I have been avoiding multiplayer Valve games like Counter-Strike 2 and Team Fortress 2, due to their in-game economies that have created an underage gambling gray market, which Valve has done little about. However, I am on Linux, and the choices for multiplayer shooters are few. Besides, my small boycott is not stopping Counter-Strike 2 from being the most played steam game. Are boycotts really the best solution to stop this epidemic in gaming? How can we best prevent these gambling grey markets and the gaming to gambling addiction pipeline?
Consumer boycotts very very rarely work. I’ve never heard of a single successful video game boycott.
Lobby for appropriate legislation with your government representatives. We could have legislation that forces companies to transparently show the chance of specific rewards, and even show the money you have to spend on average to get XY specific item. (I think there is already a law like this in the works in the EU?)
One of the major psychological tricks gambling games (including lootbox and gacha) employ is to obscure the true costs behind premium currencies. Once they are forced to remove this, and you are shown that yes, guaranteed acquisition of a single Genshin character will cost you ~300 USD, it might make you do a double-take before you pull out your bank card. (There are many more psychological dark patterns these developers employ, so it wouldn’t be a single miracle solution, unless of course legislation altogether bans random chance rewards buyable with cash.)