The Belgian governments’ forcing of developers to remove paid loot boxes from their games made headlines not too long ago. Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, and other games have already disabled this feature in order to comply with the law. It seems like someone over at Visual Concepts Entertainment, the developer of NBA 2K, isn’t happy about having to remove this aspect of the game. Apparently, they thought it was a good idea to push Belgian fans to help them advocate for lootbox inclusion.
A Reddit thread on the r/gaming subreddit has shared a message from the developers of NBA 2K which calls for Belgian fans to speak to their local government representatives to protect the paid lootbox feature in the game. Check out the post below.
Needless to say, this is an absolutely absurd move by 2K. The thread on Reddit has already received more than 70,000 upvotes and continues to climb. It just goes to show how ridiculous and out of touch companies have become if they think predatory lootboxes in video games is something that their user base actually wants.
Belgian Redditor u/magaruis, commented on the likelihood of a local government representative considering to support such a concept saying:
“Dear 2K games.
If you believe our local government can get ANYTHING done in this matter , you really don’t understand the Belgian government.
But don’t worry , most of us Belgians don’t.
What makes it even worse is that its currently local elections. So you won’t find any local government official that would commit political suicide by saying they are for allowing gambling for kids.”
The devs don’t seem to understand how politics works. What politician would be crazy enough to suggest they support gambling for kids? The fact that NBA 2K developers are willing to even make a formal statement like this makes it disturbing clear how far they’re willing to go to make that extra buck.