A lot of loot boxes across any game is getting flack and being dealt with because a) there is only a chance at a certain item and you spend real money on that chance, so akin to gambling and b) the items you can get from loot boxes give players who get loot boxes a significant advantage over players who don't. I've seen some argue that fortune cookies don't meet either of these requirements, but I certainly think it does.
For a - It's a chance, we know that. I'm pretty sure you can even check the chances for items, as least from the Timmy/Tommy regular cookies. But it's a chance. And the fancy cookies you buy with Leaf Tickets. And you certainly do earn a lot of leaf tickets just by going and playing the game normally. I've only had it installed like a week and I'm +600, not including what I spent on the golden rod for the current fishing tourney. So you could easily get by with some cookies without spending anything real. But if you run out and want more, you can buy leaf tickets with real money. It's never required but you can. And as this game has a young audience as well, even the option of 'buy more!' can be a bad idea. Speaking from experience, a little 12 year old girl with a small job that pays decently enough can get addicted to spending money on phone games even when the outcome of such spending is a given, never mind when you aren't guaranteed to get what you wanted. So yeah, gambling.
For b - On the surface level, it's mostly just cosmetics. Yeah, I know. Fancy furniture and fancy clothes. You could argue that the fact that getting some of this furniture being a requirement to unlock memories is a certain benefit, sure, but I'm more concerned about the Happy Homeroom. Happy Homeroom offers some sort of dust or something, comes in a red bag, you earn one for the first time you pass a class. This stuff, from what I've seen, is needed along with reissue material for reissued crafting. But you only earn 1 per first time class pass, and the game only has a limited number of non-event classes. This means that, if you want more than just what you can get from that (and bear in mind you need to pass the previous class to unlock the next one so it can actually be difficult to obtain) you need to do event classes. And yes, you can do the event classes that come from the free events, the tourney, gyrodite, etc, but even hen there are more cookie classes and such, and the cookie classes last a long time, even after the cookie is no longer on sale, which is unlike event-event classes which disappear as soon as the event is over. People who buy cookies get more HH dust, and people who get more HH dust get to craft more reissue stuff. Sure, it's not like these fortune cookies offer a '20% extra chance of finding rarer bugs/fish' or something but it's Pocket Camp. Yeah, the cookies only offer cosmetic bonuses to those who buy them, but Pocket Camp is like 95% about cosmetics anyway, hence I would say they meet part b also.
So all in all, I would 100% say fortune cookies are equivalent to loot boxes in Fortnite or whatever game has them. I hope more conturies hurry up and step up on loot box laws, because unfortunately just Belguim isn't enough. Nintendo will produce no money from the game if it ends up going down in somewhere like the USA, and then they'll have no real choice but to amend fortune cookies so they are no longer loot boxes, but still earn money. My own personal idea would be to have each cookies contain a fully stamped card, but each cookie has its own card now. Buying the five pack will contain an extra stamped card. Then you can exchange these cards for the furniture, using matching cards costs less (so the special item costs 5 cards if using cards from the same cookie, but 10 is using other cards). The old stamp feature, including an extra stamp for the five pack will remain in place.
I feel like I've typed more here than I have ever done for a college project but okay. Yeah that's just my two cents on what I think the problem is with fortune cookies.
