supermarkets from handing out collectible soccer cards at every 10EUR of grocery spending since people even pay money to make their collection complete, and to ban in retrospect Magic The Gathering…
Where to draw the line, regulators?
(1) Access via Tor network is possible
About Ethereum
Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference.
Author: Eik_NL
Score: 3
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