Two Parisian lawyers, Karim Morand-Lahouazi and Victor Zagury, are taking on the gaming giant, in an effort to highlight the risks attached for players of FIFA Ultimate Team.
This game mode has been part of FIFA since their 2009 version, and in France alone makes EA hundreds of thousands of Euros a year. The legal duo are arguing that in order to win in this game mode, you have to pay and gamble, spending money on FIFA card packs that could include any player available in the game.
Zagury explains further: "In this game, everyone wants to have a dream team to go as far as possible. My client spent €600 in five months without ever getting a big player. The developers of this game mode have created an illusionary and particularly addictive system. The more you pay, the more you have the possibility of getting big players. We believe that a gambling game has been integrated into this video game because buying packs is nothing more than a bet. It is the logic of a casino that has entered their homes.Today, an 11 or 12-year-old teenager can, without any restriction, play FUT and commit money because there is no parental control system in this mode. Belgium and the Netherlands have already taken up this issue."
By filing this suit, the two lawyers are hoping to be able to gain insight into "the algorithm which generates the distribution of player cards in packs."
Source:
Original source (French)
Guardian comment piece on the story:
These card packs, along with several other paid-for "loot boxes" (randomly assigned in-game benefits) are banned in the Netherlands and Belgium already, and if this ruling goes against EA in France, it could lead to an EU-wide ban. It's something that has EA worried, seeing as 20%, or £850m, of EA's net revenue came from selling Ultimate Team packs in 2018. It's big business. In this case it has impacted a 32-year-old, but as many horror stories from parents will tell you, it has also affected young, impressionable children who don't see in-game purchases as spending "real" money and put their parents into huge, spiralling debt.
I saw the Guardian piece and thought it was interesting, given the size of the French market compared to Belgium and the Netherlands, where various lootboxes etc are already banned. An EU-wide ban on the mechanics could follow this ruling if (and I realise that's a big if) it goes against EA, which could have large knock-on consequences on including lootboxes in games releasing in western markets first place, rather than just removing them for one or two countries.
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