Brazilian court orders Riot to pay R$15 million over loot boxes

Riot Games' Brazilian subsidiary has been ordered to pay R$15 million in collective moral damages over the loot boxes sold in League of Legends. The Court of Justice of the Federal District and Territories, the court system of Brasília, announced the judgment on June 16, 2026, in a notice on its own news pages. It comes from the district's 1st Children and Youth Court, and it can still be appealed.

A loot box, in the court's own description, is a pack of items bought with real money whose content is unknown until it is opened: the player does not buy a given item, but pays for a random draw run by the company. The court found that offering that to children and adolescents was an abusive practice.

The judgment does more than set an amount. It lists four changes the company must make to the game once the decision is final, and it says the practice was already unlawful before Brazil wrote a ban on loot boxes into a statute last year.

Court of Justice of the Federal District and Territories, notice of June 16, 2026.

Who brought the case and what it asked for

The plaintiff is ANCED, the National Association of Centers for the Defense of Children and Adolescents, a child-rights association. It used a civil public action, the Brazilian procedure that lets an association or a prosecutor go to court on behalf of a whole group and not of one person. The defendant is Riot Games Serviços Ltda., which the court's notice describes as the Brazilian subsidiary of the Riot Games group, itself part of the Tencent conglomerate.

According to the notice, the association asked for three things: a ban on loot boxes, collective moral damages, and an individual payment of R$1,000 to each underage user. The notice does not give the sum the association sought in collective damages, and none of the four measures the judge ordered is a prohibition of the boxes.

The Esports Advocate, which reported the case on June 19, describes the route it took. Parts of the claim had been rejected at an earlier stage; the Public Prosecutor's Office appealed, and the judge took the matter up again, which led to the present decision.

The three defenses the court set aside

The court's notice sets out what the company argued and how the judge answered. The points are the ones any publisher in the same position would raise, which is why the answers matter beyond this file.

On the substance, the judge treated the loot box under consumer law in two ways at once: as abusive advertising built into the product, and as a service with a serious defect of information. The notice gives the grounds. The company does not disclose the real chance of obtaining each item, the system that draws the result is opaque, and nothing warns the buyer of the psychological risks.

The older texts she relied on are the Federal Constitution, the Statute of Children and Adolescents, the Consumer Protection Code and Resolution 163 of 2014 of the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents. In the judge's words as the court reports them, the risk is not accidental but manufactured by the architecture of the product, with techniques designed to induce compulsive behavior in an especially vulnerable public.

That is also why no proof of individual suffering was required for the collective award. The court held the collective moral damage to be presumed from the seriousness of the conduct itself.

What the judgment orders

The R$15 million goes in full to the Fund for the Rights of Children and Adolescents of the Federal District, a public fund, and not to the association or to players.

Individual compensation is handled differently. The notice says the judgment recognizes, in general terms, the right of each child or adolescent who bought or opened loot boxes in the period concerned to seek compensation. It sets no amount. Correio Braziliense, the Brasília daily, reported on June 16 that each of them would have to show, in a separate lawsuit, their link to the practice and the harm suffered.

Then come the changes to the game. Within 90 days of the judgment becoming final, the company must put four measures in place, according to the court:

1. an express warning, on every screen where the boxes are offered, that their content is random;
2. the exact probability of obtaining each item;
3. an age check with a high degree of reliability, which blocks access for minors;
4. a free refund system for purchases made by minors without their parents' authorization.

Failing to do so costs R$100,000 a day. The company must also publicize the judgment widely, on its official channels and inside the game, for at least 90 days.

Neither the court's notice nor the two press reports carries a response from Riot Games.

The statute that arrived during the case

The 2025 statute at the center of the first defense is Law 15,211 of September 17, 2025, the Digital Statute of the Child and Adolescent, known in Brazil as the ECA Digital. Its text, published by the Presidency, came into force on March 17, 2026.

It gives loot boxes a legal definition: a feature of certain electronic games that lets a player acquire, for payment, consumable virtual items or random advantages without knowing the content in advance. Article 20 prohibits them in electronic games aimed at children and adolescents, or likely to be accessed by them. Article 9 requires reliable age verification at each access to restricted content and rules out a simple declaration by the user.

The statute has its own penalties, separate from a civil judgment such as this one. Article 35 provides for a warning with up to 30 days to correct, then a fine of up to 10 percent of the economic group's revenue in Brazil in its last fiscal year, and, where no revenue figure exists, a fine of R$10 to R$1,000 per registered user, capped at R$50 million per violation. A temporary suspension and a prohibition of activities come last, and only the courts can order them.

The Brasília judgment does not depend on that text. The Esports Advocate notes that its reasoning drew on existing child and consumer protection principles, and the court's notice says the same: for the judge, the 2025 law gave statutory form to a wrong that already existed.

What Riot had already changed in March

Riot Games adapted its Brazilian service when the statute took effect. In a notice dated March 10, 2026, the publisher said it was temporarily raising the age rating of five games to 18: League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, League of Legends: Wild Rift, 2XKO and Legends of Runeterra.

Adult players had to verify their age from March 16, with a tax identification number, a payment card, a scan of an identity document or a facial age estimate, through an outside provider. Players under 18 lost access to the five games on March 18; Riot said their accounts were paused with their progress kept. Valorant stayed open to players aged 12 to 17 with a parent's or guardian's consent. Riot said it aimed to return all its games to their original ratings by early 2027.

That notice says nothing about loot boxes. The judgment looks at the game as it was offered under its rating of 12 and up, and its measures concern the boxes themselves: the warning, the probabilities and the refunds.

Other companies before the same court

Riot is not alone. Correio Braziliense reported the same day that other game and technology companies had also been ordered to pay, in the civil public action brought by the same association.

The seven awards in that list add up to R$215 million. The daily fines attached to them range from R$100,000 to R$500,000 depending on the case, the newspaper said, and each company has the same 90 days after a final judgment to add warnings, item probabilities, age checks and refunds.

The Esports Advocate, citing the Brazilian news site UOL, gives a wider count: R$298 million in total across the related cases, with Valve, Tencent, Electronic Arts, Nintendo and Garena among the companies ordered to pay, and R$10 million for Valve in a case about Counter-Strike. The outlet says it found a related action against Valve in Brazilian legal records but could not review that judgment itself.

Brazil is one of several places where courts and regulators have taken up the question, and they have not answered it the same way. The Esports Advocate recalls that Belgium's Gaming Commission ruled in 2018 that paid loot boxes met its definition of games of chance, and that the highest administrative court of the Netherlands overturned in 2022 a €10 million penalty against Electronic Arts over its football card packs. In the United States, the attorney general of New York sued Valve over loot boxes in February 2026.

What comes next

The next step belongs to the parties. Riot Games, the association and the Public Prosecutor's Office can each appeal, and the court's notice does not say whether any of them has. The case can be followed in the court's public records under the number the notice prints.

The four measures and the daily fine do not apply before a final judgment. Two dates already announced by the sources frame the months ahead: the statute's ban has applied since March 17, 2026, and Riot's own target for restoring the original ratings of its games is early 2027.

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