New loot box transparency guidance in the UK – is it game-changing?

gamesindustry.biz:

On 18 July 2023, the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) announced the latest set of guidance on the use of loot boxes in video games, coordinated by trade body UKIE and comes as the result of the Technical Work Group that DCMS convened at the end of last year.

The guidance makes some fairly uncontroversial recommendations around improving transparency standards and information sharing which we expect will not create substantial new compliance challenges for most businesses. However, it also establishes a number of new and more ambitious requirements, particularly on the topic of age-gating and age assurance, which could have more dramatic implications for issues of children's privacy and online safety.

Many of the UKIE's 11 industry principles that form the centre of the guidance focus on improving transparency standards surrounding loot boxes in video games. In particular, these include (among others):

In a similar vein, Principles 2 and 10 focus on providing parents and players with "information about how to play responsibly," "manage their spending effectively," and "driving awareness" of what tools and technological controls are available to manage this.

This is an approach that we have already seen adopted in other jurisdictions. China, for instance, has required such disclosures since 2017, with Taiwan following suit last year, and a similar law will be coming into effect in South Korea from early 2024.

However, in all these instances, the practical impact of the provisions seems to have been limited by the lack of requirements around the methodology for complying with this mandate, i.e. without specific prominence or placement requirements for the disclosures, it is simple enough to just tuck