There’s been an ongoing debate about playing in video games for the past few years, ever considering that loot boxes became full-size now not just in cellular games, but in console and PC titles like Overwatch, Call of Duty, and FIFA. Now, Rockstar Games have introduced the Diamond Casino & Resort to GTA Online. It’s a pretty cool-sounding new region, replete with a rooftop infinity pool, plenty of new missions, and a digital casino wherein you can spend in-recreation chips on slot machines, Roulette, Black Jack, or Three Hand Poker.

This is wherein things get . . . Dicey. You can spend real money in GTA Online to buy the game’s in-recreation currency, which you can then spend on cosmetics, cars, and so forth. You can also now spend this forex on the Casino’s chips, which might be basically a second in-sport currency used for diverse Casino-related activities and cosmetics, and to buy chips with. So you may spend actual cash to shop for in-sport chips, after which gamble them away. In this manner, you could win chips and spend the one’s chips on greater playing or more in-sport content material. What you can’t do is take the ones chips and cash them in for real cash.

That’s in all likelihood an excellent thing—despite everything, if you could gamble actual money for digital chips, after which you cash that out for actual cash, it would quite actually be gambling. There’s no question that this will be more addictive, potentially lifestyles-ruining enjoy for plenty of players. But even having the option to gamble real cash in a virtual in-game online casino, even if it in no way results in really incomes real winnings, poses its own ethical issues. Yes, the game is eighteen+. However, I’m no longer certain that makes it any higher. Honestly, a game with the handiest digital chips (that you may need the simplest earn through gameplay and can’t buy with actual money) would still be something of a “gateway drug” for addicts or potential addicts. Allowing gamers to buy chips is worse. While it won’t be as bad as actual gambling, it nonetheless moves me as a horrific concept with probably terrible results.

I don’t trust that video games like GTA motivate actual global violence or transform players into misogynists. I don’t assume the act of taking pictures of virtual guns at enemies made up of pixels and animations leads people to motive damage in the real international or that taking digital capsules in a recreation ends in real drug abuse. These are all essentially faux experiences that do not replicate actual-global ones in any meaningful way (a controller is not like a gun; an in-recreation “high” isn’t always like doing tablets and many others.).

However, the same policies do not practice different behaviors. Gambling online is already a good deal a fact and might result in all of the same problems human beings face gambling in brick-and-mortar casinos. Introducing extra younger people to gambling with real money can simplest reason more problems. The act of making a bet and triumphing is the same in a sport as it’s far in actual life. Creating a digital online casino like this for GTA Online Rockstar’s right of the route.

Nothing approximately it’s far unlawful. But it’s nevertheless troubling within the identical way loot bins are troubling. Neither digital slot machines nor loot containers are precisely the equal factor as playing. However, they, without a doubt, tap into the equal parts of the mind that playing taps into. Betting on random odds to win random stuff, whether virtual chips or new cosmetics, remains to have a bet.

It’s no longer sincerely a black-and-white issue, of course. And I can see arguments on both aspects of this that make sense. Even actual gambling is not a clear-cut issue, which is why even in the US special states have wildly specific playing laws. After all, human beings should be allowed to spend their money, but they prefer to see you later because it isn’t inflicting harm to others. On the other hand, playing can result in various problems, ruining lives and families because the casino gets richer. The house always wins, despite everything.