Earlier this month, US Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri announced his plan to lay out an anti-lootbox and anti-Pay-to-Win microtransactions bill that would hamper these predatory practices in games.
Kotaku had the opportunity to interview the Republican senator earlier this week. Josh Hawley said that he hopes the bill proposal would be just the starter of a broader conversation on the topic; he also added that the reception so far from both gamers and parents has been 'tremendous'.
I think everybody though cares about the health and safety of kids. And they also should care about this broader problem of what I’ve started calling the addiction economy, which this is a great example of. We see this in other spheres by the way—we see it in social media, we’re seeing it here in the gaming industry, where you’ve got these corporations finding new ways to try to hook folks, extract personal information from them, in the case of social media. Extract money of them in the case of games. Without regard to what that does to either in the case of gaming the game itself, and then to people’s general health and wellbeing. So I think there’s a lot of concern about that and we hope to drive a conversation in this space.
Certainly the reception we have gotten from parents, from gamers has been absolutely tremendous. And we intend to push forward. I think this is something that people should be aware of, I think it’s an issue that more and more people are going to care about as they learn about it, and it’ll be the start of a broader conversation.
Hawley is not the first US politician to try this endeavor, though, and no one succeeded so far. We'll see if the anti-lootbox bill actually makes to Congress.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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