An Australian committee is expected to make a series of recommendations pertaining to loot boxes. The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs is planning the introduction of new restrictions on loot boxes in video games. These include setting standards for online age verification for products and services that have the potential to cause gambling-harm to children and young people.
According to the committee, standards such as these already exist on certain Australian platforms such as the Trusted Digital Identity Framework. They can also be found in other countries such as the UK’s Age Verification Certificate.
Other recommendations made by the committee included the need to create new educational resources, with the objective being to help keep parents informed about the risks that come with online gambling. The resources would also reduce the exposure of online gambling to vulnerable segments of the population.
According to recent statistics, one in six 16-17 year old Australians gambled in one way or another in the past 12 months. Most of those youth were boys (19% of their age-group), with 6% saying that they had bet on sports in the past year. 2% of 16-17 year-olds admitted that they had played keno casino table games and poker machines with false ID. Gambling is not legal for under 18’s in Australia.