Electronic Arts ended up under investigation in Belgium for not having removed the prize funds from FIFA Ultimate Team, the online mode of FIFA 18.
As you know, Belgium is one of the first European countries, together with the Netherlands, to have declared that premium funds are a form of gambling and should be regulated as such. Companies such as Valve, Blizzard and 2K Games have had to adapt by removing them from their titles.
Electronic Arts did not and continued to offer prize funds in the FIFA series, leading a prosecutor in Brussels to open an investigation for violating the law against gambling.
EA defended itself by the voice of CEO Andrew Wilson, stating that prize funds are not gambling because players know the amount of items they will get by opening them. The Belgian gambling commission did not allow itself to be convinced and decided to lodge a complaint against the publisher. We will see how the whole thing will evolve, which is assuming more and more grotesque characters, also because if the prize funds are a form of gambling, in the last few years someone has sold us some masked slot machines.
