Brazil court orders Riot Games to pay $3M over League of Legends loot boxes

On June 9, 2026, Riot Games, the publisher behind League of Legends, VALORANT, and Teamfight Tactics, was ordered to pay 15 million reais, roughly $3 million US dollars, in collective moral damages by the Federal District Court of Justice. The charge was on loot boxes, those randomized reward mechanics that sat at the heart of many games' business models for years. The ruling can still be appealed by Riot.

The same court also ordered Apple, Microsoft, Tencent, Google, Sony, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Valve, Konami, and Nintendo to pay a combined 298 million reais, just over $58.5 million USD, for exposing minors to loot box mechanics deemed illegal gambling. Apple, Microsoft, and Tencent bore the heaviest share, each fined 50 million reais individually (less than $10 million).

The case was brought by Anced, the National Association of Centers for the Defense of Children and Adolescents' Rights, through a public civil lawsuit. Judge Rejane Zenir Jungbluth based the amount on several factors, including the game's age rating (not recommended for under-12s), the scale of its Brazilian player base, how long the system had been in operation, and Riot's financial strength. "I set the indemnification for collective moral damages at 15 million reais, an amount I consider necessary and sufficient to fulfill the restorative, educational, and deterrent functions of the conviction," she stated.

Beyond the collective fine, the ruling opens an additional door. Every minor who used loot boxes in League of Legends could eventually seek personal damages in Brazilian courts, though no specific amount has been set. The collective sum itself will be paid into the District Federal Fund for Children's and Adolescents' Rights.

Riot also has 90 days, once all appeals are exhausted, to bring its titles operating in Brazil into compliance, covering explicit warnings, drop rate disclosure, age verification, and a refund system. Failure to do so would expose the publisher to a daily fine of 100,000 reais.

The ruling comes at an already tense time for the California-based publisher. Since March 2026, Brazil's ECA Digital, the country's new online child protection law, has forced Riot to block nearly all of its multiplayer titles for players under 18, VALORANT aside. The reason was an age classification deemed incompatible with regulations targeting gacha-type systems. Riot has said, in a statement, it expects those ratings to be lowered again by 2027.

Brazil is not an isolated case. Around the world, loot boxes are squarely in regulators' crosshairs, but approaches vary wildly. In Europe, Belgium and the Netherlands were the first to act, classifying these mechanics as gambling and banning them outright. In Belgium, non-compliant publishers face particularly harsh penalties, with fines of up to 800,000 euros and five years in prison, doubled if minors are involved.

China took a different path back in 2017, mandating transparency rather than prohibition by requiring publishers to disclose the odds behind every reward. Poland is now preparing to take its own step, as a draft amendment filed in late 2025 would require publishers to obtain a gambling license for any title featuring randomized purchases. At the EU level, progress is slow. A parliamentary report adopted in 2023 called for harmonized rules across member states, and the upcoming Digital Fairness Act could eventually lead to a bloc-wide ban, but not before 2028 at the earliest.