Card pack and loot box spending are both positively correlated with problem gambling but not linked to negative mental health

Card packs are physical products providing random content. Companies rely on them to monetise physical trading or collectible card games. Loot boxes are equivalent digital products inside video games that can similarly be bought to obtain randomised rewards. Both products are psychologically similar to gambling because the player can ‘win’ by obtaining rare and valuable rewards or alternatively ‘lose’ by obtaining non-valuable rewards. Loot box spending has been repeatedly and reliably linked to problem gambling. However, only one previous study considered the link between card pack spending and problem gambling and failed to find a positive correlation. Substantially improving on that study’s methodology, we recruited card game players living in English-speaking Western countries (N = 1,961) to reassess the links between card pack and loot box spending on one hand and problem gambling and mental health outcomes on the other. Spending money on physical card packs (r = 0.15), loot boxes (r = 0.31), and virtual card packs (a specific type of loot boxes found in a specific genre of card-based video games; r = 0.19) were all linked to problem gambling. The relationship between card packing spending and problem gambling was weaker than that between loot box spending and problem gambling. Spending money on all these gambling-like products were not linked to negative mental health outcomes. Curiously, spending money on one sub-category of loot boxes was less strongly correlated with problem gambling, indicating certain loot boxes might be more harmful than others. The current legal definitions of ‘gambling’ in many countries should be modernised using scientific evidence: presently, the law regulates products that are less strongly correlated with problem gambling and therefore arguably less potentially harmful (e.g., card packs), but fails to regulate arguably more harmful products that are more strongly correlated with problem gambling (e.g., loot boxes).