Gaming and Gambling Confused

The ban on advertising online gambling sites in the UK was talked about in length this past week. it is the latest announced component of the regulatory efforts that come into force on September 1, and in later installments later throughout the year. The UK is leading the way with an organized policy that supposes to set the wildly competitive and rather unsupervised online gambling industry.

While this is a welcome move, a smart one even, there is criticism along the way, which is hard to avoid by all means. Still, the latest from the UK seems to go slightly off track. Even if that is not the case and criticism is not in place, the latest developments have caught quite a lot of people - site operators and users - by surprise.

The current law that regulates gambling in the UK is about a half century old. Clearly it needs to adapt to the 21st century. The thing is that the definition in the new law for gambling includes mass multiplayer online games that offer prizes, playing a game of chance for a prize.

The definition introduces online multiplayer video games, such role playing games as EverQuest and World of Warcraft, both play-to-pay games available without any existing restrictions to the law. It makes it a criminal offense to provide facilities for gambling without proper operating license.

Since EverQuest and similar games offer prizes of monetary worth and even have players sell and buy their game prizes over the Internet, these games involve chance, skill and prizes, thus labeling them as pseudo-online gambling games.

The solution will be for the game providers to obtain operators' licenses from the Gambling Commission in the UK, not a difficult task under the somewhat welcoming new law, welcoming to UK companies at the very least. But it will also bring about commitments and enforced regulations, to ensure fair and open gambling, protect children and fight crime and gambling connections.