During Electronic Arts latest financial conference call, company CEO Andrew Wilson responded to concerns regarding new legislation in Belgium which classified loot boxes as a form of gambling and rulings against three specific games. One of which happened to be FIFA 18. During the conference call, Wilson that they have worked with the Belgium government and “evaluated and established that programs like FIFA Ultimate Team are not gambling.” More controversially, Wilson also said that EA “does not believe that FIFA Ultimate Team or loot boxes, in general, are gambling.”
Their reasoning for this decision is due to the belief that EA does not authorize or offer any way to cash out those items for real-world money and that players receive a set amount of items per loot box. The last comment was that they have no economic value to them. This comment alone has received major backlash from the gaming community with many pointing out that if they truly did not have any true economical value they would not be charging and encouraging the spending of real world money.
