Danish Gambling Authority targets loot boxes in children's games
Spillemyndigheden has launched a public awareness campaign and shopfront displays warning parents about gambling-like mechanics embedded in video games popular with children.
The Danish Gambling Authority, Spillemyndigheden, has launched a campaign called "Casino in the Children's Room" to alert parents to gambling-style mechanics built into video games aimed at young players, according to iGaming Business.
The regulator wants the conversation about children and gaming to move beyond screen time limits and onto the design of the games themselves, including loot boxes, randomised reward systems and in-game purchases that mirror traditional gambling products.
Anders Dorph, director of the Danish Gambling Authority, said the usual debate over children and digital media focuses on how long they play, but added that it matters just as much to look at what children actually encounter inside the games and how those mechanisms work on them.
The campaign is built around a short film that depicts a child's bedroom gradually turning into a casino, intended to make the gambling-like elements hidden in children's games visible to a parental audience.
Spillemyndigheden is also directing parents to StyrPåSpillet.dk, a knowledge platform it runs that covers gaming mechanics, gambling-style features, addiction risk and guidance for talking to children about their gaming habits.
To extend the campaign's reach offline, the authority has installed three temporary shopfronts made up to resemble casinos, branded "Casino Kids", in Bruuns Galleri in Aarhus, on Vestergade in Odense and on Købmagergade in Copenhagen, each designed to prompt passers-by to consider whether their children's games carry similar features.
The push follows research published last year by Sweden's gambling regulator, Spelinspektionen, which iGaming Business reported had identified a connection between underage exposure to gambling-style features in video games and risky gambling behaviour in adulthood.
That study found that 87% of people who had purchased loot boxes before the age of 15 went on to display risky gambling behaviours as adults.
The Danish campaign lands in the same month that the Danish government resubmitted a bill first put forward in October 2025 targeting gambling advertising aimed at minors, which would bar anyone under 25 from appearing in gambling ads and bar such advertising from live sports broadcasts.
Morten Rønde, managing partner at Nordic Legal, told iGaming Business at the time that the wider reform package had left him, in his words, "shell shocked".