In late April, Blizzard announced that the free-to-play game Diablo Immortal will be releasing on June the 2nd for smartphones and as a beta for PC. Shortly after the announcement, it was possible for players in the Netherlands and Belgium to pre-register for the game, but not for long as the pre-register was thereafter revoked.
The online blog, Tweakers got in touch with the communication manager of Activision-Blizzard Benelux to ask for a comment on this change, to which the communication manager confirmed that the game will not be released on the App Store or on battle.net in the relevant countries. “This is related to the current operating conditions for games in those countries,” Blizzard cites as the reason.
The Belgian Gaming Commission has strict laws against loot boxes. If they can be bought with money and if chance plays a part in obtaining the content, they are against the gambling law.
In the Netherlands Dutch Gaming law is slightly different, a loot box is only a game of chance if its content represents an economic value. That means it should be possible to trade the virtual item on a marketplace for real cash. So far, what is known is that it isn’t possible to trade virtual items on a marketplace.
This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen Dutch and Belgian law shut down loot boxes, a couple of years back loot boxes in CS:GO were removed in The Netherlands and Belgian for this very same reason.