>The problem is not "spending too much" on videos games. It's the reward structure designed to incentivise one to spend unbounded amounts - just like a casino.

I do not think you understand how these games work or how they incentivize spending. Lootboxes and gachas work very different to a Casino and equating their reward structure just makes no sense at all. Psychologically they work in very different ways.

I hate to be defending lootboxes and gachas, but the psychology behind those is very different to how a Casino works. Gambling addicts are at an especially high risk of suicide, because they expect some amount of returns on their gambling activity, if those returns fail to materialize the player can be in immense debt. This just can not happen with a gacha, where you know upfront that every euro you spend is a 100% loss. Again, this should not be a defense of lootboxes, but we have to be honest about these mechanics.

And the psychological mechanisms are also different, gachas and lootboxes appeal very much to a collector mindset, where people play until they get a certain rare digital good, but playing after that would be pointless. This is a different mechanism to gambling in a casino.

>And just like a casino, I don't know that making them fully illegal is the correct way to go.

I see no reason why either should be legal, to be honest. We exclude kids from casinos, because their ability to make informed decisions is limited, but the same is true for a gambling addict. Letting people just ruin their lives for whatever reason seems a pretty insane policy.