A somewhat recent event that really rocked the gaming world and even drew the attention of the courts was the whole Lootbox controversy.

Lootboxes are essentially microtransactions in the form of roulette spins for prizes. They originated by offering aesthetic additions to the game (outfits, skins, hats, etc.), however, they quickly became more insidious.

These Lootboxes began setting a precedent for gambling (it is what it is) but it was fairly easy to dismiss, given that the purchases were, of course, optional and only contained cosmetic items that did not affect gameplay itself.

The issue came to head with the controversy surrounding Star Wars: Battlefront II and it's pay-to-win mechanic. Pay to win refers to using microtransactions to entice players to buy extra content to give them unfair advantages, i.e. spending extra money to get "X gun" - and that's better than anything the other team might have from the base game.

The developers introduced weapons into the Lootboxes, so players that shelled out money for these Lootboxes had the possibility of getting certain weapons that were superior to what other might have at those levels. The resulting problem was that many players found themselves forced to follow suit and gamble on these Lootboxes in hopes that they would get equipment on-par or superior to stay competitive in a nearly-exclusively multiplayer game.

Lootboxes were enough of a problem when you had to gamble just to keep an extra costume for your own gratification, but now other players are indirectly affected by needing to catch up to others in a pay-to-win scenario just to stay in the game.

Warner Bros. made a similarly egregious choice with their publishing of Shadow of War. Rather than encourage the use of the game's wonderful nemesis system to recruit and encounter Orc followers, Warner Bros. decided to include them in the Lootboxes as well - meaning that lazy players could now skip integral parts of the game just by shelling out money for Lootboxes.

The Lootbox epidemic was and still may be at an all-time high, though it may be curtailed by Hawaiian courts having ruled the practice as inciting gambling among children and teens, as well as the significant and visceral backlash leveled at EA and Warner Bros. for Battlefront II and Shadow of War respectively. Though the pay-to-win is not nearly as prevalent now, the Lootbox trend in its more "innocent" state of only including auxiliary, cosmetic additions rather than game altering items, is still going strong.