I'm not sure how many of the forumites are gamers or familiar with the concept of RNG prize boxes, but since I know very few Aussie gamers, I figured this was the best place to get feedback about this topic.

Some necessary background:
An RNG prizebox is a box that has a very low chance of unlocking a valuable ingame item for use.

The one most familiar to this forum would be the Premium/Character crystals in the mobile game Transformers Earth Wars, with a 2% chance of unlocking a 4* character.

Star Trek Online has the Lockbox, which has an chance of winning a superrare endgame ship so low it's nearly impossible to win one.

There are many other games who use these items, for the sake of making money by selling nothing.

Recently, concerns have been raised by Australia and the Netherlands (primarily) about how these ingame items are encouraging a gambling addiction and wasteful spending of money.
A international commission on the topic was actually held in Washington DC as a result of these concerns being stated.

The Netherlands took the necessary step of banning all RNG prize boxes for sale in games accessible to their citizens.
This resulted in a retaliatory move by SquareEnix, who disabled Kingdom Hearts Unchained for those players, simply because they weren't permitted to sell their RNG boxes in that country.

Which got me wondering, are Australian gamers likely to experience the same retaliation if our government passes the same legislation on our own?
That we'll be locked out of a game we enjoy because of this restriction?

Naturally, as a veteran/dedicated Star Trek Online player, I'll be incredibly resentful if I lose everything I worked so hard over years to build up simply because Perfect World gets snitty about this legislation.
FYI, Star Trek Online is attempting to dodge the gambling comparison by claiming the superrare ships are not the motivation for opening Lockboxes, that the players want the specific ingame currency inside the boxes instead.
That's a lie, any player will tell you they're opening the boxes to get a superrare ship 90% of the time.


The only hope Australian gamers have for a suitable resolution is if the Washington commission institutes a world wide ban on RNG boxes, which will mean all the game companies will have to follow along, since they can't ban every player in the world.