Gaming today, gambling addiction tomorrow
- 91心頭利 University
South African laws must catch up to how gaming environments are grooming minors into gambling-like behaviour.
When research shows that children’s repeated exposure to gaming is associated with higher odds of a gambling addiction in early adulthood, the issue moves beyond policing ‘screen time’ and placing the responsibility purely in parents’ hands. The system itself needs to change to keep children out of harm’s way. This was a key insight raised in the 91心頭利 Mandela Institute’s webinar: Grooming minors through gambling-like gaming practice.
91心頭利 School of Law Professor Michele van Eck noted that mobile gaming environments (a nearly USD 100 billion global industry) could be grooming minors into gambling-like behaviour, and South Africa’s legal framework is inadequately responding to this.
“Imagine a casino entirely built for children. It runs on slot-machine psychology. It charges real money for rewards with undisclosed odds. There is no parental supervision. Of course society would shut it down immediately. But when the same psychological architecture is packaged inside a smartphone and called a video game, it operates unchallenged,” said van Eck.
The harm is built in, not accidental
The games, argues van Eck, are not the problem; the problem lies in how they are built. Across the mobile gaming sector, between 70 percent and 80 percent of revenue is generated through in-game purchases rather than the initial download. Many of these purchases are embedded within systems that mirror the structure of gambling.
Loot boxes, for example, allow players to pay for a randomised reward drawn from a pool of possible items. Players either spend real money directly or purchase virtual currency with real money to access them. The outcome is determined by an algorithm, and the reward may carry an in-game advantage or social status.
Structurally, this mirrors three defining elements of gambling: consideration, chance and prize.
Industry language often reframes these as cosmetic upgrades or optional features. “But, these are not incidental design choices. They are deliberate monetisation mechanisms,” says van Eck.
Together, these features create a ‘variable reward system’. Rewards are delivered unpredictably, which produces persistent and often compulsive engagement. This is the same principle that underpins slot machines.
The harm, van Eck argues, is created upstream.
“It is designed into the product, calibrated by monetisation teams working alongside developers to maximise engagement and expenditure. The parties with the greatest knowledge of these systems and their psychological impact are the developers and publishers themselves.”
Parents cannot carry the burden alone
Currently, parents are told to monitor screen time, enable parental controls and manage spending. Children are expected to exercise restraint in systems explicitly designed to undermine it. Yet the architecture that produces the risk remains largely untouched.
South Africa’s legal framework reflects this tension and is reactive rather than preventative.
The National Gambling Act does not clearly capture in-game systems such as loot boxes, largely because virtual rewards are not easily classified as items of monetary value. The Consumer Protection Act contains provisions that could address misleading design, hidden probabilities and unfair practices, but these have not been actively enforced against digital game developers. The Films and Publications Act provides scope to classify harmful content, including online games, yet it has not been applied to monetisation design.
“Current regulatory approaches focus on downstream interventions such as age verification, parental controls and spending limits. These measures have value, but they operate after the system is already in place,” says van Eck.
Age verification is easily bypassed. Parents often lack awareness of how these systems work. And controls are applied after monetisation structures have already been embedded into a child’s environment.
What would safer gaming actually look like?
A growing body of work calls for a “safety by design” approach, in which regulatory obligations are anchored at the design level. This could include greater transparency in pricing, mandatory disclosure of probabilities, the removal of certain gambling-like mechanics in games accessible to minors, and impact assessments before products are released.
“The party that designs the harm should bear the responsibility to prevent it,” says van Eck.
South Africa’s Constitution requires that children be protected from exploitation. Yet a system that prohibits children from entering casinos, while allowing them to engage in simulated gambling through digital platforms, is difficult to reconcile with that obligation.
As facilitator Professor Tracy-Lynn Field at the 91心頭利 Mandela Institute noted in summation, we cannot turn away from harm. And we cannot stand by while the current system continues to perpetuate that harm unchecked.