EA has repeated a long-standing Lootbox complaint and has escaped a million sentence. While the publisher can see as a winner, Gamers must sneak out of the place after the verdict as losers.

The card packs in the Ultimate Team Mode of the FIFA series have been extremely controversial for years and are seen by many as gambling mechanics . In the Netherlands, this conception was confirmed in a judgment in 2020, but two years later, EA has won the vocation process.

FIFA: Lootboxing judgment is turned up

In 2020, a court in The Haga ruled that FIFA’s Ultimate Team Mode ruled out of the FIFA Points and Playback Packs ** against the Dutch Gambling Act.

EA challenged this judgment and has gone to vocation. In a defeat , the publisher would have had to pay 10 million euros punishment , but the highest court of the Netherlands revised the original decision. (Source: Eurogamer)

It does not handle the player’s packs for an isolated gambling, because the card packs can be released and used for the most part during the game. It is also not relevant to the FIFA games for the FIFA games is also not relevant for the Gambling Act , because in this way usually whole accounts and not individual player packs would be offered and sold. (Source: RaadvanState)

In the video we show you the biggest publisher scandals of the story:

An assessment of Gregor Elsholz
Lootboxes remain a dangerous agent in the gaming industry, with the publisher in most countries without effective restrictions to target and yield players . The normalization of this practice and the frustrating journey of regulatory authorities harm in particular vulnerable gamers and have caused a lot of financial, but above all human suffering in recent years.

The FIFA series differs in its application of the mechanics minimally from the worst representatives from the mobile gaming genre – but it is cynical to claim that the randomly assembled and real money-making card packs are not a gambling.

The entire Ultimate Team Mode is tailored to the hunt for particularly rare cards that gamers can get in many cases only through pure luck when opening special packs. The ability to acquire FIFA points against real money , so as to buy more card packs, establishes a gambling mechanism that is only with much effort or to ignore legal loopholes.