Okay, here's the thing. Passing costs onto the end consumer only works if demand is inelastic. If we assume that it doesn't matter how much better or worse a company makes a game, all of the suckers are going to buy it anyway, then sure, you can conclude that any threat to lootboxes will simply be met with higher costs, or advertisements forced to the point of unplayability, or the like, in order to make up for the shortfall in revenue. An awful result - companies and shareholders still make all their fat stacks, the game's players get an even worse deal, the bill was a total backfire!<br>But you CAN'T make that assumption. Think about it - if the company COULD be doing all that and still getting the same sales, why aren't they already doing it? They're not running charities, it's because they'd lose sales and they know it. There's no point making twice as much money from egregious advertising and price hikes if it means you're only going to sell half as many copies.<br>The simple fact of the matter is that there is no way to make up for the loss of revenue that regulating in-game gambling will bring. That's WHY real-world gambling is regulated and taxed highly - because it's an exploitative way to make lots of money. Thanks to the Wild West of as-yet unregulated in-game gambling, profit growth in the tRiPlE aAa space is ALREADY out of control and growing faster than it can sustain - a period of readjustment for company and shareholder expectations is inevitable with or without regulation, and all fighting against is does is try to delay that just long enough to ride the gravy train for another couple of years before the CEOs get handed their golden parachutes.