In 2018, the gaming industry reported 30-billion-dollars in revenue with 2022 earnings expected to reach 50 billion![1] Much of this profit comes from the pockets of vulnerable kids and teens. To help your kids learn about the risks of online play before they get into trouble, we created the Social Media Readiness Online Course. Set up like driver’s training (but for the internet), each module is followed by a mastery quiz. That way, when your child earns their graduation certificate, you know they’ve learned what they need to have better judgment when faced with difficult online choices. For today’s GKIS article, we’ve uncovered another tricky trap that introduces vulnerable players to dangerous gambling behaviors, the loot box.
Microtransactions
In the old days, the only expense to gamers was the cost of buying the gaming device and the video game. Now video games require players to make additional purchases within the game to advance. A common and profitable expense comes in the form of microtransactions.
Microtransactions are in-game purchases of opportunity, goods, and game currency. Two types of microtransactions are desirable to players, fun pain and skill games. Fun pain purchases refer to a second chance opportunity. Skills games remove obstacles during stressful game situations. Microtransactions typically occur in the form of game currency.
Game Currency
Game currency refers to the virtual money or points necessary to progress in the game. For example, NBA 2k offers VC (Virtual Currency), Call of Duty provides CP (Call of Duty Points), Fortnite offers V-Bucks, FIFA offers FIFA coins, and Apex Legends offers Apex coins. One advantage to offering game currency is that it can have its own value. By giving a different name and image to currency, it’s easier for players to lose track of spending. Tempting marketing ploys are also common, like free offers, larger package discounts, limited time offers, and loot boxes.
Loot Boxes
Loot boxes have become a massive moneymaker for game publishers. A loot box refers to a box of virtual items (like stickers, skins, camos, weapons, in-game currency, or another loot box) that players buy before they know exactly what it contains.[4] It’s like a surprise bag that promises an advantage over other players.
Sometimes players get a disappointing loot box; while other times they win big. Creating different values to the loot boxes creates what researchers call the near-miss effect. That means the brain fires with an “almost win” in the same way it would for a win. Kids being hit with the near-miss effect are highly motivated to keep spending until they reach their dream loot box jackpot. What happens if they get their dream? They desperately keep spending to win again!
Do loot boxes introduce kids to the addictive features of gambling?
If it seems to you that the desperate quest triggered by the near-miss effect sounds like gambling, you are right. It’s one thing for adults to gamble, but it’s an entirely different thing to sneak gambling features into child activities. Because kids’ brains are still developing, they are particularly vulnerable to forming addictive behaviors.
Here is what loot boxes have in common with other gambling activities:
Exchange of money or a valuable item
Unknown outcome that can change based on future events
So is child gambling now a thing? According to the Gambling Health Alliance, it is.
They report that:
41% of gamers under the age of 18 have purchased a loot box
75% of gamers report that they’ve felt regret for loot game purchases
48% of gamers have hid the amount spent on in-game microtransactions
76% of gamers believe that loot boxes should be made illegal for minors[3]
Publishers That Incorporate Loot Boxes
Apex Legends by Electronic Arts
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 by Activision
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive by Valve & Hidden Path Entertainment
FIFA ’17-20 by Electronic Arts
Fortnite by Epic Games
Gears of War 4 by Microsoft Studios
Halo 5: Guardians by Microsoft Studios
Injustice 2 by Warner Bros.
League of Legends by Riot Games
NBA 2k21 by 2k Sports
Overwatch by Blizzard Entertainment
PlayersUnknown’s Battlegrounds by PUBG Cooperation
Star Wars Battlefront II by Electronic Games
Furthermore, Activision and Electronic Arts have current patents on motivation to spend.[2]
How can you protect your kids from getting tricked into online gambling?
First, keep up with our free GKIS blog articles by subscribing in the orange box on the top of our GetKidsInternetSafe Home Page.
Start a healthy, informative dialogue as a family about the traps of online activities. We guide you through everything you need to know with our free Connected Family Agreement. It comes directly to your email once you subscribe to our home page.
