Physical CCGs have always been on the nice side of a gray area, digital CCGs are worse, and most loot boxes are much worse. Some important differences (experience drawn from Magic: the Gathering CCG, Rocket League, Team Fortress 2, Hearthstone, Pokémon CCG, Hustle Castle, Merge Dragons, Call of Duty WW2, and a bunch more I don't remember off the top of my head; I play a lot of games):

Games with loot boxes will constantly push them: Throw a loot box in your face while you play or at the end of the match, urging you to pay to open them. What's inside? Maybe something cool? Don't you want to find out? They will also typically show that you have "(3) Unopened Boxes" in your account when you are in the menus. With a CCG, I can browse my collection, play games with friends, or even tournaments, without having to turn down constant sales pitches.

Games with loot boxes often remind you, while you play, that this and that player in your game or your friend X just opened a loot box now and got something cool.

Anything you want in a CCG can be traded or bought fairly from other players. Few loot box implementations allow this.

Any duplicates you get in a CCG can be re-sold, or given away. Few loot box implementations allow this.

Any cards you get from a CCG have a physical presence, so you can store them in a box in the basement and dig them out again years later to either play or sell. Most loot box games will be dead in 5 years.

Opening a loot box is instant gratification. One click and fireworks you have spent the money and it's opening. CCGs require either mail order or physically going to a store. The time delay between feeling the urge and getting the crackle kaboom whoosh (loot boxes opening is very showy) of opening the thing is days or hours versus split seconds.

I don't see how this is related to whether or not CCGs or loot boxes are gambling.

- "heavily advertised" is not necessarily a feature of gambling - Being able to easily resell reminds me of poker chips. - The longevity of the prize is not a requirement for gambling. - CCG could be instant gratification too. Time delay is not a feature of gambling.

Think of it as a "boiling the frog" situation. The fact that this is close to CCGs, and CCGs haven't been banned, doesn't necessarily mean that it's just fine - it's a slow, gradual increase in "water temperature for the frog" that's has over time become unacceptable. So it's going to be equated to gambling and regulated - obviously, there needs to be a line somewhere through that fuzzy, gradual, unclear border, but IMHO it remains to be seen whether that line will be above or below current CCGs.

I'm not sure I'm ready to sacrifice CCGs on the altar of "think of the children!" just because it might knock game companies down a peg.

Well, it's not like anyone asked horse racing or poker enthusiasts if they're ready to sacrifice anything before their games were regulated.

In which case, I am completely against this legislation. The supposed harm being addressed is nebulous, if it even exists.

There's not a bright line between CCGs, scratchcards and loot boxes.

CCGs have merely been overlooked by regulators because they've traditionally been a niche interest and none of the makers were dumb enough to decorate the card packs with one-armed bandits.

Not much different. Which is why I would not buy collectible cards to my kids and why I was avoiding them myself (as they cost too much overall when played).

The difference is that CCG were rather niche thing most people dont know about and these games targetted at children are ever obvious and common. Meaning, people cared less because significantly less people knew you can buy CCG. Also, sports cards and CCG had known probabilities and were overall less sleazy then some of these games. They did not baited you with psychological trics and people were less routinelly trying to earn money by buying them solely in the hope of finding jackpot expensive item to sell.

There is also element of fake think of children where gamers who hate everything new and not for them use this to demonise games they don't like.

For one, loot boxes are instant gratification. Cards and arcade machine rewards required going somewhere and physically buying something. A loot boxes is more like sitting in front of a slot machine and thinking, "oh just one more roll, I was so close this time!". Loot boxes also tend to really push you towards expensive options. 10 boxes for $9.99, 25 for $19.99, 125 for $99.99 (best value!!). Magic The Gathering cards are not cheap either but they also don't try to push you into buying a whole booster box as an impulse purchase.

This has nothing to do with whether it is gambling or not.

It's pretty obvious that both CCGs and loot boxes are forms of gambling. The question is what effects they're having and how they need to be regulated. Loot boxes have a lot more of the features that make gambling a problem, and children are less equipped to handle it. It's reasonable to regulate the benign thing differently from the harmful thing.

I think it is more clear that a CCG is a form of gambling. Loot boxes do not give you anything that you can redeem for cash.

IMO those are also gambling, and I think some cards were made more rare, so to fully complete a set you would need to buy a large number of cards.