Game news Loot boxes banned in Belgium? Genshin Impact was smarter than the others and lined its pockets!
Belgium is forcing video games to adapt to its law! Some are even banned if they don’t follow the rules, yet Genshin Impact has slipped through the cracks.
In France, loot boxes are controversial. Too addictive for some, too random for others, criticism abounds when we talk about these “slot machines” with surprise content. In my country, Belgium, we don’t have this problem. For what ? Because loot boxes are purely and simply prohibited! Overwatch or Lost Ark, many titles had to be modified in order to be released in my country. The cause: the law of April 2018 which protects minors from games of chance. This stipulates the prohibition, for those under 18 years of age, of any game which offers random content purchasable only with real money.
A little history
The April 2018 law is not new. The organization that helped create it is the Gaming Commission (CJH). This dates from 1999. At the time, you should know that all types of games of chance were formally prohibited and therefore illegal in Belgium (sports betting, lottery, etc.). Unfortunately, more and more clandestine games of chance were organized. It is in order to regulate all this that the commission was born. This organization notably participated in the ban on incentive advertising, but also in the age limit for lotteries and casinos, set respectively at 18 and 21 years in the country.
2018, a pivotal year
In Belgium, “loot boxes” are considered games of chance and titles that use them are by extension illegal. But, even if the law is only supposed to apply to minors, it is very difficult to ban anything for just one part of the population, especially when it comes to video games on phones, tablet or PC. Belgium, having neither the technologies nor the necessary means to systematically check everyone’s age, preferred to apply the ban to all inhabitants, regardless of their age.. The Gambling Commission (CJH), which seeks to protect the country’s minor players from these slot machines, has also decided to prioritize dialogue instead of starting legal proceedings against video game companies, already very anchored in Belgium. Consequently, several particularly well-known games have had to modify their operation.
Some victims of 2018
Overwatch The first of the name, for example, had to completely revise its copy, moving from a loot box system to be purchased with real money to a free “casino” via missions. But some games have decided otherwise, such as the license FIFAnow called EA sports FC. The game publisher has simply decided to remove online purchases from Belgium. Only a VPN will allow players from this country to purchase loot boxes, here in the form of packs of cards, at the heart of Ultimate Team mode.
To comply with Belgian law, two other solutions exist, but they are a little more extreme. One of them consists of ban downloading the game nationwide. This is what happened to Lost Ark, released in 2022. Despite complaints, the game was not modified and was banned in Belgium and the Netherlands. The other and last option is even simpler, but expensive. All you have to do is not change your game but pay a fine of 800,000 euros. Rocket League (to name just him) is one of those who made this choice, allowing Belgians to continue to buy loot boxes.
Protected gachas?
However, certain extremely well-known “gachas” (where the loot box principle is at the heart of the experience) have managed to circumvent Belgian law, without falling into fraud or illegality. One such game is Genshin Impact. A global video game phenomenon since the pandemic, it brings in a lot of money each month for its developer, Hoyoverse. It generated $68 million in March 2024, making it the second highest-grossing mobile game of the month. We are entitled to ask ourselves the question: did the Belgians participate in this feat? The answer is yes, because Hoyoverse has found solutions to thrive in the countrywithout paying a fine or changing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
And by some ideas, it’s actually two. The first one : a transition currency. In most games, we directly buy the loot box that interests us. But in Genshin Impact, we buy special crystals that can be used to draw a prize AND also (and this is the most important thing) packs to improve our characters or various items. For comparison, when you go to a casino, it’s as if you don’t put your coins directly into the machine and instead first buy a token valid for a set of activities.
Thanks to this, real money does not only serve the random dimension of the game. So since the game does not only sell chance, it falls into a gray area that the law does not really cover. Games like Fire Emblem Heroes or Final Fantasy: Ever Crisis do not have this more versatile purchasing system and are impossible to download in Belgium.
A crucial subtlety
The second idea, more complex, concerns the very notion of randomness in loot boxes. Indeed, a system is becoming democratized in a large number of entertainments: “Pity”. It allows players to obtain something very (very) rare in a guaranteed manner, after a certain number of draws. This number varies between games, and can even change over time via updates. For the most important loot box in Genshin, during the 80th draw, for example, you have a 100% chance of coming across a 5-star character (the rarest). The rest of the time, you only have a 0.6% chance. Note that there are several loot boxes, here called “Banners”, which each have a specific Pity.
What you have to remember is that with Pity, Genshin “breaks” the randomness of the loot box by ensuring players obtain, after a certain number of draws, the character or object they dream of. And this results in two advantages: it becomes legal in the eyes of the Belgian authorities (it is not systematically pure randomness) and, above all, it makes it a more incentive system than the average. Because yes, if you are 20 draws away from reaching the 100% chance of having five stars, are you going to put a coin back in the machine? Moreover, to take the example cited above, 80 prints does not guarantee you of winning the key character or object highlighted on each Banner. Once at 80, you have a 50/50 chance: it will either be the jackpot or another 5-star hero or item. On the other hand, if you try your luck 160 times, then you will be sure to get the ultimate reward.
This completely breaks the randomness of games of chance! Can you imagine if you were 100% sure of hitting the jackpot at the casino after spinning the roulette wheel a certain number of times? Or after such a number of poker games? Well, this is the system that Hoyoverse has chosen for its games. All these subtleties, natural for players of these titles, allowed the Chinese company to circumvent Belgian and Dutch laws.. Its latest title, Honkai Star Rail, applies these cleverly designed systems and is also available in Belgium and the Netherlands.