Once your family learns the basics about online digital injury risks and how to be smart on your devices, you’ll definitely want to add our injury and the psychological wellness strategies to build health and resilience. GKIS supplements How to Spot Marketing, and our Cybersecurity and Red Flags.
And finally, as mentioned before, if you have tweens or teens our Social MediaReadiness Course offers the valuable information needed to avoid digital.
Too busy to figure it all out step-by-step? We’ve got you covered! Our GetKidsInternetSafe App takes you through all of our GKIS course content (including everything listed above) in quick and easy 5-minute weekly videos created by our own Internet Safety Expert, Dr. Tracy Bennett. A ten-minute commitment a week to avoid costly digital and psychological injuries down the road may be the most important opportunity for family safety we’ve ever offered. Your first 30 days are completely free. Click here to find out more so you don’t miss out!
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Christian Sandoval for gambling activities in video games, and for co-authoring this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
Tracy S. Bennett, Ph. D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe
Kids and teens love YouTube’s colorful celebrities who cater to their specific interests. But many influencers use their celebrity status to lead fans into harmful situations. In today’s GKIS article, find out how these YouTube celebrities promised big earnings from online gambling, offered poorly planned conventions, attacked other influencers, and encouraged fans to harass other online competitors. Using unethical tactics and no disclosure, many of these profit-making schemes succeed unchallenged.
What’s a YouTube influencer?
A YouTube influenceris a person with a YouTube profile that has a large number of followers and can influence trends, products, and purchasing habits. Their content is typically videos of product recommendations or reviews. Other times, it’s a video (vlog) with influencers talking to their audience about anything that strikes their fancy. Most vlogs include colorful opinions, vulgar language, and provocative topics.
Most influencers are trained marketers who profit from ads, partnerships, and paid sponsorships. Although some provide harmless entertainment, others intentionally mislead or introduce content that can harm their followers.
“Oops, I didn’t mean it.”
One-time mistakes are getting increasingly rare among YouTube celebrities. For some, a string of mistakes results in more fame and profit. For instance, PewDiePie is one of the world’s most famous YouTube celebrities with 91 million subscribers. In 2108, he was criticized for promoting an Anti-Semitic YouTube channel [1], delivering Anti-Semitic jokes [2], and using the hard N-word to thousands of viewers in a live stream video [3].
In 2019, PewDiePie stoked fan fires by encouraging “a fight” with a YouTube channel T-Series and Indian production house. Competing for subscribers, PewDiePie fanned a competition between American YouTube culture versus Indian YouTube Culture. The rallying cry resulted in hacking printers and Google homes, a vandalized World War II memorial in Brooklyn (“subscribe to Pewdiepie”), and, most horrifying, a Christchurch mass murderer yelling “subscribe to PewDiePie” during the live stream of his shooting.
YouTube Influencers Encourage Gambling
CSGOLotto: In 2016, YouTubers TmarTn and ProSyndicate promoted and advertised a site called CSGOLotto. On this site, players bought in-game items that were placed into an online pot alongside other people’s purchased merchandise. The goal was to gamble to win the biggest pot of merchandise.
Video ads for the GSGOLotto showed TmarTn and ProSyndicate having fun gambling large amounts of money trying to win big. Most times, they did win BIG – up to three times the amount they started with up to $20,000 worth of merchandise!
Based on our research, at no point in the ads or written copy did either influencer mention to their collective audience of 13.5 million that they owned this site and were profiting directly. We found the ads to be misleading, looking like the celebrities were simply players rather than profiteers.
Mystery Brand: In 2018, Jake Paul and RiceGum created a similar gambling site called Mystery Brand. In this game, players purchase $5 to $100 virtual boxes that would contain a mystery item worth either less or more than the amount paid. The promised a chance to win a $250 million house with only a $15 buy-in.
The influencers were reportedly paid $100,000 for promotion to their collective 30 million subscribers. In their videos, they narrated how they “teamed up” with Mystery Brand to show how “dope” it was to play.
