Paid loot boxes in video games come from Japan, a territory where gambling is illegal (except for pachinko parlors, where gambling with added steps takes place)

Paid loot boxes in video games come from Japan, a territory where gambling is illegal (except for pachinko parlors, where gambling with added steps takes place) and they're known as gacha. They got very good at improving the system to make it increasingly addictive, eventually creating "kompu gacha", a system so addictive that it left thousands of families with telephone bills in the thousands of dollars. That's when regulators intervened and now kompu gacha is illegal. Loot boxes are meant to be addictive and make you lose track of your spending.