Majority of popular mobile games don't comply with UK loot box ad rules

The majority of the most popular games on Android fail to disclose that they contain loot boxes in UK ads, violating regulations set by the Advertising Standards Authority.

That's according to an investigation by the BBC, which studied the ads for the top 45 highest grossing games on Google Play. The inclusion of loot boxes was mentioned in the store listings for 26 of these games, and 22 of these were actively being advertised at the time.

According to the BBC, ads for only two of these titles made it clear that loot boxes were present in the game.

The ASA's regulations state that the presence of loot boxes should be disclosed in any adverts for games that feature them, and that it will ban or remove ads that fail to do so.

Throughout this year, the ASA has issued several such bans around ads run by EA, Miniclip, Jagex, Gamehaus, Huuuge Global, Mobee Co, SpinX, and Zeroo Gravity Games.

However, various experts told the BBC they do not believe the organisation is enforcing this properly.

In a statement, the ASA said: "This is an ongoing area of our work, and we're closely monitoring the sector to discover the scale of compliance and act accordingly."

The highest grossing game on Google Play is Scopely's Monopoly Go, but this was among the games that did not mention its randomised in-game purchases within its ads.

Correction: The strapline originally said only two titles failed to follow the ASA's regulations, whereas these two were the only ones to comply. The text has been amended.