After demonstrating the easy signup process, the two spent big. Once a player buys in, their money stays in. Players can’t cash out. They can only earn sponsored prizes shown on the site, like a virtual shopping mall. For example, in one video RiceGum shows off his $15,000 profit after only spending $3,000. Neither RiceGum nor Jake Paul refers to the site as “gambling,” but instead call it a “game” with “good value,” promising “there is no losing in this.” Based on our research, no place on the site states the players’ chances of winning.
A Poorly Planned Convention
Tana Mongeau is a content creator with 3.7 million subscribers. In 2018, 5,000 people showed up at a hotel in Anaheim to attend her convention, advertised to be a cheaper and more accessible version of Vidcon (which is a large-scale event hosted by YouTube to meet your favorite YouTuber). Due to poor planning, over 4,000 people waited for over four hours in the sweltering heat outside of the hotel. There were little shade, food, or water available, and many attendees got sunburned, passed out, and rioted due to poor accommodations and security.
Although promised to be free, it wasn’t. While 4,000 waited outside, the 1,000 inside were greeted with a $60 “VIP” pass, with a lack of entertainment, overcrowding, and almost the same issues as those outside the hotel. The videos of this event are upsetting to watch.
Using Their Platform to Attack People
When some YouTube influencers don’t like other content creators or other people in general, they sometimes rant with name-calling and unfair accusations. This cyberbullying can result in a cyber flash mob of dedicated fans that cyber attack through doxing(showing private information), pranking, and cyber-harassment.
False Accusations Against a Competitive Influencer
Jackie Aina is a popular beauty guru who creates and shares videos of makeup applications with 2.9 million subscribers. In 2018, she made a video accusing another YouTuber, Petty Paige (128 thousand subscribers), of stealing $1,500 from her personal bank account.
This accusation appeared to have no proof of legitimacy. Although she never stated Petty Paige’s name in the video, she put up a picture of a video Paige had made, making it easy for her subscribers to identify the accused perpetrator. Jackie Aina’s fans took to social media to harass Paige for weeks. Paige even stated that many business and job opportunities were canceled because of harassment.
Targeting Their Audience
The Gabbie show (6.4 million subscribers) is one of many YouTubers who have targeted everyday people with no regard to how the fan base would react to it. When a young girl in her audience made a negative comment on one of Gabbie’s tweets, Gabbie screenshotted it along with the girl’s account and posted it on her Twitter (2.7 million followers). This led fans to spam and harass the girl, flooding her inbox with hateful messages.
Are there legal consequences?
Too often, when malicious or unethical online behavior is identified, the scandal is fleeting. For example, in the case of TmarTns and ProSyndicate’s gambling scam, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a case for lying about ownership of a product. Yet somehow, both influencers avoided legal prosecution, only suffering a mild loss in subscribers and yearly income due to a damaged reputation. They still have a net worth of around $5 million.
For Jake Paul and RiceGum, absolutely nothing happened. RiceGum created a video justifying his behavior as the same as what others do. Jake Paul made a joke about the situation. When asked, “You loved being called out for selling a gambling scam to underage kids?” He responded, “Yes, love it.”
Of the influencers covered in this article, Tana Monogue probably received the biggest consequences. After months of backlash and hate from fans and YouTubers, Tana made multiple apologies. But she still suffered no legal consequences. And as for what Jackie Aina and Gabby Shows did, many just see it as insignificant errors in judgment.
What can be learned?
Influencers are not your friends and most often cannot be trusted.
Fanning follower anger is often fake and staged.
On the internet, bad behavior makes influencers money and often goes unpunished.
If you believe the hype, you’re gullible. It’s probably not worth the drama. Think for yourself instead of following blindly.
Thanks to GKIS intern Jack Riley for researching and writing this article. If you learned from this article, stay tuned for part 2, which details the irresponsibility and scams that YouTube influencers continue to feed their audience as well as the marketing and social manipulations used to make sure viewers keep coming back.
Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
Works Cited
YouTube Influencers Encourage Gambling
Fluff, TMARTN GAMBLING ON CSGO LOTTO & DECEIVING OWNERSHIP (Full Video Reupload), YouTube.com
(2016, July) YouTube gamers caught in gambling row, bbc.com
