EA may not be willing to stop with the lootboxes even on the heels of Belgium outright outlawing them and making them illegal, but Belgium, in turn, isn’t just going to go along with the publisher’s exploitative practices either. Apparently, the publisher may face a criminal lawsuit in the European country, with Belgium’s Gaming Commission gearing up to initiate legal proceedings against them.
According to Metro Time, in fact, EA has already received a notice from the Belgian Gaming Commission, with the file now being in the hands of the Brussels public prosecutor, who is conducting a criminal investigation- so it sounds like that may have escalated a bit too quickly for EA.
The smartest thing for EA to do here would be not to boast about how it will carry on forward with lootboxes like it did, but rather, to disable loot boxes and microtransactions for all copies sold in Belgium, much like 2K and Blizzard have done with their games.
Let’s see how this plays out.