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

WASHINGTON, June 2 (Reuters) - Consumer advocates on Thursday urged U.S. regulators to research video game maker Electronic Arts Inc (EA.O) for what they say was the misleading use of a digital "loot field" that "aggressively" urges players to spend more money whereas taking part in a preferred soccer sport.

The teams Fairplay, Heart for Digital Democracy and 13 other organizations urged the Federal Trade Commission to probe the EA recreation "FIFA: Final Workforce".

Within the recreation, players build a soccer crew utilizing avatars of actual gamers and compete against other teams. In a letter to the FTC, the groups said the sport normally costs $50 to $100 but that the company pushed push players to spend extra.

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"It entices players to buy packs searching for special gamers," stated the letter despatched by these teams together with the Consumer Federation of America and Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health and others.

The packs, or loot boxes, are packages of digital content typically purchased with real money that give the purchaser a potential benefit in a recreation. They are often bought with digital foreign money, which may obscure how much is spent, they stated.

"The probabilities of opening a coveted card, equivalent to a Player of the Yr, are miniscule unless a gamer spends hundreds of dollars on factors or plays for 1000's of hours to earn cash," the groups mentioned within the letter.

Electronic Arts said in an announcement on Thursday that of the game's thousands and thousands of players, 78% haven't made an in-game purchase.

"Spending is at all times non-compulsory," a company spokesperson stated in an e-mail statement. "We encourage the usage of parental controls, together with spend controls, which can be accessible for every major gaming platform, together with EA's own platforms."

The spokesperson also mentioned the company created a dashboard so gamers would track how much time they performed, how many packs they opened and what purchases had been made.

The FTC, which goes after corporations engaged in misleading behavior, held a workshop on loot packing containers in 2019. In a "workers perspective" which adopted, the company noted that online game microtransactions have turn into 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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