One of the more interesting legal questions to arise from microtransactions concerns ‘loot boxes’.
Microtransactions (payments of real money within a game for items, benefits, downloadable content, etc) first gained popularity as a method of monetising so-called ‘freemium’ mobile app games. They have now become a feature of triple-A games, including Overwatch, Star Wars: Battlefront II (however temporarily), FIFA 2017 and Call of Duty: WWII and account for billions in sales worldwide. Games publisher Ubisoft recently announced that for the first time, in 2017, it made more from microtransactions than from sales of its titles.
