this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
67 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
42497 readers
54 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
WRT the US, the entire reason Labubus are not legally considered gambling is because there is no wager on the outcome of them. You pay the same amount each time (not wagering based on desired outcomes), and you always get something back. The question of whether a certain level of outcome-value randomization should instead be used as the litmus test for gambling is not one that has been asked or answered legally.
The specific state-by-state definitions of gambling in the US vary, of course, but generally it consists of a wager on a specific outcome of a contest or chance event, under an agreement to receive some value in exchange based on the result.
Changing to a definition where any payment + any random chance of loot = gambling, would open up a lot of very interesting possibilities, like potentially applying to any randomized loot in a video game (unless you start making specific carve-outs). It's important to remember that gambling's definition doesn't only apply to legal gambling, but also illegal gambling, so grey-market resales of game accounts would have to be factored into the consideration of anything in-game's value (i.e. you can't avoid "random loot in a game" being gambling in that case by saying the game can't be legally traded for the item value, because regardless, game accounts can be traded).
In more concrete terms, if I can buy Diablo 2 (pay fixed cost), get a really good item drop (random chance value outcome), and sell my Steam account to someone who wants that item (money in, money out), why would that be different than that same flow with a loot box?
You seem to be trying to define sports wagering as the only thing that qualifies as 'gambling'. Casinos would like a word (or actually, they probably wouldn't, they'd love this world of yours where casino games are apparently not gambling.)
(And trust me, if all that was required for a slot machine to avoid gambling regulations was "you always get something back", they'd all be paying 1c or giving you a discount voucher for your next Happy Meal on every losing spin tomorrow.)
Except slot machines do allow different wagers to get different monetary returns. Also, casinos are not just slot machines, but lots of other gambling games as well.
Some slot machines do. Some slot machines have a fixed wager. Does that make them not gambling?
And I'm not sure what the relevance of casinos having more than one type of gambling is. I've worked in the industry more than 30 years, and not once do I remember a regulator saying "it's OK, as long as you only do one of these things, you don't need a license."
I don't know where you got the idea that sports betting is the only betting with a wagered outcome, that's basically all card or table games at a casino.
My point of mentioning casinos having more than just slot machines is to say that they are first and foremost gambling establishments. Not every game in a casino actually is gambling, either; a lot of them have regular arcade games too.
The question of whether trading cards and loot boxes are gambling from a legal perspective is down to how the laws are written, and the laws in the US currently haven't defined them as such so far, because there is no wager on a specific outcome.
If loot boxes allowed you to pay more in order to get more good items on a 'win', my guess is they'd be smacked with a gambling designation instantly.
Or if trading cards allowed you to wager on the presence of specific cards in the pack, and win additional booster packs if correct, for instance.
If casinos want to say some of their games have been improperly classified as gambling because those games don't have those characteristics, they certainly can go to the gaming commission or take them to court and argue that (and depending on the game they may even be correct), but since they have to have a license anyways for all their other games that definitely are gambling, they probably won't care to.
And there are in fact slot machine games that aren't gambling (e.g. CloverPit), that just simulate playing a slot machine without actually having any real monetary mechanic (apart from paying for the game), so just being a slot machine doesn't inherently make it a gambling game.
Not to go too philosophical, but every physical item you buy is physically unique from each other one. Even with processes like Six Sigma to minimize variations, each car, table, chair etc is physically unique, and each in ways that affect its performance. You could buy 100,000 chairs of the same kind, and figure out which one is 'best' based on some characteristic (e.g. max weight), but that doesn't make "buying a chair" gambling, just because you ~~may~~ will get a worse or better chair each time.
One potential difference is that you can play Diablo 2 as many times as you want.
So, its a lot less like inserting a coin to buy a chance at a capsule machine and a lot more like buying the whole machine. With every copy of the machine having the same capsules inside it. In your analogy you can say the previous owner already got a few capsules out, but you can also open the machine if you want and put them back inside, or change the machine's contents.
I've of course heard of Labubus, but do you not pick one to purchase? Like, are people literally paying without knowing what they'll get?
I can't imagine going to HEB and buying a random box that contains "some kind of food."
Yes, they're exactly that; plush doll random chance boxes. It's funny because gachapons have actually been in the US and Europe for 50+ years, but no one ever really thought of them like this because the toys inside never had real value.
Remember these outside of supermarkets?