Teams urge U.S. to probe ‘loot box’ on Electronic Arts video game

WASHINGTON, June 2 (Reuters) - Shopper advocates on Thursday urged U.S. regulators to research video game maker Digital Arts Inc (EA.O) for what they are saying was the misleading use of a digital "loot field" that "aggressively" urges gamers to spend extra money whereas playing a popular soccer game.

The teams Fairplay, Heart for Digital Democracy and 13 different organizations urged the Federal Commerce Commission to probe the EA sport "FIFA: Ultimate Crew".

In the sport, gamers construct a soccer workforce utilizing avatars of real players and compete against different teams. In a letter to the FTC, the groups said the sport often costs $50 to $100 but that the corporate pushed push players to spend extra.

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"It entices gamers to buy packs looking for special gamers," stated the letter sent by these groups along with the Shopper Federation of America and Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health and others.

The packs, or loot containers, are packages of digital content sometimes bought with real money that give the purchaser a potential advantage in a sport. They can be bought with digital currency, which might obscure how much is spent, they said.

"The probabilities of opening a coveted card, akin to a Participant of the Yr, are miniscule except a gamer spends hundreds of dollars on factors or plays for thousands of hours to earn cash," the teams mentioned in the letter.

Digital Arts mentioned in a statement on Thursday that of the game's hundreds of thousands of gamers, 78% have not made an in-game purchase.

"Spending is all the time elective," a company spokesperson said in an email assertion. "We encourage the use of parental controls, together with spend controls, that are obtainable for each main gaming platform, including EA's personal platforms."

The spokesperson also stated the corporate created a dashboard so gamers would observe how a lot time they performed, what number of packs they opened and what purchases had been made.

The FTC, which fits after firms engaged in misleading habits, held a workshop on loot bins in 2019. In a "workers perspective" which followed, the company noted that video game microtransactions have grow to be a multibillion-dollar market.

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Reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington Editing by David Gregorio and Matthew Lewis

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