Ready to Play?: A Children’s Rights Analysis of Gambling-like Elements in Videogames

This book approaches ‘gambling-like elements’ such as lootboxes and social casino games from a children’s rights perspective, focusing on the applicable existing legal framework and providing recommendations for future regulation. Analysed legal domains include gambling regulation, consumer protection and data protection regulation, as well as videogame industry self-regulation. An interdisciplinary approach serves as the foundation of the text; insights from non-legal disciplines such as psychology and media studies are integrated into the legal analysis. The book is aimed at readers with different levels of prior knowledge and experience regarding the topic, by providing both step-by-step explanations of videogame-related concepts and in-depth legal discussions within the various legal domains at different levels. It examines the recent evolution where children are increasingly engaging with a changing videogame environment in which the lines between videogames and gambling are blurred. By adopting a children’s rights perspective, the book aims to add a fresh perspective to the legal debate related to the interacting worlds of videogames and gambling. As the book was written based on the doctoral research of the author, one especially relevant aspect is the inclusion of recommendations and wider suggestions directed at a variety of stakeholders in the field, ranging from policymakers at different levels, to industry representatives, legal scholars, parents and carers. Pieterjan Declerck is a Doctor in Law and is affiliated to the Department of Law and Technology at the Faculty of Law and Criminology at Ghent University in Belgium.