Austria’s Supreme Court concludes that loot boxes in video games are not a gambling activity. Judges declared that loot boxes can’t be looked at as a standalone gambling product but are instead a smaller component of the video game experience.
The Supreme Court of Austria has shot down a player’s effort to recoup losses that they had incurred from spending on loot boxes in the famed FIFA video game. Austria’s highest court cited that the said video game products don’t constitute a game of chance and thus do not fall under gambling regulation when present in skill-based video games.
Austra’s judgment agrees with a similar verdict made by the Dutch Council of State back in 2022. On the flip side, the said ruling is the polar opposite of Belgium’s decision back in 2018. The Belgian Gaming Commission made a conclusion that some elements of paid loot boxes constituted illegal gambling according to the nation’s Gaming Act of 1999. Meanwhile, a couple of weeks ago, Poland tabled a proposal to categorize loot boxes as a gambling activity.
The ruling in question was delivered for case number 6 Ob 228/24h, on December 18, 2025, upending previous decisions made by courts in Hermagor and Vienna. Initially, decisions from the two lower courts had compelled Sony and Electronic Arts (EA) to pay back several players who had spent about €20,000 combined on FIFA Ultimate Team loot boxes. The said amount was spent in the period between October 2017 and October 2021.
According to the plaintiff, purchasing and opening loot boxes should be considered illegal gambling, as Sony and EA were not operating under a gambling license as required by law. As such, the complainant sought a refund of the money spent on the in-game items. However, the Supreme Court did not agree with this evaluation.
While the highest court in Austria did not explicitly rule that loot boxes aren’t a gambling item, it determined that it was not appropriate to treat them as an isolated product. The judges instead pointed out that the game has to be evaluated as a complete product together with the loot boxes. According to them, that was the only way to correctly determine whether the game satisfies the legal definition of gambling under Section 1(1) of Austria’s Gambling Act.
Per the Supreme Court’s ruling, the ‘rational expectation test’ must be applied for games that combine chance and skill. This test queries whether players have a reasonable winning expectation depending on whether they can control or manipulate key factors, even when there is an element of chance. Through this measure, Austria’s top court determined that players who participate in FIFA indeed have the control in question.
With this Supreme Court Ruling, the matter is officially settled, binding all courts within the Austrian state lines to a single line of thought. The decision affirms that loot boxes must be looked at as part of a video game in its entirety.
More importantly, the judges highlighted three crucial elements of loot boxes. That players typically acquire them to boost their gameplay experiences and not necessarily for financial gain. That the acquisition of loot boxes is directly built into the game, and their (loot boxes) proceeds can’t be transferred outside the ecosystem of the respective video game.
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