There's been plenty of time to decide whether to regulate this stuff. Loot boxes are fairly new but I was a Pokemon card addict like your friend's son, at age 1

There's been plenty of time to decide whether to regulate this stuff. Loot boxes are fairly new but I was a Pokemon card addict like your friend's son, at age 10 in 1998. No one cared much back then, so now you have former Pokemon card addicts like me designing more elaborate game systems like this, and spending real money is like a bonus thrill in the game. Ultimately people will make the decisions about what they do. Paid DLC is nearly loot boxing, but I guess the difference is there is more reasonable pressure when deciding whether to buy the DLC vs. a loot box? It's less pressure than a perceived threat in the game provoking your purchase, but it's funny how there is still a lot of pressure to buy DLC when you're simply on the Steam store page (giant green buy button, videos with 25% actual gameplay flashing at you, reviews urging you to buy the game, etc). But that's not a problem, it's only a problem when a real-money store is moved inside the game.