This. More countries will need to join Belgium and Netherlands to stop these predatory practices.

PA is walking a thin line and I think this restriction is a good showing of their true colours.

Exactly. If more countries do this then they will have no choice but to treat everyone fairly instead of vindictively punishing countries that try to prevent predatory business practice.

Don't get your hopes up. PA is a lazzy company, they rather disable it for most of EU, than put effort into adjusting the content they copy paste from KR.

Truth!

I don't know if it goes this far, but anyway PA and many publishers and devs are using this loophole about gambling in MMORPG for far too long. 

Most of the times it is not even a real loophole, but more an extreme twist of existing rules in many countries ; yet some governments didn't pay attention to it despite the public health issue ("hey, who cares about video games?") because they don't understand the real problem. For sure, it is more complicated than the fallacy "violent video-games make players violent too"...

Anyway, first with lootboxes and now that, I guess devs can feel the change that will come sooner or later. No need to blame Belgium and the Netherlands, that is exactly what a government should do with international companies trying to play with fire. If your country controls gambling, no reason to allow video-games with such features to go unworried. Same rule for all, casinos and games with gambling alike. 

Funny how this is a year ago, not that this isn't a topic I've raised before.

People blaming the government so easily should learn to think though, it's PA that determines what gets into these blocked deals and packages, not us, not the government. And the things that only cost silver or loyalty points don't come close to gambling. Getting shakatu boxes from NPCs through events is not a problem, but as soon as it's in the pearl shop even for 1 loyalty or 1 silver, you're blocked from it if you live in NL or BE, which is just crazy to me.

And it's so easy to fix, so many NPCs for events where you exchange things. All they need to do is add silver-costing items to NPCs. Done. Literally done. But they're lazy. And they don't seem to give a flying .... about the NL/BE player base. If that is punishment? Well, I don't know. But it is unfair.

Especially now, I have spent quite a bit this month coming back into the game... and I can't get a 30% off coupon for 1 loyalty because it's lumped in with an RNG box that is banned. Thanks, I'm sure you appreciate my money and loyalty. Great way to show it. Where'd the claim button go for spend rewards? Why is it 1 lotalty now and thus banned? Makes 0 sense.

Idc about the RNG box this time, even tho it'd be nice to have, I just want my 30% coupon. I really don't like getting left behind and discriminated against like this. People defending such easily solvable problems and bad practises: it must be nice not being discriminated against, huh? They literally create problems where there have to be none.

If you'd take the law at face-value the entire dang game is RNG and can be bought for money and should be blocked. The only difference is is it in the pearl shop or not? Even the real money aspect matters not. Loyalty and silver items are blocked as well as soon as they are, or come bundles with, RNG boxes.

Ridiculous.

And VPN apparently does not work. One friend of mine uses Express, the other Nord. Neither works. So, any other smart ideas? This whole practise just needs to change and it's so easy for them to do so. I'll never understand this greedy company.

The current summer palace board seems to also be restricted in the Netherlands. Annoying to still get the extra dice when logging in without being able to access the board. 

These kind of freeby events being restricted in countries with anti-gambling laws, to me, comes across as petty behavior on the game dev's part. It comes off as hostile and antagonistic in the sense that they're knowingly keeping freebies away from players from these countries under the guise of them being against the gambling laws (even though they don't fall under the gambling laws) in the hope that these players get annoyed and then start bothering their government to rectify the law. It's a deliberate tactic to try and weaken the laws in existing countries, and dissuade future countries from joining in. Very slimy behavior.

I confirmed with some other people in NL, and they are able to access it. Are you certain you checked the board in the right place? It is not the "normal" board, but rather a special board you can access via the "Rewards" tab in the new menu (note that you cannot use the special board if you still use the old menu

Looks like my tangent was misplaced here lmao. I assumed because the shakatu splendid box event you can buy for 300m silver each wasn't available for NL (and other countries) due to gambling laws, this would be a similar 'malicious compliance' situation. Cheers!

Good to hear you found it :)