Leon Xiao

Apply for the postdoc position: www.cityu.edu.hk/hro/en/job/c...

Our current postdoc, @stantium.bsky.social, will be leaving us soon to take up an exciting new position. Like him, the new postdoc will pursue their own research interests in creative media policy and help us manage our leading, continually growing gaming and gambling regulation research group.

Current projects include:

1️⃣: Video game loot box regulatory compliance

2️⃣: Physical gambling-like products, e.g., blind boxes

3️⃣: Social media advertising repository

Apply for the RA position: www.cityu.edu.hk/hro/en/job/c...

Our RAs are enjoying very productive experiences, leading their own projects (including data collection and analysis), receiving feedback on academic writing, developing coding skills, presenting at leading international conferences (3 first-authored DiGRA talks!), and securing PhD opportunities.

We’re recruiting a postdoc and up to 3 research assistants at the Creative Media Policy Observatory (www.cmpo.net), City University of Hong Kong.

Apply for the RA position: www.cityu.edu.hk/hro/en/job/c...

Apply for the postdoc position: www.cityu.edu.hk/hro/en/job/c...

Illegal video game loot boxes with transferable content on steam: a longitudinal study on their presence and non-compliance with and non-enforcement of gambling law Loot boxes are gambling-like mechanics in video games that can be bought with real-world money to obtain random rewards. Regulators in many countries have considered whether different loot box impl...

Many other jurisdictions whose gambling law takes the same position in relation to loot boxes whose prizes could be converted into real money ("cashed out") should take the same approach, as we have argued: doi.org/10.1080/1445...

New York 🇺🇸 Attorney General Letitia James just sued Valve corporation for promoting ILLEGAL gambling through the hashtag#LootBoxes of its Steam games. Currently parsing through the 52-page complaint…

Press release: ag.ny.gov/press-releas...

Complaint: ag.ny.gov/sites/defaul...

Another line worth pursuing is getting the Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore to do more and achieve the standard of protection being enforced by its European counterparts. It previously refused to require loot box presence disclosures, even on referral by the UK advertising regulator.

I hope the Government will also consider whether failing to provide blind/loot box probability and presence disclosures is already an "unfair practice" within the meaning of section 4 of the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act 2003 (S'pore) (sso.agc.gov.sg/Act-Rev/CPFT...).

The original question referenced both physical and virtual gambling-like products, but the answer only explicitly referred to physical ones. We shall see how wide the regulations will be. I do not think a distinction should be drawn in terms of requiring basic transparency disclosures.

K. Shanmugam, on behalf of the Government, answered that blind box regulations will be introduced. The specific provisions are currently being drafted, and the suggested probability disclosure requirements are being considered.

Earlier this month, in the Singaporean Parliament 🇸🇬, Dennis Lip Fong TAN 陈立峰 asked the Government about any plans to require probability disclosures for #BlindBoxes and #Gacha.

www.mha.gov.sg/media-room/n...

Thanks also to all presenters, attendees, reviewers, and the University’s many support teams (IT, catering, & events).

Thanks to our great team (Xiaoyao Ren, Elvis Lo, Xiaoyu Xiong, Yuchen Huang) and invited speakers (@hmblakey.bsky.social, Benjamin Horn, Yeonwoo Lee, @jjol33n.bsky.social, Yixiang Que, @anhthu.bsky.social, Orlando Woods, Claudia Fu, @darthtayrah.bsky.social).

2️⃣: The Gam(bl)ing Conference focused on the gaming and gambling convergence (expected September 2026)
3️⃣: GachaCon 2027 on otome games and beyond (expected February 2027)
etc.
📣 Please stay tuned for more information! 📣

We will host several more game-related conferences at City University of Hong Kong:

1️⃣: History of Games (25–27 June 2026; www.history-of-games.com/2026-hong-ko...)

69 submissions; 42% acceptance rate

60+ authors whose extended abstracts (see: www.cmpo.net/gachacon) we aim to archive in the DiGRA Digital Library

ONE gacha machine

Many probability disclosures of varying quality were hidden around the venue.

Some hard stats!

277 total registrations; 125 physical badges collected

Averaged 70 offline and 30 online attendees throughout

102 in the Discord channel and 91 in the WeChat group

Attendees came from 🇨🇳(🇭🇰)🇯🇵🇰🇷🇸🇬🇮🇳🇬🇧🇩🇪🇫🇷🇪🇸🇳🇱🇩🇰🇫🇮🇲🇹🇺🇸🇨🇦🇦🇺🇧🇷

Held our first conference! #GachaCon2026 focused on Genshin Impact, spanning #GameStudies research on storytelling, world building, player communities, gender, the Chinese industry, game design, psychology, monetisation, regulation, and beyond.

We look forward to welcoming you to City University of Hong Kong!

Please do apply and encourage early career researchers around you to give it a go! That extra push and assurance might be all it takes.

However, that claim was not sufficiently supported by evidence. [64]–[69] This may be a further avenue to explore in the future for Austrian and EU players.

What I understand to be a consumer law claim was also attempted for the first time during the Supreme Court appeal on the basis that a euro-equivalent price was not provided for the in-game purchases (procedurally very odd).

In such cases, perhaps the gambling-like mechanic would be capable of being assessed on its own as to whether it infringes gambling law, rather than the whole trading card game?

Another interesting point is that physical Pokémon card packs, for example, are bought by many consumers just to collect (trade or even resell) cards without any desire to play the accompanying game.

However, we should note that in contrast, for example, under UK gambling law, a "predominance" of chance over skill is not a requirement for something to constitute a "game of chance;" any element of chance will suffice.

Gambling law is the way it is in different countries. Most likely, it cannot be used to directly address loot box-related concerns.

This Austrian judgment mirrors the Dutch approach taken in 2022 that the game overall, rather than loot boxes on their own, should be assessed as to gambling law contraventions (uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocume...), which Pieterjan Declerck and I critiqued: doi.org/10.1089/glr2....

3️⃣: As the Ultimate Team mode is not gambling, that classification applies to transactions that are preparatory and ancillary to it, such as purchasing virtual currency to open loot boxes in order to play the game. [57]

2️⃣: The Ultimate Team mode is a mixed "game" of skill and chance [52], but whose outcome is not determined exclusively or predominantly on chance as required by Austrian gambling law, so it is not gambling. [56]