I made this petition to make sure that children don't become addicted to gambling through online video games. This affects all Canadian citizens but especially children and we need change now! Please sign and share with Others!

Loot boxes are essentially unregulated gambling. You spend money on the game and you are given a reward with items that can be used in the game however you do not know what the reward will be and it is purely based on chance. This is the same as Gambling but unregulated and targets children.

A study done by Anthony King and Gloria Wong-Padoongpatt at the University of Nevada found that the use of Loot Boxes in video games is addictive and that loot boxes or microtransactions in video games increases the risk of addiction to gambling later in life. They conclude that
“the near ubiquitous implementation of gambling mechanics into modern video games may represent a substantial threat to the psychological and financial well-being of emerging adults, who are already at an elevated risk for addictive disorders”
They also say that “our results indicate gamers can experience negative financial consequences from their involvement in video games via microtransactions, which suggests there is a key monetary risk involved in IGD[Internet Gaming Disorder]”.
A report done by the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada found that gambling addiction is likely to affect between 4.1 and 8 million Canadians. Gambling mechanics in video games are only going to increase that number. For example, one teenager spent his college savings on Gambling on the Electronic Arts video game FIFA. That is just one example, a quick internet search would allow you to find dozens of reports of similar scenarios.

We ask you to advocate for changes to the Criminal Code of Canada to make it clear that loot boxes in video games are gambling. We ask that you ban sales of video games that use loot box or microtransaction features to children under the age of 18 or the creators of the game would receive a heavy fine. Technology is changing, gambling is now no longer being done in casinos but done on the internet and now by children and young adults who are more likely to be addicted to casino type gambling when they are older. With technology changing our laws need to change with it or we will be faced with bad consequences.