Deceptive advertising and its connection to unregulated gambling in the gaming industry

Streaming and on-demand entertainment content on new media platforms exposes viewers to gambling as influencers leverage audience’s trust within an insufficiently regulated industry. This article covers instances of influencers directing undisclosed endorsements for gamer gambling services to their audience, highlighting the presence of both inherent risk and of the need to regulate. On regulation, this article provides an evaluation of the regulatory framework already in place and whether consumers are sufficiently protected against deceptive advertising. It establishes a connection between undisclosed endorsements and unregulated gambling, in some cases involving minors. Lastly, it provides a thorough analysis on the effectiveness of the current regulatory framework as enforced by the FTC in the US and European influencer marketing legislation. This includes a discussion on the limitations of competent authorities to regulate in time juxtaposed by the strong interests of stakeholders within the gaming industry.

Augmented and virtual reality art: a new frontier of legal protection

Augmented reality (AR) refers to a type of technology in which a digital overlay can be added to the real world in order to present the viewer with aspects of both reality and a virtual world. Virtual reality (VR) environments consist of a computer-generated, three-dimensional, virtual world. However, in contrast to augmented reality technology these environments are self-contained, and do not allow users to interact directly with the real world around them. 1 This article will explore the current status of protection for AR and VR art in relation to moral rights drawing from three jurisdictions: France, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Protecting video games against online copyright infringement: a Russian approach to site blocking

Throughout recent years Russia has developed a strong anti-piracy and site blocking laws which claim to become effective tools against an ongoing issue of video game piracy. Thousands of pirate torrent indexing websites, illegal marketplaces with unauthorized digital goods and in-game values are shut down yearly by video game right holders in order to prevent illegal content consumption. Torrent sites loose up to 90% of traffic quickly after blocking measures are implemented. However, if the law is too good to be true, it most probably is. The strict domain-specific site blocking approach has been an ongoing issue and an obstacle for right holders to tackle site blocking circumvention tools from Russia. Most pirate sites hop to a new domain name after the right holder obtains first content-removal order making it impossible to sue the website for repeated copyright infringement. The dynamic site blocking approach developed within European case law and best practices may become a potential solution to this problem.

Registered Community designs in the video game industry: a neglected yet potent tool

This article aims at demonstrating how and why registered Community designs should be integrated into the video game industry's intellectual property strategy. Although the validity of virtual designs has not yet been tested before courts, registered designs adequately address the issue of clone gaming faced by the industry. Some minor changes to the EU legal framework could contribute to balancing out the perceived legal uncertainty surrounding this intellectual property right.

Regulating loot boxes as gambling? Towards a combined legal and self-regulatory consumer protection approach

Loot boxes represent a popular and prevalent contemporary monetization innovation in video games that offers the purchasing player-consumer, who always pays a set amount of money for each attempt, the opportunity to obtain randomized virtual rewards of uncertain in-game and real-world value. Loot boxes have been, and continue to be, scrutinized by regulators and policymakers because their randomized nature is akin to gambling. The regulation of loot boxes is a current and challenging international public policy and consumer protection issue. This article reviews the psychology literature on the potential harms of loot boxes and applies the behavioural economics literature in order to identify the potentially abusive nature and harmful effects of loot boxes, which justify their regulation. This article calls on the industry to publish loot box spending data and cooperate with independent empirical research to avoid overregulation. By examining existing regulation, this article identifies the flaws of the ‘regulate-loot-boxes-as-gambling’ approach and critiques the alternative consumer protection approach of adopting ethical game design, such as disclosing the probabilities of obtaining randomized rewards and setting maximum spending limits. This article recommends a combined legal and self-regulatory approach: the law should set out a minimum acceptable standard of consumer protection and industry self-regulation should strive to achieve an even higher standard.

Should loot boxes be considered gambling or can Self-Regulation and Corporate Social Responsibility solve the loot box issue? A review of current UK law and international legislation

Loot boxes are an important form of monetization in the Video Game Industry (VGI). Loot boxes became controversial since the release of Star Wars Battlefront II in 2017 causing many jurisdictions to investigate loot boxes as a form of gambling. This article will highlight how loot boxes might be classified as a form of gambling in the UK under the Gambling Act 2005 but will examine alternate jurisdictions for guidance on the stipulation of ‘money's worth’ in section 6(5)(a) of the Gambling Act 2005 and whether money's worth has to be a quantitative amount or a more intrinsic value. This article will also examine soft law approaches in managing the loot box issue such as Self-Regulation and Corporate Social Responsibility. However, from this article one can see that the loot box issue is far from being solved and the larger issue of predatory monetization arises. This indicates even if the loot box issue is solved, users might still be harmed by the VGI using other monetization methods which are predatory and addictive.

Getting under your skin(s): a legal-ethical exploration of Fortnite's transformation into a content delivery platform and its manipulative potential*

This article investigates the ethical and legal implications of increasingly manipulative practices in the gaming industry by looking at one of the currently most popular and profitable video games in the world. Fortnite has morphed from an online game into a quasi-social network and an important cultural reference point in the lifeworld of many (young) people. The game is also emblematic of the freemium business model, with strong incentives to design the game in a manner which maximizes microtransactions. This article suggests that to properly understand Fortnite's practices – which we predict will become more widely adopted in the video game industry in the near future – we need an additional perspective. Fortnite is not only designed for hyper-engagement; its search for continued growth and sustained relevance is driving its transformation from being a mere video game into a content delivery platform. This means that third parties can offer non game-related services to players within Fortnite's immersive game experience. In this paper, we draw on an ethical theory of manipulation (which defines manipulation as an ethically problematic influence on a person's behaviour) to explore whether the gaming experience offered by Fortnite harbours manipulative potential. To legally address the manipulative potential of commercial video game practices such as the ones found in Fortnite, we turn to European data protection and consumer protection law. More specifically, we explore how the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation and Unfair Commercial Practices Directive can provide regulators with tools to address Fortnite's manipulative potential and to make Fortnite (more) forthright.