FIFA loot boxes once again hit the mainstream headlines as teen blows £3000 on packs

FIFA and the thorny issue of loot boxes have once again hit the mainstream headlines after a UK teen revealed he had blown £3000 on Ultimate Team packs.

The BBC 5 Live Investigations Unit today published an investigation into FIFA loot boxes based on the testimony of a 21-year-old Brit called Jonathan Peniket who, as a teenager, spent the savings his parents’ had given to him for his future on packs.

FIFA lets you spend real world money on packs of virtual cards in a bid to create the ultimate team. While the mode, which brings in billions of dollars a year for publisher EA, shows the percentage odds of “packing” cards of each available rarity, customers do not know exactly what they will get for their money. Ultimate Team has been accused of being pay-to-win because of the availability of powerful cards in packs – cards that are then used to play competitively online.

“2017 was the year that changed everything in my life,” Peniket told the BBC. “I was completing my last year of A-levels, with vague plans to go to university. In September my mum was diagnosed with cancer.

“Everything became about waiting until it would all just be a memory. Waiting until the day that my mum’s treatment would be over, when I’d have finished my exams and we could all appreciate normal life again.

“I searched for any way to cope. The buzz of opening packs offered me an escape.

“Any rational sense of moderation and the value of money that my parents and grandparents had saved for my future began to subside. I felt like I needed the money now, to cope, and that in years to come my future self would somehow understand.

“I was spending £30 at a time, then £40, then £50. By the time my card began to block my transactions, I was throwing £80 into the game four or five times a night.

“A few weeks before my exams, after days of watching people open packs on YouTube whilst my parents thought I was upstairs revising, the moment came when the money ran out.

“Money that my parents and grandparents had worked for, that had been given to me as savings for my future. I had blown almost £3000.

“I accept responsibility for what happened. The decisions I made to spend that money were made by me. My parents were heartbroken when they found out and read through the bank statements.”

At a government level FIFA’s loot boxes – and loot boxes in other games – are under increasing scrutiny over their link to gambling and potential effect on children. In early July, the House of Lords published a report recommending the UK Government reclassify loot boxes as gambling, arguing loot boxes should be considered “games of chance”, which means they would fall under the Gambling Act of 2005 and be regulated by the Gambling Commission.