A market Reviews determines that the model is here to stay, with an annual growth of 5%. Asia, the most prone to this model.
Loot Boxes or loot boxes, microtransactions with random content present in more and more video games, will have generated more than 20.3 billion dollars in 2025, according to an Reviews carried out by the firm Juniper Research (via GamesIndustry). The study, which has taken as a reference the rate of implementation of this business model in all regions, groups all this expenditure into just 5% of the total number of players; a figure of more than 230 million players for the date indicated.
If in 2020 the money generated through these boxes of random content, such as the card envelopes of the kiosks, is in video games above 15 million dollars in 2020, Juniper Research estimates a growth of 5% each year , a projection that will be increasingly attenuated, but continuous, so that this alternative for project amortization seems to have come to stay. The reason for slower growth over time is because “consumers get fatigued with loot boxes and the market is limited by legislative restrictions.”
Most of this economic amount comes from video games for mobile devices, although they do not determine the exact percentage. Countries such as China and other East Asian territories are the most prone to this model, for whatever reason, with titles such as Free Fire, Peacekeeper Elite, Honor of Kings or Pokémon GO at the top of the monthly billing (according to data collected every month by SuperData).
Behind Asia is North America, while later, at a very considerable distance – see graph – are Western Europe (where Spain is located) and Latin America. Juniper Research considers that the cosmetic type Loot Boxes (aesthetic elements that do not directly affect the gameplay) are the ones that will grow the most from now on.
Legislators, government agents and associations, against loot boxes
Legal disputes around loot boxes are a constant, starting with agents who link this type of content as a declared approach to gambling, gambling, especially when they are directed at minors; with less awareness of the value of those investments and less purchasing power.
In Spain, the coalition government of the PSOE and Podemos, led by the Minister of Consumption, Alberto Garzón, committed in 2020 to regulate loot boxes in our country. The concept of “loot box” is expected to be considered a game of chance by law in Spain. Germany, for its part, intends to declare all video games with Loot Boxes as +18 titles.