Yet loads of people sell their in-game items (that they got through chance) for real money. So in a sense, they do own them.
More problematicly, im not sure how youd stop it from extending to say WoW gold-selling, or even cartridges with 100% saves on them.
People will attribute value to anything for any number of reasons, but I’m not sure you can make regulation on anything beyond “encouraging” such behavior. (And I would assume these companies already actively discourage it; you’re not supposed to be able to get money back out of the system!)
There are some game developers looking at sanctioned RMT right now because it would be a huge selling point. "Make money playing video games" used to be a popular slogan on tacky banner ads. That could see a comeback in a different way.
Sanctioned RMT works through some official marketplace (think Diablo 3's ill-fated Auction House). Not only does the developer not pay out anything (all money flowing through the auction house is coming from buyers of items), but they even take a "transaction fee" cut. All while continuing to own all the items being traded. There's no downside for the "house".
Except perhaps suddenly running afoul of gambling regulations if they can no longer argue there's no "prize" element to the gambling?
We're well past the point where virtual entitites are imaginable by the general populace.
Getting a virtual gun, creates an actual advantage in the game your are playing online.
While ultimate ownership of the code may be fraught, but practical day to day ownership and usage is not (unless you are fighting a particularly contrived case).
On one hand, this may be enough to consider it gambling for money.
On the other hand, many games may expressly forbid selling in-game stuff. This is not easy to enforce, though, unless you forbid to drop and pick up items, or make in-game exchanges. A number of games uses exchange as a important "social" / "multiplayer" feature, but likely those are not slot-machine-like anyway.
Done.
I believe if I had a slot machine that paid out in free vacations instead of cash, there would be no doubt playing it is a form of gambling.
I think it’s that the micropayments don’t get a random return. When someone buys to complete a level it is a predictable outcome, not a gamble.
People get variable return on item drops, but you don’t generally pay with money for item drops, just time.
There is a one-step-removed way in which I think video games could be regarded as a kind of indirect or obscured gambling.
1-I pay to receive an in game item like a weapon
2-I use that investment to go out and kill monsters for treasure drops
3-I end up with some randomly variable items of value that are by definition valuable, because people will pay me for them, TOS doesn’t establish a thing’s market value.
But I think this would really require us rethinking or redefining a number of concepts.
Slot machines are regulated because they fall under the category of gambling and video games don't meet the legal definition of gambling. (Although, I'd agree that it's starting to seem more and more as if they should.)
There's a pretty good explanation of the criteria at https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti... but the brief summary (from the article) is "Gambling consists of three elements: consideration, prize and chance. If any one of those three elements is missing, the game is simply not gambling (Rose, 1986))."
By looking at those criteria, there's a lot of ways video game companies can defend themselves. The strongest one IMO being that, from a legal standpoint, there is no prize. You "win" things or get drops but the TOS of all games say that the player does not own them (or anything else in the game) in any legal sense. The analogy would be more like a carnival ride where you are paying for the experience rather than the expectation of getting anything material in return.