Normally when people discuss gambling in video games, they’re talking about loot boxes, the controversial mechanic where people spend money on the slight chance of winning rewards. James is one of tens of thousands of people being swept up in a new wave of gambling in video games, which is helping to drive a surge of underage gambling addiction. “I remember going on my daily walks and crying, thinking that I was losing all this money and there was nothing I could do about it,” he says. He spent weeks gambling on the random outcomes, eventually emptying his entire bank account on the virtual betting site. “Everything you could bet on in a normal American Football game you could do in this one,” James recalls. Instead of poker or real-life sports games, he started betting on the outcomes of computerised matches on Madden, the NFL video game. Years later, while in the midst of recovery during lockdown, he relapsed on an entirely new form of virtual gambling.
James* first began to develop a gambling addiction as a teenager after winning over £50,000 on his dad’s betting account.
